Diamonds in the Rough

After the anemic offensive performance in Boston I posed myself a hypothetical question. Who is the best “Diamond in the Rough” offensive player the Astros have cultivated based off their initial draft picks, international signings, and acquisitions early enough to consider “development” (1 year or more) from other teams since 2010 using their major league production. While I know development can overlap well into many major leaguers career. It’s too difficult to pinpoint where a cutoff line should be for that, so I hard-capped it using the following parameters.

Parameters: 1. Never was a first-round pick. 2. Not a top 30 international signing (Using MLB Pipeline). 3. In Astros system for at-least 1 year prior to MLB debut with HOU (Sorry Marwin Gonzalez). 4. I exempted Yuli Gurriel for obvious reasons. He would have been 4th if anyone cares.

Notes: 1. Since this is purely based on offensive prowess I used baseball references oWAR, sure it may not be the best metric to determine offensive capability, but I am only so good at making spreadsheets. 2. If a player was acquired prior to 2010 I included them as long as they played in the majors in 2010 or later 3. I apologize for any mistakes. I’m providing data for a most likely flawed dataset for the love of the game.

Top 10: 1. Jose Altuve – 62.8 oWAR 2. Yordan Alvarez – 23.5 oWAR 3. Jeremy Peña – 13.7 oWAR 4. Yainer Diaz – 7.5 oWAR 5. Hunter Pence – 6.0 oWAR 6. Jake Meyers – 5.0 oWAR 7. Chas McCormick – 4.6 oWAR 8. Chris Johnson – 3.3 oWAR 9. Jonathan Villar – 2.0 oWAR 10. Myles Straw – 1.7 oWAR

There are 43 position players who qualified for the list. Kudos if someone can name who ranked #43 with -1.1 oWAR with the Astros.