We would like to start this top 10 list with a brief recap of last year’s top 10.  Our top 3 from last year, Burke, Astacio, and Taveras all made contributions to the big club.  We all know what they did so we’ll move on.  We don’t believe there were any surprises in our 4-10.  Amongst our other highlights:  We took a lot of flak from folks for excluding Einertson.  But, we’re sorry to say we were right on him.  His off-field problems caught up with him at the higher level.  We were correct about Barthmaier, Gutierrez, and Sutil.  We missed on Diaz, Maysonet, Jimerson, and Parraz.

This year’s top 10 sports 5 new faces.  There was some shuffling of those repeating our list.  You’ll find after the top 10 a list of lesser known players who we believe are one’s to watch.
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This draft begins the dawn of a new era for the Astros.  This is the first draft in many years headed by a new General Manager.  Tim Purpura takes the reigns and will put his first stamp on the long-term health of the organization.  The Astros also have a new Scouting Director, Paul Ricciarini.  Together, they will attempt to add quality players to a minor league system that has seen a number of bad drafts in the past 5 years.

As has been noted on numerous occasions this is the first draft in 3 years that the Astros have a pick in the first round.  Because of the Jeff Kent signing (2003) and the Andy Pettitte signing (2004) the Astros forfeited their first round picks in the indicated draft year.  Despite that those 2 year’s drafts appear to be promising.  So, the outlook for this year’s draft was quite optimistic.
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