Korey Lee, the top Astro Prospect.
Lee had a significant year of development in 2021, advancing 3 levels in the minors. He'll need to improve more in 2022 to make a major league impact.
The lockout will likely delay Spring Training, but it cannot stop many of the rituals associated with Spring Training, especially those from journalists who are not contractually obligated to do Rob Manfred’s bidding.
As so this week, as he has done for years, Keith Law of The Athletic released his list of the Top 100 prospects in baseball. No Astros made the list. But Law published a follow-up article headlined “Just-missed list: The baseball prospects right behind Keith Law’s 2022 top100.”
And at the top of the page was a picture of Astros catching prospect Korey Lee. Law wrote that “Lee was actually my final cut from the top 100 this year, so if you’re asking who was No. 101, It’s him.” So Lee is the Astros’s top prospect.
Also this week, Jake Kaplan of The Athletic looked at the Astros minor leagues to find “the 5 prospects with the clearest paths to helping the Astros in 2022.” And Lee did not make the list. Kaplan thought that the fact that Lee is not on the 40-may roster yet “lowers [his] odds of making it up and carving out a role compared to those already on the roster…as of now, [he] needs more to go [his] way to make it up and contribute in the short term than those on this list.”
These two articles help give us a sense of Lee’s position in the organization right now. He is a good prospect with a promising future, but he has not done enough yet to challenge for a fulltime position on the major league club. Lee is thus likely to spend most of the season at AAA Sugar Land, and Lee was one of the players who appeared last weekend at the event announcing the team’s name change to the Space Cowboys.
So what talents does Lee bring that make him the Astros top prospect? And what work does he need to do to improve during the upcoming season?
Korey Lee’s Scouting Report
We can start with the question of what kind of player is Korey Lee. MLB Pipeline writes that “Lee surged to a .337/.416/.619 line in 2019 [in college at Cal]. Though most clubs viewed Lee as a third-round talent, the Astros loved his raw power and arm strength and made him a surprise first-rounder, signing him for a below-slot $1.75 million at No. 32.”
Lee was sent to short season ball in 2019, then, like all minor leaguers, he was not able to play in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. But Lee still used his 2020 to develop his skills, purchasing a pitching machine for his home to work on both his hitting and his receiving and blocking of balls.
That work paid off when minor league ball resumed in 2021. Lee advanced three levels from Hi-A Asheville to AA Corpus Christi to AAA Sugarland for a cup of coffee over the final week of the season. Overall, Lee batted .277/.340/438 in 362 plate appearances, with 11 home runs.
Evaluators write up two primary skills from Lee—his contact rates and his throwing arm.
Writing last Spring, Jim Callis of MLB.com observes that Lee “has quieted his load, shortened his stride and improved his balance, allowing him to drive balls from gap to gap more easily.”
Keith Law describes Lee as “a solid hitter for contact.” In a Spring 2021 writeup of the Astros top prospects, Eric Longenhagen of Fangraphs wrote that Lee had worked to improve a long swing and poor recognition of breaking pitches by “eliminating a big leg kick and simplifying his footwork.”
Law says that Lee is “a plus a plus defender with a powerful and accurate arm, throwing out 43 percent of runners across three stops last year.” MLB Pipeline says that Lee has improved as a thrower as the “Astros have shortened his arm stroke, making him even more effective at deterring the running game.” In Spring 2021, Eric Longerhagen of Fangraphs wrote that Lee’s “mobility and plus-plus arm make him a potential impact defender.”
What does Lee need to improve to make it to the majors this season and to carve out a permanent spot on the 26-man roster from 2023 on. Law cites a need to get stronger. While Law “has seen him hit velocity, it’s more singles and doubles than anything that might turn into bigger power.” Many of scouting reports on Lee talk of his power, it has not fully developed for him yet. He hit only 11 home runs in the 2021 season with an isolated power rate of .161. Both are modest numbers.
Lee also needs to learn to better work with a pitching staff. This has been a skill the Astros have shown to value, as they have in recent years give their playing time to catchers such as Martin Maldonado and Brian McCann, who are known for their ability to call pitches and work with a pitching staff.
Lee has been working on this aspect of his game. In an interview during the Arizona Fall League earlier this offseason, Lee said “trying to manage a pitching staff has been a whole different dynamic, especially since in college you're not really controlling the pitching staff…Now, in professional baseball, that's my job to take care of it. So that's something I've really taken advantage of.”
Korey Lee and the 2022 Astros
While Lee is not on the Astros 40-man roster, there are reasons to think that he will make his major league debut this season. The front office traded Garret Stubbs to the Phillies before the lockout, and Lee appears to be next in line if major leaguers Martin Maldonado or Jason Castro suffer a serious injury.
So what can we expect if and when Lee arrives at Minute Maid Park this season. A look at the various statistical projection system indicates that we should have modest expectations. Fangraphs.com lists 7 different projections for each player, and those for Lee are pretty consistent. His wOBAs range from .287 to .290 and his projected wRC+ is in a tight range between 83 and 86. Both are below average measures.
The projections expect Lee to be a high contact hitter, with strikeout rates below major league average. But he also is projected to have low walk rates and to have modest power projections (all his projected slugging percentages are below .400).
These projections are consistent with the idea that Lee needs more development before he earns a job on the Astros major league roster, but also consistent with the idea that Lee does have a major league future. While his hitting needs development, projections for Lee’s defense indicate he would have positive value in the majors.
The ZiPS projection system estimates what players would do if they received a great deal of playing time, regardless of whether or not we expect them to actually get that that playing time. ZiPS projects that if Lee got 381 plate appearances, he would save the Astros 9.1 runs above league average. Is that good? Well, defense first catcher Martin Maldonado is projected to save the team 10.2 runs above average by the same measures.
One should take that measure with multiple grains of salt. It is hard to project defense at any position for major leaguers, much less minor leaguers. Those difficulties go up for catcher. And those measures do not account for important part of a catcher’s job like pitch calling and managing a pitching staff.
But overall, the ZiPS projection says that Lee would produce 1.4 fWAR for the Astros this season if he got a full season’s worth of playing time.
Overall, Lee projects to be a solid regular in the near future. A review of his reports and numbers gives me confidence that he can take over as the Astros first string catcher in the near future. But they also indicate that Lee is unlikely to become a star level player.
But quality regulars are important to a baseball club and help to set a high floor for the club in future seasons. There is a lot for us Astros fans to look forward to from Korey Lee in the future, if not in 2022.