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Astros’ sporadic building of starting pitching through the draft

Reading about young Spencer Arrighetti and his hopes and dreams for making an impact to the Astros, brought a number of thoughts to the mind.

When you look at the Astros’ Renaissance period from 2015 to the present, very little of the starting pitching that was critical to the team came from their Jeff Luhnow/James Click drafts. Dallas Keuchel was a 2009 draft pick that Jeff Luhnow inherited when he took over the front office in December 2011. Coming out of his drafts (2012 thru 2019) the only pitcher that has been a multi-season success for the Astros has been Lance McCullers Jr.(2012 draft), who certainly has been a hit and miss addition to the rotation with his up and down health situation.

Beyond Lance, Patrick Sandoval (2015) has become a middle of the rotation pitcher, but for the Angels, not the Astros as he brought Martin Maldonado back in a trade.  Both J.P. France (2018) and Hunter Brown (2019) were important to the 2023 rotation, though their long-term impact has yet to be determined.

The team has gone to the early round well,  a number of times for pitchers, but not successfully during the Renaissance. This included first overall picks Mark Appel (2013) and Brady Aiken (2014), who thank goodness turned into Alex Bregman. Forrest Whitley (2016)  and J.B. Bukauskas (2017) were taken in the first round of their draft. Whitley has done nothing but tease potential and Bukauskas biggest contribution was to help bring Zack Greinke back in a trade. Alex Santos (drafted at the end of the 2nd round in 2020) is still only 22 but has gotten worse as they have promoted him up to A+ ball in 2023.

During the Renaissance period the Astros maintained well to great pitching rotations with little contributions from their draft classes. The rotation was filled out for the most part by blockbuster trades (Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole, Greinke), retrievals off the trash heap (Collin McHugh), under the radar free agency signings (Charlie Morton, Wade Miley) and rehab of a pitcher almost forgotten (Brad Peacock).  

The one other way they filled out their rotation has been a bargain basement method that gave them some leverage as their draft position got worse and worse. And that was through international signings. Framber Valdez (2015), Cristian Javier (2015), Luis Garcia (2017), and Jose Urquidy (2015) were all picked up at bargain signing bonuses and have beaten the odds to become contributing members to an annual contending team.

Though the team has not used the draft as their major building block for the major league rotation, it is likely that this method will be used more by GM Dana Brown, who was part of an Atlanta Braves front office that drafted and developed talented pitchers (and others) that have fueled their recent success.

The Astros drafting and development of starting pitching will be an area to watch closely moving forward.

 

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18 responses to “Astros’ sporadic building of starting pitching through the draft”

  1. Forgive me for my absence. All the youth animal shows were great and the girls did well.
    But, today is the day for the other granddaughter who gave up showing goats and went back to her real passion, gymnastics. She was out for three years, but is rounding back into form and has an important competition today.
    Will be mulling over Astros pitching in between performances and will be back to share my thoughts tonight or in the AM.
    Thanks to all of you for your terrific comments about the Houston Astros.

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    • OP – it is always fun living through you and your family which is a lot different than us city folk live through.
      Glad your granddaughters are doing so well!

      Enjoy that!!

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      • Dan, there were 36 competitors in her class at this meet. They all did routines in Floor exercise, uneven parallel bars, Vault and balance beam.
        Our girl had her personal best scores in three of the four events and had the highest cumulative score in the meet.
        It was a good day and she burst into tears when her mother told her what her score was.
        She is far from a star and she wants to move up two class levels this summer to start doing more complicated and difficult routines. Next year will be a better indicator of where she fits in gymnastics.
        Her goal is to find a niche in the limited world of college women’s gymnastics while studying aviation. At age 13, she has flown single engine planes twice(with an instructor) and wants further lessons.
        Lofty goals indeed, but Mrs.1op and I got to see her fly through her routines yesterday. We were stunned.

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  2. The Astros were ahead of the curve with international signees. Everyone else has caught up by now. Japan is expensive. Is it worth having a scout based in Australia? For right now anyway, drafting college players, those with strong tools already established and a maturity level presumably more refined than high school prospects seems to be the prudent path. And a few of those guys should get to the majors quicker too. But it all comes down to picking the right talent. We need an infusion of arms at every level.

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  3. Great to see Jake earning the centerfield job to date. Two solidly struck doubles so far today. I did not quite understand the early pronouncement that he had been given the job.

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  4. We’ve played 10 spring games in 8 days to date. I probably should not comment on our starting pitching after a week, but it’s good to see guys like Urquidy, Brown and Javier look so comfortable in their initial opportunities. Reptil looked especially smooth on Friday. And having the pre 2023 version of Urquidy ready and healthy is a big boost to the back end of the rotation.

    At the same time, I’d rather have seen Framber show the same kind of readiness his peers have. His desire to throw his own pitches, could that be because he’s got a new guy behind the plate? I’ll say this again. I think Framber already has unresolved time management issues on the mound, and calling his own game might not be a great idea. It really is a shame that Diaz never got a chance to catch him in 2023.

    It’s also good to see some of our prospects getting a look and turning heads. I’d put a guy like Loperfido on the roster tomorrow replacing Jon Singleton, except for the fact that Loperfido is better off playing everyday in Sugar Land. But we will have legitimate options just across town when help is needed for the big club.

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    • I don’t know what to make of Singleton. If the Astros really do plan on playing Yordan 80+ games in LF then another lefty bat that can work a pitcher, draw a walk, and has some power is helpful, when he isn’t hitting lazy fly balls. I guess all this depends on Meyers. If Meyers starts hitting in the .260-.270 range he probably locks himself into a regular gig, meaning Chas shifts to left and Yordan doesn’t play left a lot, in that case, give me Cabbage, or one of these youngsters like Joey L, and let them use their athleticism to help you in other ways (pinch running, defensive sub, etc.).

      If you are not going to find a way to get Singleton 300-350 PA’s you probably don’t want him on the 26 man. He won’t play otherwise. It sounds like Espada is going to give us our wish and dial back Abreu to 135-140 game range, but there are plenty of options for 1B on days he isn’t in there. Heck, your backup catcher or your starting catcher either one could use those ABs, and both have spent a bit of time there.

      I get it though. Brown is looking at lefty options for AB’s – right now his starting lineup looks like 2 lefty’s and thats it. But if the other guys are giving you quality at bats, stick with em.

      I’m not seeing a world where everything Brown and Espada are saying can happen. “We want to play Yordan a lot in LF, we want Meyers to go win the CF job, we want Chas playing almost everyday….” won’t all work. I assume Yordan will spend most days at DH.

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      • 100% with you on that last paragraph Steven. I think Brown gets carried away and talks too much at times. He’s always not making things easier for Espada.

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      • I wouldn’t play Yordan 80+ in LF unless that’s something he is pushing the team to do. If you were to play him out there half the time and played Chas there the other half, you could plan for Chas to get 40 games in CF and Jake to take the other 120. I’m assuming that putting Dubon in the outfield on a regular basis is not in the plans, but if it is then my numbers above wouldn’t work unless someone is injured. There’s no one else on the roster to give strong consideration at this point.

        I think their hope with Singleton is to release him at the end of ST and sign him for Sugarland if no one bites. I think it’s a pretty solid plan unless someone gets hit by a late injury at 1B and panics.

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  5. Other than the poor start by Framber, this was a good weekend for Astros who will actually be on the 26 man roster – like you said Urquidy, Hunter and Brown and big hits by Altuve, Tucker, Yordan and others. And we get 60 non-competitive pitches out of JV, which is positive.
    Hopefully, Framber turns it around, but I agree that it might not be the best thing giving him more things to do on the mound. It might take his mind off of the things that upset him or it might give him even less time to get in the right mood to pitch.
    No truer words than Dusty being almost criminal in not letting Diaz catch Framber and JV last season. Stupidly stubborn.

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  7. Eventually, having to draft at #28-30 in every round of the draft for the last seven seasons will catch up with any team. That is, unless you sign enough International Free Agent pitchers and then are good enough or lucky enough to hit on a bunch of them to make a difference.
    I’m not sure Jim Crane gets enough credit for keeping this team in the hunt for so long a stretch, especially with two managers and 3 different GM’s.

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    • Definitely the one thing Crane has impacted – the fact that Verlander now has to consider which hat is on his HoF bust, and that Jose Altuve doesn’t. And that is huge.

      The rest, I’m up in the air on. There is no doubt you can’t win without a committed owner. But he probably didn’t even know who Framber, Javier, Garcia, Urquidy or Abreu were until they got to at least AA. He probably didn’t have a lot to do with the trade for or savvy extension of Pressly other than sign the contract.

      We know what happened when he didn’t have a GM – an old first baseman that is a below average player at this point and a monster contract to a reliever that had been great exactly 1 year in his entire career. But hats off to him for spending through the cap to fix that error.

      I am sure he approved the drafting of Springer, Correa, Bregman, but he didn’t pick em. He also didn’t know Charlie Morton was as good as he was (who did, well one guy did), or figured out how to get the most out of guys like Brad Peacock when no one else could.

      I don’t know that Josh Hader is worth the richest contract in history for a relief pitcher – he has a bit of inconsistency built into his at times sheer dominance – but we are going to spend 5 years finding out.

      If I sound like the president of the Luhnow fan club – maybe. He has a few clunkers (some guys named Gomez, Appel, Aiken, Singleton), but overall, his insistence on drafting/signing youngsters that could tell a ball from strike and pitchers with plus velocities and spin rates when no one else was looking for that combination of things is the reason we had success for going on 8 years now (and some short guy, I mean really short). And that Alvarez/Fields trade, pure gold.

      I am not a fan of the way Crane dismissed Luhnow, but I also readily admit I have no idea what happens in the halls of MMP. It may have been completely warranted. I also think Luhnow was impersonal, he had the reputation of thinking of players as assets and not employees of his company, and Crane seems to be the exact opposite. They probably didn’t always gel.

      The rest of the league is caught up now. It will be interesting where it goes from here.

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      • Lots of true statements there Steven – and we really don’t know how things went down back when.
        Maybe it’s because he had too much ego to swallow and take the blame, but it is rather amazing that Hinch and Cora sat out their suspensions and immediately had a job (in Cora’s case the same job) and Luhnow is running minor league soccer in Mexico.

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      • If I was a guessing man – Luhnow was caught with his pants down, then insisted after he was fired that he didn’t know, except it probably came out that he did. And that kind of stuff will not sit well in baseball circles. Jim Crane seems well respected in baseball circles, maybe not the fanbases of New York or LA, but by other owners. I don’t know that we ever see Luhnow back in baseball.

        It’s crazy to think that Cora kept his job or Hinch found another knowing they were 100% more involved in it, heck Cora and Beltran are considered the masterminds, but they aren’t GMs, the proverbial “main eventer” or “top of the ticket.”

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      • Plenty of good points, but regarding Luhnow, at the very least, the GM should have been tuned in enough to know what was going on in the dugout, and that’s assuming Hinch never brought the cheating program to his attention. Hinch got off easy too. Spineless. He lost his own dugout. We’re still talking about this crap all these years later and Jose Altuve, the legitimate alter boy, is still getting booed throughout baseball. That pisses me off the most.

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      • I don’t want to dwell on the cheating, but it’s widely accepted that Luhnow would come down the tunnel and ask if they were actively using the scheme during games. It’s also widely accepted that Hinch didn’t like the scheme and destroyed at least one monitor used for it. He has put for the claim it was done in protest…but who knows whether that’s true or not. What we don’t know is what happened after MLB circulated the memo telling teams to knock it off after Boston and NYY both got caught using watches and tablets, respectively, in late summer of 2017. If Luhnow sat on that directive then he deserves all the ire he is getting. If he directed Hinch/Cora/players to stop and that continued doing so under his nose then I guess he’s the Jim Harbaugh of the MLB world, right?

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