Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Houston Astros. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fifth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.

A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.

All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here. Read the rest of this entry »

In a race for a playoff spot, every edge matters. Yet all too often, for reasons that extend beyond a player’s statistics, managers and general managers fail to make the moves that could improve their teams, allowing mediocre production to fester at the risk of smothering a club’s postseason hopes. In Baseball Prospectus’ 2007 book, It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over, I compiled a historical All-Star squad of ignominy, identifying players at each position whose performances had dragged their teams down in tight races: the Replacement-Level Killers. I’ve revisited the concept numerous times at multiple outlets and have adapted it at FanGraphs in an expanded format since 2018.

When it comes to defining replacement level play, we needn’t hew too closely to exactitude. Any team that’s gotten less than 0.6 WAR from a position to this point — prorating to 1.0 over a full season — is generally in the ballpark, though my final lists also incorporate our Depth Charts rest-of-season projections, which may nose them over the line. Sometimes, acceptable or even above-average defense (which may depend upon which metric one uses) coupled with total ineptitude on offense is enough to flag a team. Sometimes a club may be well ahead of replacement level but has lost a key contributor to injury; sometimes the reverse is true, but the team hasn’t yet climbed above that first-cut threshold. As with Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of hardcore pornography, I know replacement level when I see it. Read the rest of this entry »

Recently, I’ve had to re-evaluate a strongly held belief. It’s an important thing for responsible adults to do every now and then; even if the opinion wasn’t wrong at the time, conditions can change. And I’m not too proud to identify such a situation now.

Here’s the old take, the one I’m revising now: Jeremy Peña is the most overrated player in baseball. At the time, it made sense. But it definitely doesn’t now. Read the rest of this entry »

When the Astros awoke on May 7, they were 17-18 and had just slipped into fourth place in the AL West. They had recently placed Yordan Alvarez — who had struggled mightily to that point — on the injured list with what had been diagnosed as a muscle strain in his right hand. First baseman Christian Walker, their big free agent addition, was scuffling along below replacement level, and both new left fielder Jose Altuve and the group that replaced him at second base were playing every bit as badly. Meanwhile, their already-thin rotation had been further compromised by the loss of Spencer Arrighetti. But even while receiving more bad news on Alvarez, and losing two more starters — Ronel Blanco and Hayden Wesneski — to Tommy John surgery, the Astros have turned things around, winning 15 of 24 and briefly sneaking into first place in the AL West.

At this writing, the Astros are now 32-27, and have trimmed the Mariners’ division lead from four games to half a game:

By comparison, the Mariners started 21-14, but have gone 11-12 since. Since May 6, the Astros have won four series (against the Reds, Royals, Mariners, and A’s), lost one (Rays), and split two (Rangers and Rays). They took three out of four from the Mariners at home from May 22-25, capped by Walker’s walk-off two-run homer off Casey Legumina on May 25. That was one of three walk-off victories during that span; Isaac Paredes‘ solo homer off the Royals’ John Schreiber on May 13 and Yainer Diaz’s solo homer off the Rays’ Garrett Cleavinger on May 30 were the others. The latter shot lifted the Astros’ record to 31-26, allowing them to sneak past the Mariners and into first place, but since then, Seattle beat Minnesota in each of its next two games while Houston split a pair with Tampa Bay, restoring the Mariners to first place by the barest of margins:

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When the Astros signed Christian Walker to a three-year, $60 million deal in December, it felt like a reasonable solution to a longstanding problem. The Astros have rarely gotten good production from their first basemen in the past decade, and while Walker hasn’t quite been All-Star caliber, in recent years he’s generally provided solid offense with exceptional defense for the position. So far this season, he’s struggled mightily, which unfortunately for the Astros has come at a time when other key players have also failed to hit, and the rotation has weathered numerous injuries as well.

Last year, Walker hit .251/.335/.468 (119 wRC+) with 26 homers and 3.0 WAR for the Diamondbacks, while over the past three seasons, he averaged 32 homers, a 120 wRC+, and 3.6 WAR; his 2024 shortfalls mainly owed to his missing a month due to an oblique strain. Even with time missed, that 2024 production looks like the second coming of Jeff Bagwell next to the .226/.291/.360 (87 wRC+) performance of Astros first basemen last year, with 18 homers but -1.4 WAR, a total that was somehow not quite as bad as the first basemen of the Rockies and Reds. Starter José Abreu crashed and burned and was released in mid-June despite only being about halfway through his three-year, $58 million deal. Thereafter, Jon Singleton did the bulk of the first base work, sharing the job with Yainer Diaz and Victor Caratini on days when one or the other wasn’t catching. It wasn’t great, but it at least stopped the bleeding in that Abreu alone produced -1.5 WAR, while the rest — a group that also included Zach Dezenzo, Mauricio Dubón, and three players who made a single appearance at the position — netted 0.1 WAR.

As Michael Baumann pointed out when Walker signed in December, first base has been a multiyear problem for the Astros. During the 2022-24 span, only three teams had lower WARs at a single position — right field for the White Sox, Rockies, and Pirates — than the Astros’ -2.7 WAR at first. Over the past decade, Yuli Gurriel was the only Astros first baseman to exceed 2.0 WAR in a single season (he did it twice), and five times in the past six seasons, the team’s regular or co-regular first baseman finished with negative WAR. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. I’ll keep the introduction short today, because I’m getting ready to travel to St. Louis for a game with my dad and uncle. There’s a Masyn Winn bobblehead ticketed for my memorabilia shelf – and a pile of enjoyable plays to recap before I can go get it. So, of course, thank you to Zach Lowe of The Ringer, whose NBA columns of likes and dislikes inspired this one, and let’s get started.

1. The Weekend of Wilmer
I have a soft spot for Wilmer Flores through a sheer fluke of geography. I lived in New York during his Mets tenure, and I moved to San Francisco around the same time he did. His walk-up music has been the same for the last decade: the Friends theme song. It’s a fan favorite and even comes with a good story. He’s the quintessential role player, a guy that most teams would love to have but no team needs to have. He’s been pitching in across the diamond, albeit in decreasingly difficult defensive roles, that whole time. With the exception of a down 2024, he’s been consistently valuable, but he’s never been a star – the closest thing I know to a Wilmer Flores highlight is his charming sadness when he thought he was getting traded.

For just one weekend, though, that all changed. Flores has been improbably dueling with Aaron Judge for the major league RBI lead throughout the first eight weeks of the season. RBI might not be a great predictive stat, and it might not be a great stat overall, but it definitely matters to players. Fancier versions of measuring contextual offense – WPA, RE24, and so on – all think that Flores has been a top 10 run producer this year, too. He’d fallen behind Judge by just a hair in those races – and probably has no chance at keeping up all season. I mean, have you seen Aaron Judge? But none of that mattered when the Giants played the A’s last weekend.
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Everyone should have one weird player they love. If I were commissioner of baseball, this would be part of my pitch to fans. There are a million different ways to succeed in this sport we all love, and if you only like the guys who swing hard, throw fast, and run well, you’d miss the splashes of color that dot the sport. Tyler Rogers pitches upside down. Jose Altuve is small but mighty. Luis Arraez swings slowly on purpose. Then you’ve got my personal favorite, Isaac Paredes, who is among the league leaders in WAR thanks to his one weird trick.

That weird trick is incredibly valuable: pulling the ball in the air. Take a look at the distribution of his aerial contact this year:

Paredes isn’t going to wow you with barrels. His hard-hit rate is among the league’s lowest. Many of those home runs look farcical. This one would be out of only five parks:

I know, I know, this isn’t news. I’ve been writing about Paredes’ pull-only power for years, marveling at his ability to rack up star-level production with journeyman-level raw tools. Since the start of the 2022 season, when he first became an everyday regular, he’s been worth about as much WAR as Bryce Harper (11.9 to Harper’s 12.4) in about as many plate appearances (1,798 to Harper’s 1,818). Some of that is defense, but even if you want to compare him on the offensive end, he’s matched Carlos Correa, Anthony Santander, and Corbin Carroll at the plate. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s not often that I take a pause from the prospect lists to write about individual call-ups, but we have three big league debuts on the docket for today, and I wanted to update readers on those pitchers, as well one other prospect-related bycatch that’s come up during the course of me working on the Reds, Guardians, and Brewers org lists.

First, let’s talk about the starting pitchers making their big league debuts today: Chase Petty of the Reds, AJ Blubaugh of the Astros, and Noah Cameron of the Royals. All of them have updated player profiles over on The Board.

Chase Petty, RHP, Cincinnati Reds (50 FV)

Petty, who touched 102 in high school, came to the Reds from Minnesota during the spring of 2022 in a trade for Sonny Gray. After missing time with an elbow issue in 2023, he had a healthy and complete 2024 season in which he worked 137 innings spent mostly at Double-A Chattanooga, many more frames than he had thrown in any year prior. Proving he could sustain big stuff across that load of innings was instrumental to his inclusion among the 2025 Top 100 Prospects. His fastball was still sitting 94-97 mph after Petty had been promoted to Louisville at the very end of last season, and he has carried that into 2025. As of his call-up, he has 27 strikeouts, nine walks, and a 1.30 WHIP in 23 innings (five starts). Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) This Week. There must have been something in the water across the league over the past seven days, because while this column always highlights delightful oddities that I caught, they aren’t often so delightful or so odd. This week, rarities abounded. There were runners getting hit by throws, wild acrobatics, no-look passes, and even a pitchout. Hot teams and cold teams clashed, errors got compounded, and situations that felt in hand rapidly got away. So keep an eye on the runner at first base, and let’s get started – after my customary thanks to Zach Lowe of The Ringer, who popularized this column format for basketball.

1. Not-Quite-Free Bases
Jarren Duran is off to a slow start to the 2025 season. And while the problems have mostly come at the plate, everything seems a little off. Take this misadventure on the basepaths last Thursday. Duran led off the bottom of the 10th inning with a game-tying single. That made him the winning run, and he immediately started plotting a theft of second base to get into scoring position. Nick Sandlin checked on him:

Then he checked on him again:

That’s two disengagements; Sandlin wasn’t likely to try again. Duran stole 34 bases last year. He’s blazing fast. He was 5-for-5 on the season and had already swiped one in this game. Second base was as good as his. And so the Blue Jays took extreme measures, calling for one of the least-used plays in modern baseball, a pitchout:

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Welcome to another edition of Five Things I Liked (Or Didn’t Like) In Baseball This Week. I was at a wedding this past weekend, a generally fun event for a baseball writer. That’s because strangers ask me what I do, and then I get to say, “I’m a baseball writer.” That plays a lot better than, “I work in accounting/finance/tech,” no offense to any of you in those fine fields. But this weekend, someone inquired deeper. “Oh, like sabermetric stuff?” “Yeah! Kind of. Also I make GIFs of dumb and/or weird plays. And bunts, lots of bunts.” Yes, it’s a strange job being a baseball writer, but also a delightful one, and this week delivered whimsy and awe in equal amounts. So unlike guests milling around at a wedding, let’s get straight to the point – after the customary nod to Zach Lowe of The Ringer for the inspiration for this article format.

1. Not Reaching Home
The third time a runner was tagged out at the plate in Wednesday’s Cardinals-Pirates clash came at a pivotal moment. Locked in a scoreless tie in the bottom of the 11th, Pittsburgh finally looked like it would break through when Joey Bart singled to right. But, well:

That was a good throw by Lars Nootbaar and a clean catch by Pedro Pagés, and that combination turned a close play into a gimme. I mean, how often are you going to be safe when the catcher already has the ball in his glove and you’re here:

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