George Springer Promoted to AA

Twitter exploded with news from Astros writers and fans that the Astros had promoted 2011 first round pick (11th overall) , George Springer to AA Corpus Christi. The news was well received among fans and comes with just over a month to play in the minor league season. It was also a bit odd given the timing since just last night he went 0-5 with five strikeouts. Nevertheless, he will be in uniform tonight and playing CF (with newly acquired Robbie Grossman shifting over to LF) for the Hooks. He will take the roster spot left empty by Marc Krauss when he was promoted to AAA Oklahoma City earlier in the week.

Springer was rated by Baseball America as the #58 prospect in all of MiLB prior to this season. He was also consistently ranked in the top three Astros prospects (along with Jarred Cosart and Jonathan Singleton) by pretty much every national minor league outlet. I had him ranked third behind Singleton and Cosart respectively. He has truly hammered the ball thus far. To be fair, he does play in a very hitter friendly environment down at Lancaster and his stats are probably a little inflated but the talent is still there. Some would argue that a promotion should have happened sooner (I’d be among that crowd) but when the Astros had their ongoing yard sale throughout July with talent being acquired in bunches and most of it being routed to Corpus Christi, I wasn’t too upset or surprised when he wasn’t promoted last month. He does have a high strikeout rate as well but that can still be worked on.

Springer has been touted by scouts as having legitimate five tool potential. He has lived up to it thus far in his brief career in the minors. I am anxious to see how he does at the next level down at Corpus. For now, the Hooks middle of the order will feature a batting duo of Jonathan Singleton and George Springer. Astros fans should get used to that as those are the two guys who will most likely anchor our lineup for the next decade.