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Dear Mr. Fred Nelson, Director of player development........Sir, can we please speed things up a bit?

You will get no argument from me that talent has everything to do with how fast a players moves up through the minor leagues. But; with that said, the Astros former regime had a bad habit of moving too slowly. Case in point; Hunter Pence was at AA when they moved him to the majors. So, does that mean he wasn't good enough to be in AAA??? That is beyond explanation.

Now that there is some talent coming into the minors; I would hope the the new leadership in the Astros front office implements the "Peter Principle". You rise to the level of your incompetence. It's time to move players up when they're ready; not a year or so later. One quick example and I'm sure there are several others that would be better; but, Tanner Bushue (quite possibly a very poor choice). If there is any future hope for this 20 year old; he needs to be in Corpus Christie no later than mid season 2012. There is little way to improve in baseball while competing with lesser or equal talent to yourself.

Without the organization challenging these young players (dare I say pushing players to improve or cease to be players); saying the Astros should be a legitimate playoff contender in 2015 may be a pipe dream.

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Mar 2012 from Camden Chat - 32 comments

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This past season was Fred Nelson’s first year in that position and he was definitely pretty aggressive this past season with several prospects, there were some that it took a little too long for mid season promotions, but most they had their reasonings.

by Subber10 on Jan 3, 2012 4:20 PM CST reply actions  

Hasty promotions...

Altuve, Martinez, Paredes, and Lyles hasty promotions may have been a plea by Ed Wade to keep his job once ownership was finished transferring. I believe, all 4 were drafted under his regime.

by Bacasillas on Jan 3, 2012 4:58 PM CST up reply actions  

I do not think it was too fast

Altuve had a minors AVG of .327. He never played above AA, 1 year there he had 144 at-bats with a .361 AVG, .388 OBP, and .958 OPS. I do not like a player jumping from AA to Majors, but they waited too long to put Altuve in AAA. We signed him in 2007, why had he been no higher than AA. Martinez had 506 at-bats in AA with a .324 AVG, same question here why was he not in AAA. We drafted him in 2009, no reason for him not to have been in AAA at the begging of this season, especialy because at the begging of the season our farm system was considered depleted.

by Astro#1fan on Jan 3, 2012 10:11 PM CST up reply actions  

I agree with OremLK. If anything, Wade pushed players too fast through the system over the last couple of years. If the Astros can become more deliberate in player development, I think that will be a sign that the farm system is maturing and player depth is becoming more normal.

by clack on Jan 3, 2012 8:43 PM CST up reply actions  

Earned promotion over panic......

The 4 you mentioned were “fast tracked” because of panic and need. This has not been the rule in the past it has been the exception.

by AstrosBill on Jan 4, 2012 8:14 AM CST up reply actions  

Previous years were under different management. Fred Nelson was in the position for the first time this year, and he was pretty aggressive overall.

by Subber10 on Jan 4, 2012 10:59 AM CST up reply actions  

I think players, in terms of development and readiness for promotion, have such a variance in how they need to be treated. Each player needs to be treated as an individual case. Sure, there are some general rules of thumb (a player should never spend 3 years at one level, a player is unlikely to drastically improve past age 27), but the overall strategy should be the people with the most exposure to the player should be the ones making a judgement based on individual performance/analysis. In Bushue’s case, I definitely think he is getting closer to a “sink or swim” moment, but throwing him up to AA not only might be squandering his latent talent by rushing him, it may also deprive another, more ready player of a AA rotation slot.

I agree with Orem that many of the current youngsters have been rushed. Other than Martinez and Jack Shuck, I think every player under 25 should be in the minors in 2012. Castro was rushed and needs to ease back into everyday play. Wallace needs to be in AAA until he finds his confidence and power stroke. Altuve needed time in AAA to work on plate discipline. Paredes needs minor league work to get better defensively at 3B (and to work on striking out less). Lyles’ clock was started too early and to me he hadn’t shown an ability to truly dominate AAA, and at his age, there was still plenty of possible tweaking that couldve been made to raise his ceiling.

by Snake Diggity on Jan 3, 2012 6:36 PM CST reply actions  

It’s like adding too much yeast to a bread dough to try to make a faster forming dough. But what you’re doing is you’re not allowing the gluten to form properly, thus producing a poor quality dough and a poor quality bread that won’t taste good and won’t store for long.

I don’t feel like pushing players to the majors is a particularly good idea. A player needs to work on improving their habits and characteristic issues they have to deal with in the minors. Pushing a player to the majors will put them on the spotlight and then they will try to impress others by altering their habits to try to find quick success. There is one particular example in which the hitting coach from Round Rock (2010) noticed that Jason Castro altered his swing once he reached the major league level. He did not do well with the bat that year, flirting with the Mendoza line for the rest of the season.

If we keep promoting players too early, we are setting ourselves up for disaster by not allowing players to be properly developed.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason why so few engage in it. - Henry Ford

by BustaPozee on Jan 3, 2012 10:57 PM CST reply actions  

I have an Interestin Question

With the first pick it looks like we will take Mark Appel. He spent 2 years in college so he is 20. He has a 95mph fast ball a good slider and an above average change up. My question is how soon before we see him in the bigs. Should we rush him he did have two sesons in college, he went to Stanford thus most likely a pretty smart guy. Or do we wait. How old should he be when he hits the bigs. I say 22 let him wait 2 more years. Maybe a September call up this year just a few innings though.
What do ya’ll think?

by Astro#1fan on Jan 4, 2012 6:46 PM CST reply actions  

Assuming Appel is the draft choice, and I think it’s too early to say that…I think it depends on how he is pitching in the minors. 2 years in the minors seems like a good projection, but it could be a little sooner or later.

by clack on Jan 4, 2012 9:05 PM CST up reply actions  

IF he is the pick, my projection would be:

2012- Tri-City
2013- Lancaster/Corpus
2014- OKC/Houston
2015- Houston

And that’s if he stays healthy and all goes as planned. But optimistically he could be a solid member of the rotation by 2015 and a top of the rotation arm by 2017.

by Snake Diggity on Jan 5, 2012 9:48 AM CST up reply actions  

Case in point; Hunter Pence was at AA when they moved him to the majors. So, does that mean he wasn’t good enough to be in AAA??? That is beyond explanation.

That’s not necessarily how it works. Most of the very best prospects in baseball never make it to AAA. By the time they have a significant number of games in AA, it can be obvious that the player is ready for major league ball, and moving them to AAA won’t accomplish anything except delaying a good career. AAA is populated with mostly rehabbing veterans, older guys who have had something happen to them that stunted their major league careers, and “organizational soldiers” whose best chance at making the majors is as a short-term bench player when somebody gets hurt.

Many good prospects make it to AAA, but they are often players whose position is blocked in the majors, late bloomers, or guys with less than elite talent who have something specific to work on to improve their game unless that weakness gets exploited in the majors.

In Pence’s case, he had no need for much time in AAA because he had no noticable weakness in his game and there was an open spot for him in Houston.

In Altuve and Paredes’ cases, as clack pointed out, both of those guys have huge holes in their skill set that really could use some work in the high minors, mostly having to do with being more selective about which pitches they swing at. In the majors, the pressure to perform could prevent them from working on that, and as a result they may never be as good as they could have been had they stayed in the minors for another year or so to work on plate discipline.

by CRPerry13 on Jan 5, 2012 7:52 AM CST reply actions  

Pence had a big thing he could have worked on. Patience how many times did we see Pence at the plate and we yelled at him what are you swinging at. More or less every at bat. If the pticher threw him a slider low and outside Pence was swinging and whiffing. That is a part of his game that could have been imporved but if you look at the majority of our prospect in the last 5 years or so none of them seem to be very selective. I think that our player development system was not teaching our players to be selective or patient. They wanted them to swing. Maybe McClane’s obsession with the long ball had something to do with that.

by Astro#1fan on Jan 5, 2012 9:06 AM CST up reply actions  

To be completely accurate, Pence was playing in AAA when he was called up to the major league team. The Astros planned on giving Pence more time in AAA, but his huge spring training and Chris Burke’s disastrous start to the season moved up the time line for calling up Pence from AAA. That extra month or so at the big league level cost the Astros dearly on the monetary side, since Pence became a Super Two player and ended up getting arbitration after only 2 years.

by clack on Jan 5, 2012 9:45 AM CST up reply actions  

It's worth nothing that ...

… some of these international guys (Altuve and Paredes, for example) can be on pretty different timelines that their American counterparts. They went through a different system and can sometimes develop a little faster, I think. Not that any of those guys were ready to skip AAA this past season, but it’s a thought.

by super_shredder on Jan 9, 2012 11:13 AM CST reply actions  

because they begin playing professionally at an earlier age, the organizational clock is moving earlier, which tends to make teams push them through the minors faster. Some international players will be Rule 5 eligible at 22 if they aren’t put on the 40 man roster (see Altuve and Marwyn Gonzalez as examples). They might become minor league free agents at 23 or 24. So there is some incentive to find out what they can do at a younger age than their counterparts.

by clack on Jan 9, 2012 11:36 AM CST up reply actions  

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