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Prospects

Baseball America, the foremost authority on traditional scouting, posted its annual rankings of the Top 10 prospects in the Astros organization, as well as its list of the "Best Tools" in the organization.

Most notable to me is the absense of C Hector Gimenez from the list of Top 10 prospects (though he is listed as the organization's "Best Defensive Catcher"). The absence of Gimenez should not surprise me, as his ZIPS projection of 13/.256/.300 is even worse than Brad Ausmus's.

But Gimenez is vital to the Astros in two ways. Next season, the Astros should be able to move on past their strange obsessive relationship with Ausmus, as his contract expires then. This will provide the Astros a unique opportunity to get a catcher who hits better than the pitchers he catches. The second is that Gimenez is being groomed for the job, and his development prompted the club to include John Buck in the deal for the half season of Carlos Beltran.

But if Gimenez cannot crack the Top 10 of even the Astros weak farm system, it greatly increases the possibility that the Astros will do what they always do for the second-line positions, pay more than they should but not enough to seem to really take up their resources for replacement talent (see here, here, and here.

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