The Player Development Machine Goes Hum: How the Astros Won the World Series, Again.
The Astros have developed players in their minor leagues, scouted well, and made good major league players even better. It's how they have succeeded across six different seasons now.
The Astros have won the 2022 World Series, the second in franchise history.
The first was of course in 2017. And there are some obvious threads that run between the 2017 champions and the 2022 squad. In particular, there are five players who played in both victories World Series. They’re a pretty solid group.
But five players do not a World Series winner make. The Astros have turned over 21 roster spots from 2017 to 2022, and it is in these roster spots, in the development of a new young core of players developed in the Astros and in players the Astros have acquired from other teams that has allowed the team to sustain excellence from the first title to the second.
A Player Development Machine
The Astros have become a player development machine.
That was certainly true in 2017 when the team was led by its prospects that had developed into stars. Many of those, like George Springer and Carlos Correa, were high draft picks. That means they were always marked as having extraordinary baseball talent, and the Astros player development system drew the best out of those traits.
The 2022 team had a higher degree of difficulty in creating star players to contribute to a World Series winner. The team no longer drafts near or at the top of the draft. And the Astros development machine in the 2010s was highlighted by the early adoption of new technologies (e.g. high speed camera) and new theories on how to play baseball (an emphasis on four-seam fastballs at the top of the zone). Other teams have followed the Astros lead since then, reducing the Astros advantage.
But the Astros have persevered and succeeded at player development despite these obstacles. I want to highlight three ways in which the Astros have succeeded at this task—minor league coaching, great amateur scouting, and development at the major league level.
And the best way to do that is by discussing the three stars of the Game 6 victory—Framber Valdez, Yordan Alvarez, and Ryan Pressly—as exemplars of the organization’s player development capabilities.
Framber Valdez and Minor League Development
I would have voted for Valdez as the World Series MVP. He threw 12 innings in the World Series, allowed only 2 runs and 11 baserunners while striking out 18 Phillie batters. He finished second in WPA during the Series at 0.39 (Ryan Pressly led in this statistic at 0.71).
The Astros signed Valdez at the age of 21 for $10,000 in 2015. That sentence in and of itself tells you something about how unheralded Valdez was as an amateur prospect in the Dominican Republic. Heck the Astros scouts who signed Valdez—David Brito and supervisor Roman Ocumarez—saw Valdez at the end of the day using car headlights to light the field.
Dominicans (and other international prospects) are eligible to sign at the age of 16, and the top prospects sign for signing bonuses of over $1 million. The top prospects also have scouts get there before the sun sets. Framber got such a small signing bonus that he could not immediately pay back his debts to those who trained him as an amateur player.
But once the Astros got him, they helped him improve. He moved up quickly through the minors, pitching at four levels in 2016 and reaching Double A in 2017. He kept striking guys out—79 in 73.1 innings in 2016; 126 in 110.1 innings in 2017 and 129 in 103.1 minor league innings in 2018.
It is important to put that minor league qualifier in the previous sentence, because Valdez, the kid nobody wanted for 4 years, was in the major league less than 4 years after signing with Houston.
The Astros were able to develop a major league pitcher from a guy who was from a baseball standpoint, essentially nobody.
Scouting Yordan
Many Astros fans know the name of Al Pedrique. He’s the scout who signed Jose Altuve when he was a 16-year old in Venezuela, despite his slight frame. Thank you again, Mr. Pedrique.
But we should also learn the name and give praise to another Astros scout—Charlie Gonzales. Because he is the man who insisted that the Astros acquire Alvarez. Thank you, Mr. Gonzalez.
The story is slightly more complicated than Gonzelez spotted Alvarez and recommended him to higher ups in the front office. Gonzelez certainly did that, He saw that Alvarez was a “good tracker of pitches. The guy showed everything down in the box and stayed inside his swing.”
But as much as Gonzalez and international cross checker Oz Ocampo may have wanted Alvarez, General Manager Jeff Lohnow had decided not to incur penalties from going over his international bonus pool allotment for a second year in a row.1
But Gonzalez did not turn away from his recommendation. Six weeks later, the Astros were deep in discussions with the Dodgers on a trade for Josh Fields. Luhnow called Gonzalez and asked him to recommend a player “Are you kidding?” Gonzalez exclaimed, “Is this a cruel joke.”
The Astros got Alvarez for Fields, and the joke was on Phillies reliever Jose Alvarado, who was called up in the sixth inning of Game 6 with runners at first and third, one out, and Alvarez coming to the plate.
Alvarado got too much of the plate on a 2-1 sinker and Alvarez hit is 450 feet.
Alvarado will get to spend the rest of his life trying to avoid highlight packages of the 2022 playoffs, which will undoubtedly feature Alvarez taking him deep. Maybe he should form a support group with Robbie Ray of the Mariners.
That Alvarez hit the ball 450 feet is not a surprise. He’s been an awesome major league hitter since the moment he arrived in Houston in 2019. His career slash line is .296/.384/.590 for an OPS+ of 163.
How good is a 163 OPS+. It would be 14th all time in major league history, tied with Jimmie Foxx and Mark McGwire. Or to put it another way, Jeff Bagwell’s career OPS+ is 149. So maybe getting him for one month of Larry Anderson is no longer the greatest trade in Astros history.
Good scouting has brought to Houston one of the small handful best hitters in the majors.
Ryan Pressly and Making Major Leaguers Better
The Minnesota Twins acquired minor leaguer Ryan Pressly before the 2013 season, and he was an average reliever for them. In 315 innings over 6 seasons, Pressly at a 3.77 ERA and a 2.61 K/BB ratio. He increased his strikeout rate over time, but also increased his home run rate over his time in the Twin Cities.
Many Astros fans were underwhelmed when the Astros acquired Pressly at the trade deadline in 2018, giving up two prospects (Jorge Alcala and Gilberto Celestino) would would turn out to be major league contributors.
But the Astros front office saw that Pressly had more potential than what he showed in Minnesota. And their changes began immediately after he got to Houston.
No more than fifteen minutes after he finished unpacking in the clubhouse, Pressly was summoned into a meeting. In attendance were Astros pitching coach Brent Strom, bullpen coach Doug White, and multiple analysts from the front office. The Astros, Pressly learned, had a plan for him to be better, and the analysts launched into the details. “They sat me down and they put up all these x, y charts and all this other stuff,” Pressly says. “It almost sounded like they were speaking in a different language. I just raised my hand and said, ‘Guys, just tell me what to throw and not to throw.’” They told him his two-seam fastball to lefties was ineffective but that they loved his curve and hoped he’d throw it more. They also suggested he elevate his four-seam fastball and throw his slider slightly more to make his fastball more effective.
The newest Astro was open to input. With the Twins, he had wondered, “Why is it not clicking for me?” Now someone was offering answers.2
The advice of the Astros coaches and analytics staff was quite solid. Pressly immediately impressed as he allowed only 2 runs in 23.1 innings in 2018, with 32/3 strikeout to walk ratio.
In 187 innings out of the Astros bullpen since 2019, Pressly has a 2.59 ERA, a 0.97 WHIP, and a 5.49 K/BB ratio. In this postseason, Pressly faced 42 batters. Only 9 reached base, while 13 struck out. He saved 6 of the 11 games the Astros won this postseason, including the clinchers in Game 4 of the ALCS and Game 6 of the World Series.
The Astros took a pretty good major league player and made him better.
Developing Star Level Players
Each of these three players are stars themselves. But they are symbols of the larger player development efforts of the Astros.
The Astros rotation is made up of five homegrown players Three others—Cristian Javier, Luis Garcia, and Jose Urquidy—are similar to Valdez. Each is a Latin American pitcher who was not highly regarded enough to get a big signing bonus on their 16th birthday. Instead, all three had to wait until later and had no leverage to get a big contract offer.
This season, there were only 15 pitchers who signed from Latin America as amateur free agents who made 20 or more major league starts.3 Four of them are Astros. They have exceeded any reasonable expectation for development of Latin American pitchers.
But the ability to take unheralded prospects and turn them into quality major leaguers is also on display with the Astros positions players. Chas McCormick the adult crushed the dreams of Chas McCormick the child who grew up cheering for the Phillies with a leaping catch at the wall against JT Realmuto in the bottom of the 9th in Game 5.
McCormick was drafted in the 21st round of the MLB draft. So few major leaguers come from the 21st round that MLB has shorted the draft to 20 rounds. Yet McCormick developed into a quality regular.
Jeremy Pena was a 3rd round pick, a round where teams can usually find utility infielders and bullpen pieces. Pena is one of only 9 players from the 3rd round in 2018 to have made the majors, and only 4 have positive bWARs at this point in their career.4 Pena is of course one of them. Thanks to his power and Gold Glove defense, he was worth 4.8 bWAR.
The Astros player development machine—and the fact that he’s easy on the eyes—turned Pena into a superstar.
And Pressly anchored a bullpen that was really good this postseason. In fact, it was better than really good.
Yeah, it was historically good. And it combined improvement of established major league players like Pressly and Rafael Montero, who was DFA’ed by the Mariners last season. It includes good scouting to identify pitchers like Hector Neris and Ryne Stanek, who were available as free agents.
And it included the development, both at the minor league and major league level, of Bryan Abreu. Abreu debuted in 2019 but stalled in his development in the pandemic season of 2020. He struggled in a part-time role in 2021, shuttling back-and-forth between Minute Maid Park and AAA Sugar Land. But in 2022, he blossomed, striking out 88 batters in 60.1 regular season innings on his way to a 1.94 ERA.
In the postseason, Abreu was even better. He threw 11.1 innings, allowed no runs, and struck out 19 of the 43 batters he faced. Abreu was so dominant that Kyle Schwarber, one of the Phillies top sluggers, thought the only way to beat him was to bunt with two strikes in the bottom of the eighth in Game 6. Schwarber fouled the pitch off, which meant it was a strikeout.
The Astros develop players
Since 2017, the Astros have lost players to age (e.g. Josh Reddick; Brian McCann) and to free agency (George Springer; Carlos Correa; Dallas Keuchel). It is the cycle of baseball time. Players get older and either decline or require more money to keep them employed.
The Astros have succeeded since 2017 because they have replaced star players from that team with younger players who are just as good, if not better.
The Astros mirror their 2017 team in one important way—most of the team is based on players initially signed or drafted by the Astros. This season, as in 2017, right about 61% of the plate appearances were taken this category of players.5
On the mound, the contribution of homegrown players is even greater. In 2017, 43.4% of the innings pitched were by players who were initially signed or drafted by the Astros. This season, homegrown pitchers threw 60.0% of the innings for the Astros in 2022.
The Astros develop players into stars. They develop high draft picks like Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker; they develop unheralded Latin American prospects like Valdez, Javier, Urquidy, and Garcia; they develop those taken in later rounds like McCormick and Pena. And they develop successful major leaguers like Ryan Pressly into even more successful ones.
The Astros are a player development machine, and it is why they are World Champions. Again.
He had gone over the limit in 2015 to sign Yuli Gurriel.
The pull quote is taken from the book The MVP Machine: How Baseball’s New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer and Travis Sawchick of TheScore.com. The book is very much #RecommendedReading.
There are three Japanese pitchers—Yu Darvish, Shohei Ohtani, and Yusei Kikuchi—who were professionals in the NPB before they signed in the United States. I did not count them here.
Obviously, those drafted in 2018 are still young and we can’t fully judge that draft yet. So let’s go back 4 more years to 2014. Only 16 3rd rounders from 2014 have played in the majors and only seven of them have positive bWARs. The 2nd best bWAR from 2014 3rd rounders is held by J.D. Davis, who has 2.2.
This number would go up to 70% if Charlie Gonzalez got his way and Jeff Luhnow signed Yordan Alvarez outright.