• Franklin Perez was No. 66 on my top 100 this winter and No. 3 prospect in the Houston Astros’ system a.....Now with High-A Buies Creek, Perez was throwing 92-96 mph with a ton of strikes when I saw him pitch at Wilmington, complemented with a hard changeup at 83-84 and a fringy curveball ....
The changeup is so good that you can see his hand turn over and it will still miss some bats, but the breaking ball has a ways to go. He repeats his delivery well, with a slight cutoff in his landing but not enough to really bring his arm across his body. He's listed at 6-foot-3 but looks a lot smaller than that.....
• Astros right-hander Hector Perez was throwing 93-96 mph with good downhill plane when I saw him. The not-so-good news? He had just 30 command and didn't show great feel for any off-speed pitch -......He's had a few dominant outings, but he's been so erratic since his promotion from High-A that his overall line isn't very good, especially if you assume at least some of those 10 unearned runs he's allowed were his responsibility.
• The Astros gave Cuban shortstop Anibal Sierra $1.5 million last year as a free agent, but he was so bad in the two games where I saw him last weekend that I'd hesitate to even call him an org player. He's now hitting .188/.258/.278 as a 23-year-old in High-A, batted ninth in both games I saw him, and couldn't make routine plays at shortstop. I didn't see him before he signed, so I don't know what he looked like before the contract, but this has to be a huge disappointment given the investment.
