As we speculated about ridiculously implausible Roy Oswalt trades, the Astros' minor league teams were busy dominating the competition 37-25 across all teams.
Won:
- Round Rock, 11-8
- Lancaster, 7-0
- Tri-City, 6-2
- Greeneville 5-1
Lost:
- Corpus Christi, 3-5
- Lexington, 5-9
Best Performances
- Brian Bogusevic (AAA), 3-for-3, HR, 2 BB, 2 SB. Praising Bogey has gotten to be a daily occurrence. His OPS is up to .822 on the season, and he's looking more and more like starter material, especially if he can play center field, as he did today for the Express. None of his individual tools pop out at you, but he seems to be average or above all the way across the board.
- J.D. Martinez (AA), 2-for-4.
- Jon Gaston (AA), 1-for-3, HR, BB. Gaston's OPS since the All-Star Break (66 at-bats): .891. He has shown improvement in every facet of his game over the past month.
- Jordan Lyles (AA), 6.2 IP, 9 H, 5 R, 2 BB, 11 K. In a particularly bizarre line, Jordan Lyles got pounded for the loss, but posted a spectacular strikeout-to-walk rate in the process, which is what got him on this list. Part of that pounding was the grand slam he gave up, but the other part was the nine hits he allowed.
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Jay Austin (A+), 2-for-4, K, SB. A bunch of awfully similar lines follow, but Austin's is the only particularly good prospect of the bunch (although the ones below all technically qualify as low-end grade C types).
- Brandon Barnes (A+), 2-for-4, 2B.
- Federico Hernandez (A+), 2-for-3, 2B, BB.
- Barry Butera (A+), 2-for-3, 2B, K.
- Brandon Wikoff (A+), 2-for-4, K.
- Leandro Cespedes (A+), 7 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 2 BB, 8 K. These are the results you expected when a pitcher performs like Cespedes has this season. He gets plenty of strikeouts and doesn't walk too many batters, but allowing a lot of fly balls (0.86 GO/AO) is a bad idea in Lancaster, as evidenced by Cespedes' 4.78 ERA.
- Jose Altuve (A), 2-for-4, BB, PO. Altuve got picked off of first base, but the rest of his night was what we've come to expect from him.
- Kody Hinze (A), 2-for-5, 2B.
- Ben Orloff (A-), 1-for-1, BB, SB.
- Ben Heath (A-), 2-for-4, 2B, BB. Heath has been cold lately, so a good game like this was exactly what he needed.
- Michael Kvasnicka (A-), 2-for-5, 2B, 3B. His resurgence continues. I saw in an interview yesterday that Kvasnicka felt like he'd been hitting a lot of lineouts lately, which fits with what the stats tell us: He's been unlucky on balls in play.
- Buck Afenir (A-), 2-for-4, 2B.
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Jake Buchanan (A-), 5.2 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 0 BB, 2 K. Jake Buchanan has a 2.06 groundout/airout ratio in 22.2 IP. This is, needless to say, good.
- Chris Wallace (Rk), 2-for-4.
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Telvin Nash (Rk), 2-for-3, HR. Promote both Nash and Wallace, please! It's about that time.
- Carlos Mojica (Rk), 2-for-4, 2B, 2 K.
- Euris Quezada (Rk), 7 IP, 5 H, 1 R, 0 BB, 3 K.
Goats of the Day
- Yorman Bazardo (AAA), 1 IP, 5 H, 4 R, 0 BB, 1 K. Bazardo blew the save for the Express, but fortunately, they came back to win it anyway.
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Jose Vallejo (AA), 0-for-4, 3 K. Not real helpful, Jose, but we'll give you a pass since you just healed from cutting off your own fingers.
- Juan Minaya (A+), 4.2 IP, 5 H, 6 R, 6 BB, 2 K. Any time you walk six batters, it's going to be pretty hard to come up with a good performance.