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In the upcoming MLB draft, the Houston Astros have the 28th overall pick. While the team doesn’t have the strongest farm system, ranking 27th as of March 9th, 2024 by MLB.com, they do have a history of drafting well. Most of the core of the squad that has seen successful thought-out the past years was made by the draft.
Players like Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa, and Alex Bregman were all players that were drafted by the Astros and brought up through the farm system and molded into the players they are now.
Let’s break down some of the past few years of first round draft picks and see how they have been panning out.
2023: Brice Matthews; Nebraska
Last year’s first-round draft pick Brice Matthews was the 28th pick in the 2023 draft and has had an excellent first full season. The 6 foot, 190 lb infielder played three years with the Cornhuskers after graduating from Atascocita High School in Humble, Texas.
In his final season at Nebraska, he hit .359 with 20 homers, helping lead Nebraska to a 40-22 record and a regional visit, boosting his draft stock after not being selected in the 2022 draft. He finished as a NCBWA Second-Team All-American, First-Team Big 10 and a semi-finalist for the Dick Howser award, given to the top college baseball player every year.
In summers following his 2021 and 2022 seasons at Nebraska, Matthews was playing summer ball for the St. Clous Rox in the Northwood league. In the Summer of ’21 he hit .308/.449/.439 and in ’22 he hit .271/.448/.470, both adding up to over a .900 OPS.
After being drafted, Matthews started out very slow. Between Rookie and Single-A ball in 2023, he played 35 games, hitting .208 in his first 125 at-bats with a 1.6 K/BB ratio. He also struggled in the field at first as well, picking up six errors in those games.
He has since picked it up to another level since the start of the 2024 season. Starting the year in rookie ball again, he came out and banged, collecting six hits in four games and immediately getting the call to High-A and he kept going. In 21 games for the Tourist, he hit .321 with six homers and over a 1.000 OPS, prompting yet another call up, this time to AA.
This is where he has started to struggle this year. Playing in just 13 games as a Hook so far, he has been on a tough patch, hitting .198 with already 19 strikeouts. His fielding seems to have taken a dip too, with already six errors this season between playing short and third.
2022: Drew Gilbert; Tennessee
Gilbert made headlines during the 2021 Knoxville Regional after hitting a huge walk-off 3-run homer against Wright State and doing a massive bat flip as he skipped down the first base line. He then made headlines the next year after getting drafted 28th overall by the Astros and playing one full season with the team before getting sent to the New York Mets as part of the Justin Verlander trade.
While part of the Volunteers’ lineup, he was an everyday player for two years straight. His final season was when he broke out, hitting .362 with 21 2B, 11 HR and 70 RBIs in 58 games. Names a NCBWA All-American in 2022, he led Tennessee to a 57-9 record and an SEC tournament victory. They went on to host a Super Regional and make it to the championship before losing to Notre Dame.
Getting sent to rookie ball, Gilbert immediately impressed, hitting .455 in his first four professional games. He ended the 2022 season in Single-A, playing six games for the Fayetteville Woodpeckers and starting 2023 in High-A and as the team’s highest-rated prospect. He played another 81 games as an Astro and proved himself valuable enough for other teams to want him.
That was when the Mets agreed to a trade for Gilbert, as well as fellow minor leaguer Ryan Clifford, in exchange for Justin Verlander, reuniting him with the Astros. At the time, many Astros fans were not happy with the trade, seeing Gilbert as a player that could have been a franchise outfielder. It also required them to pick up, what many considered to be, Verlander’s overpriced contract paying him nearly $45 million a year.
Since being traded to the Mets, Gilbert has played well. He finished off the 2023 season with the Mets Double-A team, the Binghamton Rumble Ponies hitting .325 in his final 35 games and great defense at all three outfield positions. Thanks to this play, he started the 2024 season on the Syracuse Mets, the teams Triple-A affiliate, and has played in seven games so far and posting a .240 batting average
2020-2021: No Draft Pick; 2017 scandal
As a part of the Astros’ cheating scandal that broke in November of 2019, they were forced to forfeit their first and second round picks for the 2020 and 2021 drafts. In addition to the forfeited picks, the team was also fined a league-maximum $5 million.
2019: Korey Lee; California
In a draft class that was stacked with player that would go on to be stars, like Adley Rutschman, Bobby Witt Jr. and Corbin Carroll, Korey Lee fell into the Astros’ hands at the end of the first round. As the third catcher taken off the board, Lee didn’t stay an Astro long as he, like Gilbert, was traded. He was sent to the Chicago White Sox in exchange for Kendall Graveman during the 2023 trade deadline.
Playing for the California Golden Bears for three years, Lee made his name known to MLB scouts when he broke out in his junior year, hitting .337 with 15 home runs. He helped lead his team to a regional bid, but fell short, going 0-2 and getting bumped out of the tournament.
After getting selected with the 32nd pick in the first round, Lee went on to play the remainder of the 2019 season for the Astros’ Single-A affiliate, the Tri-City Valley Cats. He looked good in his first taste in the minors, hitting .268 over 64 games with 13 extra base-hits and 23 RBIs. In 2020, there was no minor league season, so Lee was able to get work in and get ready for 2021.
He started out the season in High-A and it took him less than 30 games to get the call up to Double-A, where again, he didn’t last long. He played only 50 games for the Corpus Christi Hooks, hitting .258 with eight home runs and nine doubles, before getting his next call up to Triple-A to go play in Sugarland. He ended 2021 playing just nine games for the Skeeters, collecting eight hits, four for extra bases. He remained there to start the 2022 season, playing a little over 70 games for the Skeeters before finally getting the call up to the majors on July 1st, 2022.
He got his first major league at-bat that same night, pitch hitting against the LA Angles. He got another pitch hit opportunity the next game before making his first start on July 4th against the Kansas City Royals. He would only get into 12 games in his first stint, getting 26 plate appearances and collecting just four hits.
Lee finished out the 2022 season back in Triple-A, however make the 2022 World Series roster and get a ring after the Astros beat the Phillies in six games. He played in 68 more games for the Skeeters in 2023, hitting .283, before getting shipped to the Sox on July 28th for relief pitcher Kendal Graveman in a one for one deal.
After joining the White Sox, Lee played a few 14 games for the Charlotte Knights (the Sox AAA team) before getting called back up to the majors once again and ended the season up there. For the 2024 season, Lee was slated to start out in Triple-A, but made the opening day roster, replacing an injured player.
2018: Seth Beer; Clemson
In what many consider to be a weak first round, Beer was not any different than a lot of the other players talked about on this list. Going 28th overall to the Astros, he wouldn’t last very long with the team before getting traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks along with other prospects for veteran pitcher Zach Greinke.
After graduating high school a year early to go play baseball for the Clemson Tigers, Beer instantly became a standout player. He won the Dick Howser award in his first year, becoming the first freshman ever to win the award, after hitting .369 with 18 homers and 70 RBIs in 62 games. He continued this for two more years at Clemson, coming runner up in both his sophomore and junior year.
Following getting drafted, he was sent to Low-A where he played for the Tri-City ValleyCats for the start of his pro career. He quickly showed he was good enough to move on though, getting the call to move up to Single-A after just 11 games. Once there, yet again, he showed quickly that he needed to be moved up yet again, hitting .348 with a .934 OPS in 29 games. He ended the season in High-A, playing for the Buies Creek Astros for the final 27 games.
He started out his first full season back in Single-A, playing for the Astros’ new affiliate team, the Fayetteville Woodpeckers. He picked up where he left off the previous season, quickly collecting over 40 hits in his first 35 games. He spent the majority of the 2019 in Double-A playing for the Hooks.
After playing 63 games there for them, he was sent to Arizona in a blockbuster deal that included three other prospects, including another previous first rounder, for Greinke, who was coming back for his second stint in Houston. Beer finished 2019 on the Diamondbacks’ Double-A team, the Jackson Generals.
Beer stayed in the Diamondbacks’ system from 2019-2023, seeing the big leagues two separate times. He had a five-game stint in 2021, where he hit .444 across those games, and a 36-game run in 2022 where he hit an awful .189. Following that second time up, he finished off 2022 and started 2023 in Triple-A before getting demoted to Double-A. After the 2023 season, Beer was taken by the Pittsburgh Pirates as a Rule-5 Pick, where he is currently on their Triple-A team.
2017: J. B. Bukauskas; North Carolina
Yet another player, along with Beer, to be traded as part of the Greinke deal, Bukauskas was taken 15th overall by the Astros in 2017 just a few months before they won their first World Series in franchise history. He would be traded two more times after going to Arizona, currently playing for the Milwaukee Brewers.
Over his three years with the North Carolina Tar Heels, he was a great starter, posting a career 3.18 ERA with opponents’ batting just over .200 against him in 42 starts. He showed improvement as the years went on, lowering his ERA year by year, while also staying consistently healthy, making at least 13 starts each year. In his last year as a junior, he was one of the best pitchers in the country and named First-Team by NCBWA. As a Golden Spikes Finalist, he posted a 2.53 ERA and was named ACC pitcher of the year, helping him shoot up draft boards and landing him at such a high pick.
After getting drafted, he was sent to the Complex League to play for the Gulf Coast Astros, but he only made one start there. In that one start, he threw four innings of three hit, no run ball and that was all the organization needed to see before they promoted him right to Low-A. Finishing the year there after making two starts, he started the 2018 season back in rookie-ball and made just one start again before going back to Low-A.
While there for his second time, he was fantastic, allowing zero runs over eight innings in three starts. After this run, he got the next call up to High-A and after just five starts and a 1.61 ERA, he was called up yet again, this time to Single-A to play for the Quad City River Bandits. Yet again, he wouldn’t last there long either, getting the call up to Double-A after just four starts.
He ended the 2018 making one start for the Hooks, going six innings and allowing one hit and no runs. He spent the offseason playing in the Arizona Fall League before returning to Corpus to kick off the 2019 season. He made 20 appearances for the Hooks with 14 of them being starts marking his first time coming out of the bullpen since entering college, before he was shipped to the Diamondbacks in the same trade as Beer.
Since leaving the Astros, Bukauskas has bounced up and down between teams and leagues. After going to the Diamondbacks, he made two starts to close out 2019 and they were both bad. He missed out on the 2020 season due to COVID and when he came back for 2021, he was a full time reliver. He had 13 appearances in Triple-A before he was called up to make his Major League debut.
He came out of the pen 21 times for Arizona to end the season and during the offseason before 2022, it was announced that Bukauskas would be missing time due to an arm injury. He ended up spending the entire season in the Complex League before getting activated back to Triple-A at the end of the season. He was then designated for assignment and was claimed by the Brewers and has done more bouncing between the majors and minors.
The draft gives team’s chances to investigate what they want their futures to look like for their franchises and make those decisions. With contracts coming to an end for some players and others not showing the stuff they were expected to, this draft gives the Astros to get key pieces that could shape the franchise for the next decade if not more.
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