He did trade those busts like Appel/Beer/Buskaskus for established players that helped the Stro It really is pretty simple, he held down Springer, Bregs/any number of pitchers.
Some interesting stuff on draft trends: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/48771509/2026-mlb-draft-buzz-scouting-reports-intel-analysis
Interesting. My read on that as it relates to the Astros is that Houston seems to have been ahead of the curve on the trend to prioritize ceiling over floor, it just hasn’t paid off (yet). Based on that article, a guy like Brice Matthews would go even higher in this year’s draft, and the same can probably be said about Xavier Neyens. The Astros also seem to have been ahead of the curve of targeting high ceiling college P in the middle rounds. So all of that is encouraging, even if the results have been pretty discouraging.
I looked up Ed Wade’s track record on this topic. Wade had 5 drafts as Astros GM (2007-2011). He drafted Jason Castro 10th overall and George Springer 11th overall, both major successes. Outside of that he drafted the following really good players in later picks (all 3 in 2007): Dallas Keuchel JD Martinez Enrique Hernandez So Ed Wade was basically as good or better at drafting good players outside of the top 10 than Jeff Luhnow.
Most will disagree with me, but I thought Wade did a good job as GM. Are you saying Wade was on par with Luhnow as a GM? All of the numbers in the world that you give me cant overcome one simple fact. Luhnow drafted, traded for, signed international players that gave the city of Houston the best decade of success this city has ever seen.
I am not saying Wade was as good overall as Luhnow. I was just highlighting that Wade had a better track record of drafting good players outside the very top picks than Luhnow. This is all a tangent of your assertion that Dana Brown has not been up to par because Brice Matthews isn’t a borderline star player already. Luhnow only drafted one of those guys every 4 years, Ed Wade drafted 2-3 in 5 years. So my point is really that it’s too early to judge Brown’s drafting prowess with Houston and we shouldn’t expect every draft to yield a really good player and shouldn’t expect any individual late 1st round pick to be a good player. Overall I would definitely say that Luhnow was a better GM than Ed Wade.
I think the funny thing about Luhnow Only Fans is that they do not understand what made Luhnow a good-to-great GM. Luhnow did not have a underlying philosophy on picking prospects. He looked for market inefficiencies and exploited those. For example, he drafted Hunter Brown, a D2 pitcher BTW, since Hunter had a good-for-D2 fastball and a great spin rate on his curveball, assuming that the curve was MLB ready and that the Astros development team could turn his fastball from to good to great. If Luhnow had not been fired, I suspect that he would be testing out potential market inefficiencies as we speak.
I do expect every draft/international signing period to yield one really good player. Really 2. The reason I'm questioning Dana as GM isn't because Matthews isn't a star. I ask myself if the minor league system is better or worse in the 3 years Dana has been GM. I'm not saying these guys have been busts, but for the scout Dana was supposed to be the results so far have been pretty underwhelming. IMHO
Jason Schiavone picking up right where he left off in Asheville as he just hit his first homer for Corpus. He now has 18 home runs on the season. He's at 1B tonight.
I really thought Beer would hit... Who was the big RHP/1B from Kentucky? He was supposed to hit, but he really did not hit at all eta: AJ Reed
He is very likely to strike out too much to be a viable MLB hitter. But he clearly has power and patience.
For the value they provided, Jason Martin. Seth beer, Corbin Martin, josh rojas, daz cameron, Jake rogers, etc were all wins of draft picks by Luhnow. They all did well enough, early enough to be considered a top prospect by enough people to result in cole, Verlander and greinke. Being a top 100 prospect, even though they do not have a good MLB career, is a draft pick win in and of itself if approached properly.
I felt that Reed and Beer would both hit. Seth Beer raked at Clemson from the first time he took the field. He then raked in the minor leagues too.... COVID hurt him a lot. He had a OPS in the upper minors north of 900 before he got hurt. As for AJ Reed --- his bat was special when the Astros had him focus on 1st/DH. He crushed it his last year at Kentucky, then flew through the Astros minor league system. He came up to the big leagues, he struggled and it spooked him. About 18 months later he quit baseball. He had some emotional issues, that sticks out to me.
