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Update:
It's now 6/11/19 and The Astros currently are 35-32 and have a 3.5 game lead over the A's for 1st place in the AL West.
The draft was a huge success despite still not signing 3 of the picks: 5th rounder Seth Johnson is still going back and forth with our initial offer! 26th rounder Jack Little and 30th rounder Billy Seidl are both "impossible" to sign and won't be accepting our offers. Seidl seemed like a steal in the 30th round because both the OSA ratings and my scout ratings had his potential at 3 stars and his fastball and sliders both with 70-75 potential on the ratings scale. Hopefully we can try and snag him in a future draft.
We are still working on upgrading the catching position. We've made two offers to the Pittsburgh Pirates for Francisco Cervelli. The most recent one we dropped the salary retain percentage we're asking the Pirates to cover and added a minor league catching prospect (in addition to the starting & relief pitchers already in the deal). If we're able to work it out, based on performance so far this season, it's likely that Robinson Chirinos would be DFA'd and we'd search for a trade partner. Max Stassi is and has been the better defensive catcher between them and has surprisingly been the better hitting catcher of the two. And I use the term "better hitting" very loosely there. (BA of .234 to .197; both have 3 home runs; Stassi's OBP is .324 compared to .290 of Chirinos). Cervelli would be a significant upgrade in terms of hitting and Stassi can be a defensive-minded backup catcher for us and still get regular at bats like he has been. I've been playing Chirinos 3 of 5 games and Stassi about 2 of 5 games.
Up next is a 2 game series with the Brewers in a possible World Series previewl; followed by a 3 game series with the Blue Jays to conclude an 8 game homestand before hitting the road for the next couple of series.
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