Grading Dana Brown and the Houston Astros front office at the season’s midway point
By Bill Felber
Farm system
The team’s championship holdover nucleus includes such luminaries as Alex Bregman, Jose Altuve, Yordan Alvarez, Framber Valdez, Kyle Tucker, and Jeremy Peña, so the Astros may have felt comfortable supplementing with their farm system. They’ve done so frequently.
Brown has used nine first-year system products, a couple for longer stretches. Corey Julks won the left field job and is hitting .265 with six homers. Hunter Brown is 6-4 in 15 starts with a 3.62 ERA, and J.P. France has filled in as a starter in the injury-induced absence of Jose Urquidy. France is 3-3 with a 3.13 ERA in 10 starts.
Their combined WAA works out to +1.6 at the season’s halfway point.
That being said, first-year classes are notoriously difficult to extract positive value from, and the Astros are no different. Of those nine first-year players, Brown and France are the only two with positive numbers, and the sum total contribution of all nine is -0.4.
The Astros appear to think that Ronel Blanco has potential. A reliever, he’s been given 13 chances to prove himself and he has a 4.63 ERA … not great but good enough to stay in Houston. Grae Kessinger has had only 10 plate appearances with just one hit since his June 5 call-up, but they haven’t sent him back down yet.