The Houston Astros Next Top Prospect is Brett Phillips

Earlier in the offseason I asked a question, who would be the next top prospect after Carlos Correa and Mark Appel are promoted to the big leagues. You can find the original post here, Astros Prospects: Next Top Prospect After Carlos Correa. Looking at the rankings of the  Houston Astros top prospects at the time, the top three prospects at the time were Vincent Velasquez, Michael Feliz, and Brett Phillips.

Velasquez has done a great job this year pitching with the Astros, and will continue to improve his pitches to avoid the high pitch count due to foul balls. Feliz has been back and forth between Double-A and the Astros but has only made one appearance out of the bullpen for the Astros. While those two have great potential, the best of them is still at Double-A and has not made an appearance with the Astros yet. The next top prospect is Brett Phillips, who would like to go by his middle name, Maverick.

I might be a little biased with this guy because he was the first player to interact with me on Twitter, and we have stayed in contact since. I may over-hype this guy at times, but he does the talking mostly with his play. He made the Single-A California League All-Star team and was told shortly after the game that he would be promoted to Double-A Corpus Christi Hooks.

You can find some of my posts including interviews, below.

The Rise of Astros Prospect Brett Phillips

Stealing Second with Astros Prospect Brett Phillips (with/interview)

Keeping Up with the Astros Prospects: Brett Phillips

Keeping up With Astros Prospects: Brett Phillips

Click below to continue

Next: High School and Minors Stats

High School and Minors Stats

High School Seminole High School (Florida)

Phillips made the Varsity team during his sophomore season after playing JV his freshman year. In high school, he didn’t show much power in terms of home runs, but he did show plus average and on-base skills. He also showed some speed, especially in his sophomore season with 11 steals on the season in 14 tries.

The stats below are from MaxPreps, which can be found here.

The Astros then drafted Phillips in the 2012 MLB draft in the sixth round out of high school. He was drafted in the same class as Preston Tucker, Lance McCullers, Correa, and Rio Ruiz. While he may not be top of that class, now that they have all found their way to Houston (or traded to the Braves), he should supplant Correa as the top prospect.

Minors

Below is Phillips’ timeline through the minors from Baseball-Reference.

Coming out of high school at the age of 18, Phillips started in the rookie ranks and has moved up to Corpus Christi Hooks at the time of writing this post.

Let’s take a look at his stats so far in the minor leagues from Baseball-Reference.

Looking at his progression, he really didn’t start to blossom until 2014, where he was the Astros Minor League hitter of the year. The biggest jump is in home runs, where he hit zero in his first two years, then exploded for 17 the next year. His on-base percentage has stayed fairly constant but took a dip so far in 2015. Despite the drop in on-base percentage, his slugging percentage is rising in 2015. Phillips can hit for average, power, and speed.

Click to continue

Next: Scouting Report and Trading Block