The Mysterious Case of Kyle Hallock and Other Roster Moves

Barely more than a week ago, I outlined why I thought that it could be a BIG YEAR for Astros LHP Kyle Hallock. I felt that if he could get back to his pre-2012 injury form, he could move quickly up through the ranks. However, I did not foresee that he would pitch one inning at Low A Quad Cities and be promoted up three levels to AAA Oklahoma City the next day. Color me confused. That's a huge leap which makes me think that the promotion may be a temporary fill-in measure. It is my fervent hope, though, that Hallock makes the most of the opportunity even if it's simply a case of being in the right place at the right time (and being a lefty). I'll admit that there is a special place in my heart for Hallock who gave me my first interview ever.

In conjunction with this move, Cameron Lamb was assigned to Quad Cities from extended Spring Training. That was not unexpected since Lamb was already listed on the provisional roster released by the Astros on Monday.

Also, I am delinquent in posting the info on the trade with Oakland that netted the Astros LHP Travis Blackley for AAA OF Jake Goebbert. I think that the move will ultimately be a good one for Goebbert and I wish him nothing but the best. I got to know him a little bit in this interview from last summer. But it is our friend Astros County who tells us the ultimate story about the type of player Goebbert is. Edgar Gonzalez was removed from the 40-man roster and designated for assignment to make room for Blackley.

And finally, LHP Tommy Shirley and OF Chris Epps were placed on the temporary inactive list for Lancaster.

UPDATE: At the precise moment I posted this, it was reported that the aforesaid Travis Blackley strained his shoulder in his very first bullpen at Minute Maid Park and will be placed on the 15-day DL. Dallas Keuchel is being called up to replace him.

MiLBY Awards

Voting for the minor league MiLBY Awards is now open and you have the chance to vote for a few future Astros.

PLAY - Austin Wates over the wall catch and Jake Goebbert collision at home plate

BREAKOUT PROSPECT - Mike Foltynewicz

GAME - Chris Devenski's no hitter and Jesse Wierzbicki's hitting for the cycle

PROMO - The Home Run Derby aboard the U.S.S. Yorktown which featured Lexington Legend's players Matt Duffy and Zach Johnson

I object most vehemently that the Lancaster Jethawks weren't nominated for Team of the Year, but I guess they can take solace in their California League Championship trophy!

Happy Birthday - 9/24

RHP Jake Buchanan (23)
Drafted in the eighth round in 2010 out of North Carolina State, Buchanan spent most of the 2012 season pitching for the Corpus Christi team. Used as a starter early in the season, he was moved to the bullpen in August. In 19 starts for the Hooks, he was 5-6 with a 5.00 ERA and a 1.513 WHIP. Out of the bullpen, he was 0-3 with 4.76 ERA and a 1.554 WHIP in 8 appearances.

OF Jacob Goebbert (25)
Drafted in the 13th round out of Northwestern in 2009, Goebbert spent the majority of his 2012 season in Corpus Christi with the Hooks where he hit .304/.399/.473 with 23 doubles, six triples and nine home runs. He was among the league leaders in batting average.

RHP Christian Garcia (21)
Drafted in the 29th round in 2012 out of Florence-Darlington Technical College in South Carolina, Garcia pitched in 18 games out of the bullpen for the Greeneville Astros this season and compiled a 2-0 record with a 4.19 ERA and a 1.398 WHIP.

Alyson Footer (?)
Although Alyson isn't technically a part of our Astros family anymore, she will always hold a special place in our hearts. Happy Birthday, Alyson!

Corpus Christi Hooks Season Recap

So far we have looked at the seasons for the DSL Astros, the GCL Astros, the Greeneville Astros, the Lexington Legends, and the Oklahoma City Redhawks. Now let's take a look at the AA Corpus Christi Hooks. Here's a quick look at how the 2011 and 2012 teams compare.

2011 Wins-Losses/Win Percentage: 50-90/.357
2012 Wins-Losses/Win Percentage: 81-59/.579

2011 Runs Scored - Runs Allowed = Run Differential: 605 - 761 = (156)
2012 Runs Scored - Runs Allowed = Run Differential: 736 - 628 = 108

2011 Team ERA & WHIP: 5.01 & 1.460
2012 Team ERA & WHIP: 4.07 & 1.332

2011 Team Batting Line: .258/.320/.388
2012 Team Batting Line: .268/.342/.410

This team not only won 31 more games than last season, they also had a 264-run swing in their run differential and made their first post-season appearance since 2006. I knew they would be a better team than last season, but Wow! In the Texas League, Corpus ranked first (out of eight teams) in batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, runs, hits, doubles and RBI.

Let's look at just a few of the outstanding position players for the Corpus team.

1B Jon Singleton finished the regular season hitting .284/.396/.497 with 27 doubles, four triples and 21 home runs. He was second in the league in walks and runs, and in the top 10 in on-base percentage, slugging percentage, doubles, home runs and RBI.

The triumverate of 2B Jose Martinez, OF Austin Wates and OF Jake Goebbert tied for fourth in the league in batting average. Martinez' .304/.362/.464 was good enough to land him in the top 10 in the league in SLG and OPS, and although he was at Oklahoma City for the final 23 games of the season, he was still in the top 10 in runs and RBI. Wates was tenth in the league in OBP with a batting line of .304/.375/.429. Goebbert quietly went about hitting fourth in the league in OBP, sixth in OPS and eighth in SLG as he hit .304/.399/.473 with 23 doubles, six triples and nine home runs. 3B Andy Simunic (.297/.349/.345) also ranked in the top 10 in batting average.

I will look at CF George Springer and 2B Kike Hernandez when I look at the Lancaster team since they played the majority of the season there, and we'll see how their stats stacked up in the California League.

Other players of note include SS Ben Orloff who only played in 39 games for the Hooks after playing the bulk of the season in Lancaster. He hit .295/.360/.352 at Corpus and .288/.362/.316 at Lancaster. And OF Drew Locke, playing in 68 games for the Hooks after a June pick-up, hit .295/.347/.456 and, it should be noted, provided the fans with a little extra excitement as he hit grand slams in back-to-back games.

As far as pitchers go, there were several very good pitchers for Corpus Christi who were promoted to Oklahoma City (Jarred Cosart, Jose Cisnero and Brett Oberholtzer) and I looked at their seasons in conjunction with the Oklahoma City season recap. However, one other starter at Corpus who came into his own this season was RHP Ross Seaton. Seaton was young for the Texas League last season. It showed at times and he repeated the level. In 25 starts for the Hooks this season, he was 8-8 with a 4.07 ERA (11th in the league among qualified pitchers) and a 1.274 WHIP (tied for 6th) and was also 7th in strikeouts. He dipped a toe in with four starts at Oklahoma City and was 0-1 with a 3.09 ERA and a 1.329 WHIP in those starts.

The relief corps was dominated by the one-two punch of LHP Kevin Chapman and RHP Jason Stoffel who pitched many an eighth and ninth innings for the Hooks with great results. Chapman was 6-3 with a 2.64 ERA and a 1.397 WHIP in 49 appearances while Stoffel was 2-1 with a 2.33 ERA, a 0.982 WHIP and a league-leading 27 saves in 56 appearances.

In limited time for the Hooks, newcomers RHP Asher Wojciechowski and RHP Matt Heidenreich had good results. Wojciechowski was 2-2 in eight starts with a 2.06 ERA and a 1.008 WHIP while Heidenreich was 3-1 with a 3.93 ERA and a 1.340 WHIP in eight games (seven starts). RHP Paul Clemens also fared well in his return to Corpus, after struggling in Oklahoma City this season, as he went 3-2 with a 3.98 ERA and a 1.248 WHIP in seven starts to end the season. I will look at RHP Bobby Doran in conjunction with the Lancaster recap.

Although the playoffs were disappointing, LHP Rob Rasmussen's performance was outstanding as he pitched seven shutout innings with a 1.143 WHIP.

I will look at the final two teams, Lancaster and Tri-City, when they finish post-season play.

Roster Moves - 6/30

Two moves according to Greg Rajan of the Corpus Christi Caller Times.

Corpus Christi
Jake Goebbert was assigned from Oklahoma City to Corpus Christi

Lexington
Ryan McCurdy was assigned from Corpus Christi to Lexington

An Interview with OF Jake Goebbert

The 24-year old lefty hitting Jake Goebbert was a 13th round pick by the Astros out of Northwestern in 2009. He plays the corner outfield positions with good doubles, on base and defensive skills and projects as a solid fourth or fifth outfielder on a major league club. At Corpus Christi this season, he hit .279/.354/.438. I interviewed him on the afternoon of Friday, June 8th. He went three-for-four that night and was promoted to Oklahoma City the next day. His coaches described Geobbert as a smart player, a solid player. He's definitely quite smart, thoughtful and well-spoken. Here's what Jake had to say to me.

On his season so far: "There's a lot of room for improvement right now. I feel like I've had spurts of really good at bats and quality swings and spurts of not-so-great ones but overall I feel like I've hit the ball hard. I've hit the ball well. I'm increasing my walks and lowering my strikeout to walk ratio by a lot which is something signficant that I've wanted to do this year. As a team, we're playing a lot better. We're taking strides in the right direction and we're looking forward to the second half because I feel like we really kind of gave it away in the first half. We had a nine-game losing streak and a couple four or five game losing streaks that really hurt us that we could have minimized and we'd be right in the thick of things right now if that wasn't the case."

On the Arizona Fall League: "I really enjoyed it. It was a great experience. Numbers wise, it was after a long season so my numbers were not where I wanted them to be but the experience itself being on a championship team was incredible. Getting to know some of those guys on other teams was a new experience for me in professional baseball. And being able to talk to them and look at how they're doing on line and actually have friends in other organizations now is a pretty neat thing to have. There's a lot of camaraderie in the game."

On his defense: "Defense is something that I feel like I can really control. It's more of a controlled environment. You can't necessarily control the pitches you get in an at bat or what you do with the pitch you do get. You always try to give yourself the best opportunity you can. But defensively, I try to just go hard all the time. And if I can do that, I feel like I'll make fewer mistakes and be in a better position to succeed."

On his success vs. lefties in 2012 (hitting over .400): "It's something that I'm trying to figure out, to be honest. I think my career average is probably .260 against lefties and probably .310 against righties, approximately, so I don't really understand. Right now I think it's kind of having less of an expectation at the plate against a lefty and just relaxing more and against a righty maybe expecting too much out of myself and trying to do too much. So I'm trying to find a little bit more of a balance between both of them and keep hitting well against lefties, but kind of bring that same approach to the plate when I face righties."

On the competition in the Texas league: "It's very good competition. It's the best I've ever played against. Quality pitching every night. There's really no free days. There's no days when you go in and say, 'Man I'm going to go in and get four hits tonight.' It's the attitude I always want to have but you have to be ready for every at bat and there's a lot of good players, a lot of good pitchers and just good quality teams."

On which Astros organization pitcher he would least like to face: "I would probably not want to face Oberholtzer because being left-handed and he's kind of a power left-handed pitcher. He'd probably be the one for me personally that I wouldn't want to face."

On Corpus: "Love Corpus. I absolutely love Corpus. It's a great set up, good fans, great stadium, great people, the nice breeze off the water. It's been an excellent experience."

On something most people don't know about him: "I'm married. I've been married for a year and a half. I grew up on a pumpkin farm about an hour west of Chicago in a small town called Hampshire, Illinois where my family does a big agritainment business in the fall. In the spring we do flowers. I grew up a farm boy in a real small town."

On what he would do if he didn't play baseball: "I went to school for Psychology and Pre-Med but most likely I would work on the family farm. You don't realize how much you love it until you leave it."

Any final words? "Keep up with the Astros. We're coming. We're coming fast. It's going to be a fun couple of years. I'm excited and hope that I can be a part of it. It's been a great year. We've obviously seen a lot of change. Just keep with us and look foward to the future because there's a bright future for this organization."

Thank you for your time, Jake. Good Luck in Oklahoma City!

A Little Advice for New Draftees

I asked several of the Hooks players what advice they would give the players who were drafted last week, what they wish someone had told them when they were first drafted. This is what they had to say.

RHP Jason Stoffel - a fourth round draft pick in 2009 out of the University of Arizona
"Get ready! Minor league baseball's a grind. It's a long season. I came from college. We played 56 games or whatever and you almost triple that, and it's every day. It's tough and it takes some getting used to. That's my best advice. Don't underestimate it."

1B Jon Singleton - an eighth round draft pick in 2009 out of Millikan HS in Long Beach, CA
"Not to be in a rush. A lot of guys went to college. They had a great experience. [For players drafted out of high school] it's definitely a learning experience. It's three or four years of your life that you really want to enjoy and have fun so just take your time. You shouldn't be in any rush."

OF Jake Goebbert - a thirteenth round draft pick in 2009 out of Northwestern
"What do I wish someone had told me? Give it all you have every day and have no regrets. Really play like you've got nothing to lose because eventually for all of us being in the game a while, we see it ends and not too many people get to finish out on their own accord. So when you're given the opportunity which is a special opportunity, make sure you give it all you've got and don't take it for granted."

OF Austin Wates - a third round draft pick in 2010 out of Virginia State University
"My best advice is keep your head down, keep playing. You never know how far away you are and you never know how close you are either so you've got to kind of keep your head down and keep playing."

LHP Kevin Chapman - a fourth round pick in 2010 out of the University of Florida
"What do I wish I'd known? Just how to pace yourself throughout the season because it's a long season. In college you get into long season but you're not playing 13 out of 14 days every time, and to be able to pace yourself and keep yourself in shape is huge. I feel like last year, my first full season, towards the end of the year I sort of just fell off a little bit because of that. I feel like coming into this year I had a lot better idea what I needed to do."

Tweets of the Day

Brandon Barnes ‏ @TheBarnyard15

Congrats to my boy @JakeGoebbert for Co Texas league player of the week

Jacob Goebbert ‏ @JakeGoebbert

@TheBarnyard15 named player of the week in the Texas league#ballout

~~~~~~~~~~~

Yes, Jake and Brandon were co-players of the week!

Minor League Schedule and Results

TUESDAY'S GAMES

Lexington at Hagerstown at 6:05 CST
Probable Pitchers:  RHP Carlos Quevedo (0-0, 6.75) and RHP Wirkin Estevez (0-0, 13.50)
Available on MiLB.tv

Tulsa at Corpus Christi at 7:05 CST
Probable Pitchers:  LHP Drew Pomeranz (0-0,-.--) and RHP Jarred Cosart (0-0,0.00)
Available on MiLB.tv

Nashville at Oklahoma City at 7:05 CST
Probable Pitchers: RHP Wily Peralta (0-0,1.50) and RHP Paul Clemens (0-1, 3.00)
Available on MiLB.tv

Lancaster at Rancho Cucamonga at 9:05 CST
Probable Pitchers: LHP David Martinez (0-0,13.50) and RHP Zach Lee (0-0, 0.00)

MONDAY'S RESULTS

Hagerstown over Lexington 8-7 in 11 innings
Noteworthy:  They gutted this one out and fell just short.  Hallock's first start was less than memorable, but Tropeano provided five innings of relief with 10 strikeouts.  Delino DeShields, Zach Johnson and Alex Todd provided the bulk of the offense.

Corpus Christi over Tulsa 7-4
Noteworthy:  Jake Buchanan had way too much traffic in his 5.1 innings, but still managed to keep Corpus in the game, while Kevin Chapman and Josh Zeid shut the door.  Austin Wates continues to hit at a torrid pace with another 3-hit night, but Jake Goebbert was the man of the night with a 3-run walk-off home run to give Corpus the win.

Oklahoma City over Nashville 4-2
Noteworthy:  The pitching staff was effective all around with a solid start by Henry Sosa and solid relief from the bullpen corps.  And they needed strong pitching because they only scraped together five hits as opposing pitcher Seth McClung took a no-hitter into the fifth.  Fernando Martinez was the man of the game with a 2-run single that gave OKC the cushion they needed for the win.

GAME OF THE DAY
Lancaster over Rancho Cucamonga 6-0

What went right:  Wes Musick, the bullpen and Jonathan Meyer.  Wes Musick gave Lancaster the strong start they needed in order to finally get that elusive first win, and the bullpen never allowed Rancho Cucamonga to get anything going.  On offense, it really was a team win, but Jonathan Meyer's early home run in the second gave them the lead they would never relinquish and set the tone.

Wes Musick (W) - 5IP  4H  0R  1BB  6SO
Pat Urckfitz - 2IP  1H  1SO
Kirk Clark - 1IP  1H  2BB
Jorge de Leon - 1IP  1SO

Jonathan Meyer - 3x5  HR  3RBI  2R  SB
Rafy Valenzuela - 2x5  SO  R
Telvin Nash - 3x5  2B  RBI  R
Kike Hernandez - 1x4  2B  2RBI

Also, Adam Bailey and George Springer each contributed a stolen base.

What went wrong:  Nine runners left on base and a fielding error by Jonathan Meyer, but a win is a win.

PITCHER OF THE DAY
Wes Musick, hands down.

PLAYER OF THE DAY
Jake Goebbert - when you get a 3-run walk-off homer, you've pretty much sealed the deal for player of the day for me.

A NOTE ON MINOR LEAGUE RECAPS - I don't plan on doing full-blown recaps of the games this season as that would keep me from writing other things that you may find of interest as it pertains to the Astros minor league system.  For more information (and different perspectives), you should check out Astros County and The Crawfish Boxes for their minor league recaps.

Tweet of the Day

Brian McTaggart @brianmctaggart

Jake Goebbert, wide-eyed and fresh-faced, has reported to Astros camp.