The Astros' 1/1 problems

Carlos Correa, seen here hitting for the Quad Cities
River Bandits against the Cedar Rapids Kernels in 2013,
is currently shelved with a fractured leg.

The Houston Astros have had the first overall pick in each of the last three drafts. With the spectacular collapse of their negotiations with this year's 1/1 as the team indulged in apparent gamesmanship with its draft pool, it's worth looking at how they've fared with those picks so far.

2012: Carlos Correa.

This was a gamesmanship draft by the Astros. Correa wasn't expected to go that high; the consensus had Byron Buxton as the top talent and three college pitchers (Mark Appel, Kyle Zimmer and Kevin Gausman) as safer selections.

The Astros took Correa and signed him for considerably less than the Twins, who picked second, spent on Buxton. They then used their bonus pools savings to buy a pair of "tough signs," Lance McCullers Jr. and Rio Ruiz, out of their college commitments.

Two years later, Correa is a highly regarded prospect, albeit out for the remainder of the season with a fractured fibia near the right ankle. He's not as highly regarded as Buxton, however, and if the broken leg helps force him from shortstop to third base, his value will recede a bit more.

As for the gain downdraft, it's probable that the Twins did better with Jose Barrios than the Astros did with McCullers Jr.

Correa wasn't a bad selection by the Astros, but I think the industry would agree they'd have been better off taking Buxton.

2013: Mark Appel

When the Astros and Twins bypassed Appel in 2012, so did several other teams, and he slid to the Pirates at No. 8. Pittsburgh didn't have the bonus pool money to appease the college junior, and Appel returned to Stanford.

This time the Astros took him (over Jonathan Gray and Kris Bryant), and Appel signed.

He has been a disaster.

Appel was somewhat less than dominant for Quad Cities in the Midwest League last summer, but it had been a long collegiate season and he was shifting from pitching once a week for Stanford to a more frequent professional rotation. Nobody was concerned.

Moved up to high A Lancaster in the California League this year, Appel is 1-5, 10.80. Let me repeat that ERA: Ten-eighty. He's averaging a bit more than three innings a start, and he's allowed 69 hits in 38.1 innings.

Lancaster is a notoriously terrible place to pitch, but there is no sugarcoating those numbers. The Astros would have done better to take Bryant, certainly. At this point, they'd have done better taking anybody else. It's difficult to envision a four-year college pitcher doing this poorly in A ball and having a career.

2014: Brady Aiken.

Appel may not be what the Astros (and, to be fair, most everybody else) expected, but at least there's a chance he will contribute someday to the Astros. Aiken will assuredly not.

Whatever the specifics of the medical concerns, whatever the perceived risk, it is baffling that the Astros front office screwed up the negotiations this badly. And, of course, it wasn't just Aiken they lost, but Jacob Nix as well. I doubt that general manager Jeff Luhnow is in any real jeopardy over this, but there is a serious case to be made that this should a firing offense.

Houston will get the No. 2 pick next June in compensation for failing to sign Aiken. The Astros don't deserve it.

The fallen Appel

In the final paragraph of this morning's post, I noted a report that Mark Appel had turned down a pre-draft offer of $6 million. The reporter who stated that has since retracted it.

I'm not privy to the specifics of the pre-draft contact between team and player. The behavior of the two parties makes the initial report credible.

It may indeed be that the Astros never specifically offered $6 million, but there shouldn't be much doubt that Appel's financial expectations outshot the willingness of anybody to meet those expectations, and that's why the player generally projected to be the No. 1 overall pick fell to No. 8.

And the player's refusal to talk to the Pittsburgh media after his selection, instead issuing a statement on his dedication to reaching his academic goals, comes off as petulant. He ain't getting what he thought he was going to get.

Draft day: Evening edition -- Buxton over Appel

Byron Buxton during a showcase game last summer.

I am acutely aware of the limitations of my knowledge of amateur prospects. I'm not a scout, so I have no first-hand observations of Bryon Buxton or Carlos Correa or Mark Appel to rely on. Unlike John Sickels or the crew at Baseball America, I don't talk to scouts or scouting directors, so I don't have second-hand information. I can offer nothing more than third-hand opinions.

That said: The Twins' choice of Buxton with the second overall pick Monday evening pleased me. The scouting consensus isn't always right, but he was/is widely regarded as the top talent in this draft field. (I have a suspicion that Correa may prove the better player, but that was out of the Twins' hands when Houston made Correa 1-1.)

That the Twins passed on Appel didn't disturb me at all (it apparently does Joe Christensen, who tweeted repeatedly in the wake of the pick that the Twins have zero top-of-the-rotation prospects). My reading of the information on Appel (and the other top collegiate pitchers) does not suggest that any of them are destined to be the next Justin Verlander.

That Appel fell to eighth suggests another issue: He is a Scott Boras client, and Boras has been known to hold inflated bonus expectations. Buxton was said by the Twins to have been at the top of their draft board since last summer, but Appel's chances of being their pick may have died the night Boras sat in Terry Ryan's suite last month.

The draft rules have changed sharply from the recent past, and the penalties for overpaying to sign propects are steep enough that it's hard to imagine anybody exceeding their alloted budget. And the penalty for not signing a pick is also painful.

Appel and Boras, I think, overplayed their hand leading up to the draft. The pitcher was taken by a team (Pittsburgh) whose TOTAL budget -- for 10 rounds -- is less than the money slotted for the first or second overall pick. Somebody is going to come out of those negotiations unhappy.