Monday's Three Astros Things

Some things to talk about while TROOGDOOOR burninates more of the village...

1) Third round of cuts made

Don't have much more than what Clack posted on the third round of cuts, but I have three quick thoughts. First, there were no real surprises. A few long shots got pulled out of the running early, like Josh Zeid or C.J. Fick. Did anyone else forget that Carlos Perez was still in big league camp? I sure did. Has he gotten any at-bats recently?

Second, the Robbie Grossman Dream officially ends. No Grossman in right field, which leaves that competition down to Rick Ankiel and Fernando Martinez, plus some others. Did Robbie Grossman do enough to earn a spot in the majors? Not really. Plus, with his playing time slipping, the writing has been on the wall for a while. Still, it hurts. The dream is dead. Let's just wait until June for him to resurface.

Finally, the thing I've noticed about these cuts is that no one has been released or waived yet, right? All the "cuts" have just been players getting reassigned to the minors or optioned down there. For the most part, they've also been players that we expected to be in the minors any way.

That means at some point these cuts are going to get more serious. When will that be? Will there be one more round with just reassigned players or will some of these cuts get deeper?

2) Xavier Cedeno gets love from BtBS

Thanks to clack for a heads-up on this piece over at Beyond the Box Score. John Roegele looks at pitchers who change their arm angles based on the handedness of the batter. How does that affect the Astros?

Xavier Cedeno, who made 44 appearances in his rookie season in Houston last year, clearly dropped down the most of all pitchers based solely on batter handedness. Cedeno is an interesting story, as after struggles early in his minor league career he was forced to endure the entire 2010 season outside professional baseball. His return has certainly been more successful, and leads me to wonder if he has always used these two release points based on the hitter or whether this strategy has helped to fuel his new found success.

What are your impressions of Cedeno? Did anyone notice a difference between his arm angle during the season? Do you think this gives him an advantage? Here's Clack's take on it:

Summary: Among ML pitchers, Xavier Cedeno has the most severe change in arm angle for different hitters. Almost all of the "angle changers" are LHP who change the angle on a platoon basis. The author wonders whether this is a characteristic which Cedeno developed when he was out of baseball and accounts for the big change in his performance.

3) Correa headed to Quad Cities

After an impressive couple of games on Friday and Saturday, Carlos Correa received some praise from his GM Jeff Luhnow:

"It’s going to be Quad Cities or extended," general manager Jeff Luhnow said. "If it is extended, it’s a short period of time. I’ve sent players to Quad Cities before and there’s been snow on opening day. I’m not sure. We’ll have to weigh that part of it.

"He’s certainly making a case for maybe a level higher, but we’re going to take the conservative approach with him."

Mark it down. 2015 will be the year that Carlos Correa makes the majors.

The article doesn't touch on this, but holy crap, Quad Cities still has snow on Opening Day? What have the Astros gotten themselves into with this new affiliate? More reason to bring those affiliates close to home. Let's get a High-A Texas/Louisiana league going STAT.