Venezuelan pipeline?

[pravata]

This clown from FOX writes this "In the past, the Astros were kings of the Venezuelan Talent Market, ...The talent has dried up."

Part of it has been Drayton McLane's tightening of the purse strings and refusing to pay up for big money talent in the draft or abroad.  But the other part is that the Astros didn't evolve  They weren't able to adjust for the times and as a result, several other teams now dominate the Venezuelan market and the Domincan, areas where the Astros did relatively well. Link

Ortiz wrote this

the Astros' farm system isn't ranked highly. Heck, it's usually ranked poorly, and that's a reflection of poor drafts plus Purpura's decision to get rid of the man who had established the Astros' Venezuelan Academy.

Here's a list of MLB players from Venezuela, Link (I don't know if it's accurate) how many of these players were not developed by the Astros and why are they no longer in the Astros system?

[Duman]

Here is another factor:

Andres Reiner had the foresight to realize Venezuela's declining economic fortunes could steer young boys toward baseball as a way of escaping poverty. In 1983, he approached several teams about opening a baseball academy in Venezuela with trained coaches, state-of-the-art equipment and high-level competition for prospects preparing to go to the U.S.

The Houston Astros accepted his proposal six years later.

In Reiner's prodigious 17-year tenure as a Venezuelan scout for the Astros, he unearthed numerous future stars such as Bobby Abreu, Freddy Garcia, Melvin Mora and Carlos Guillen. Other franchises soon opened Venezuelan academies and by the late 1990s, it was not uncommon for teams to have almost as many full-time scouts stationed there as they did in the Dominican Republic.

It's easy to have a pipeline when you have little competition. 

[pravata]

Here is another factor:

It's easy to have a pipeline when you have little competition. 

But, if the Astros organization has failed, due to Purpura's stupidity and Mclane's cheapness of course, where's all the players the other teams developed in Venezuela?  The players currently in the majors are almost all from the Astros and were lost in trades, attrition, and one very unfortunate Rule 5 transaction.

[Rebel Jew]

Here is another factor:

It's easy to have a pipeline when you have little competition. 

this has been talked about a lot here, but all the enterprising makes for a pretty bittersweet legacy considering that so many solid players were developed by the astros but so few actually played for them.  with the way hidalgo's career panned out, and kevin brown's witchery in '98 this is even moreso.  here's hoping paulino turns into an all-star closer some day soon; i distinctly remember gerry hunsicker on the radio excitedly talking about this 17 year-old venezuelan kid they had who throws 100 mph.