Astros Draft Roundup

The Major League Baseball draft is easily the most anticlimactic of all the major sport drafts. The players drafted will take years to develop into major league talent, if they ever make the big club in the first place. You're not going to go out an buy the jersey of your team's draft pick the next day. However, for a club like the Astros, who are in the process of restocking their minor league system, the draft is the first step toward rebuilding a young, healthy team.

After taking catcher Jason Castro from Stanford last year, the speculation surrounding the Astros camp was whether they would take another starting pitcher to supplement studs like Jordan Lyles and Ross Seaton, (who currently reside in Class A Lexington) or a position player. Scouting director Bobby Heck and GM Ed Wade went with the latter, drafting a possible heir apparent to Miguel Tejada in the form of California high schooler Jiovanni Mier.

Mier has been compared to Nomar Garciappara (only without the soccer wife or the hilarious tendency to hurt his groin): an athletic shortstop who hits for average with a little power and lots of speed. He's already talking smack on the radio about replacing Tejada, which shows either a healthy confidence or a level of PR retardation not seen in Houston since the days of R...well, anyway. Here's hoping the kid delivers on his promise.

In later rounds of the draft, the Astros continued to focus on high school talent, grabbing RHP Tanner Bushue, LF/3B Telvin Nash, and 3B Jonathan Meyer in the first three rounds.

The takeaway here is that the team is restocking on defense, skill positions (like 3B), and pitching. When your organization's needs are listed as "everything", this is the best thing you can possibly do, drafting the identity that you want the eventual major league team to have. They didn't draft mashers who hit long home runs, or many corner outfielders, leading us to believe that the future Astros will have a lot more in common with Michael Bourn and Edwin Maysonet than Carlos Lee and Lance Berkman. Now let's wait four years to see how well this plan pans out.
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photo: flickr user Termin8er