The rich get richer, Astros promote top prospect to the majors
By Ynal Al-Ouri
The Houston Astros have been the best team in baseball so far this season, but they just added more firepower to their team.
It seems like the rich just keep on getting richer these days, and the Astros are no exception to that mantra. Just when you thought Houston couldn’t get any better than they already have been this season, they promote their top prospect.
The news was broken this morning by the teams beat writer for the Houston Chronicle, Jake Kaplan.
Kaplan did state that the team plans to bring him out of the bullpen initially, until he gets himself accustomed to big league batters. They are the best team in baseball and now they’re just casually breaking in their top pitching prospect, go figure. The Astros were already dominating the league up to this point with their offensive fire power, but their pitching just received a major upgrade as well.
Francis Martes is the Astros top ranked prospect, which says a lot about his talent since they boast one of the top farm systems in the majors. He is also the 15th ranked prospect out of the MLB’s top 100 list. Martes has struggled so far this season in AAA, but he has still shown an excellent pitching repertoire leading him to 38 strikeouts in 32.1 innings.
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However, he boasts a 23-17 record, a 3.18 ERA, and 345 strikeouts overall in his minor league career, holding opponents to a batting average of .234. Martes has a long way to go until the Astros throw him into their starting rotation, but at 21 years old, the sky is the limit for the pitching phenom. Bringing a talent like Martes out of the bullpen will only solidify the Astros as the favorite to win the World Series at the culmination of this season.