Keith Law Continues to Pan Astros In His Latest Draft Review

Another day and another hyper-critical piece on the Astros has dropped from The Athletic.

In Keith Law's breakdown of all American League teams, Law panned Dana Brown's initial draft:

"This was an uninspiring draft for a team that just hired a highly respected evaluator, Dana Brown, as its GM; they landed just one player from my top 100 and overdrafted him by a round. That player is Nebraska infielder Brice Matthews (1), 57th on my board but taken at pick 28, a shortstop with plus speed who might be able to move to center if short doesn’t work out. "

- Keith Law

Very little was said that was positive about the Astros picks. Ironically, multiple of the Astros picks were on Law's prospects to watch for outside his top 100.

You know who else was outside of Law's Top 100? Michael Harris II. Harris was Atlanta's third-round pick in 2019. He won the NL Rookie of the Year after a dominant 2022 season. Safe to say, the pick was nailed.

Who made that pick you ask? Well the same "highly respected evaluator" in Dana Brown that Law is now panning because he wears evil Astros orange.

Heading into 2022, Law had Harris ranked behind Christian Pache in the Braves prospect ranking. Pache isn't even with the Braves barely a full season later. While Harris won Rookie of the Year in 2022, Pache in 91 games with Oakland posted a .491 OPS.

Maybe we should trust Dana Brown's evaluation skills more.

And that might now have been Law's most egregious miss of the Braves 2022 Prospect rankings...

Freddy Tarnok was #6 on Law's list. No offense to Tarnok, but he had a 4.05 ERA last season across AA & AAA. 12th on Law's list: Spencer Strider. In 31 starts in The Show last year, Strider posted a 2.67 ERA. He's 11-2 this year with a 3.44 ERA and a league-leading 14.3 strikeouts per nine.

Law also had Vaughn Grissom 11th on his list.

To use Law's own language, talk about an uninspiring evaluation...

Maybe Dana Brown's picks don't pan out. We'll know more in the future.

But there's also a reason Brown is the one calling these shots. Law's recent evaluations have been way off regarding Brown's picks. The 2023 class may very well be more of the same.