The valleycats dropped their exhibition game 10-4, but Juan Paulino, Hector Martinez, and Andres Santana all hit HRs. I'm not sure if there's a boxscore anywhere.
For those who were wondering about the context, Brett Conine allowed three hits and struck out seven over six shutout innings for Fayetteville.
Fangraphs has added draftees to their prospect board lists: https://www.fangraphs.com/prospects...on-prospect-list?sort=-1,1&pagenum=0&team=hou Here’s where the draftees rank: Lee 11th, Grade 40+ Brewer 21, 40 Brown 27, 40 Barber 29, 40 Kessinger 33, 35+ Barefoot 43, 35+ Obviously we should hope they’re wrong about Lee and Kessinger.
Seemed like a pretty lame update. They added Torres and Urquidy (though his description still has him 89-93, which doesn't match BA's report) and they bumped Beer and Alvarez up a bit, while dropping Tucker, Perez, and Bukauskas. I thought for sure Conine would be somewhere on there, and that you could bump Pena, Valdez, Toro, etc. I get trying to do a minor league update right after all the draft coverage is a huge undertaking, but it seems like they could have done a better job. Or I'm a huge homer.
I like how they gave Alvarez an arrow up, but didn't increase is future value grade. At the same time, they gave Tucker a down arrow and lowered his grade. Overall, Astros system besides Alvarez and Urquidy has seemed pretty blah so far this year.
Nah. The pitching as a whole has taken a step backward compared to expectations. But they have had quite a few guys increase their value: Alvarez went from MLB top 100 to MLB top 20 Toro went from Org Top 20 to Org Top 10 Pena, Rojas, E Valdez, Urquidy, Paredes, Conine, and Torres put themselves on the radar. Obviously too early to know but I am excited about the draft and the current (and expected J2) crop in the DSL. Of the rest of their preseason Top 30, I would say Tucker, Martin, Nova, Abreu, Beer, Ivey, Straw, Bielak, L Santana, Arauz, and Javier have had their stock stay level since the preseason. And as quite a few of those guys are young for their league, I am very hopeful we will see most of them have strong 2nd halves to raise their stock goin into the offseason. Whitley, Bukauskas, C Perez, Solomon, Schroeder, Deetz, Armenteros, McKenna, R Dawson, Matijevic, and Adolph have seen their stocks fall. But Bukauskas and Perez seem to be on the way back, and of the rest, Whitley is the only one who was expected to be a true impact prospect. Alvarez’s rise counters Whitley’s fall. Toro’s rise counters Bukauskas’s fall. The group of unknowns who have broken out (Urquidy, Rojas, etc.) balance out the 3rd tier guys who have busted (Adolph, Deetz, etc.).
