When asked about the trades to Houston, Baseball America's Jim Callis responded by talking about the depth added in these trades and then breaking down Houston's new Top 10 prospect list as he sees it. You'll have to click on this link to see the full list, but I'll give you the top five now with some thoughts after the jump...
1) Jonathan Singleton, 1B
2) Jarred Cosart, RHP
3) George Springer, OF
4) Jonathan Villar, SS
5) Brett Oberholtzer, LHP
The first, most surprising thing to me was how far Delino DeShields, Jr. fell in these rankings. After sitting at second behind Jordan Lyles heading into this season, he falls all the way to eighth. Part of that can be his disappointing 2011 season so far, but generally Baseball America devalues performance over tools early in development, so the fact DDJ is showing some pop and somewhat holding his own as one of the youngest players in the Sally should give him some credit.
And yet, he still falls behind both Mike Foltynewicz and Jonathan Villar. I'm not surprised VIllar made the top five, since I put him at the top of my midseason Top 10 list about a month ago. His struggles at Corpus have made me downgrade him a bit, but he's still been pretty impressive as a young guy in the Texas League. I"m a bit shocked by Folty's ranking, too. He hasn't shown much at all this season and, in fact, profiles pretty closely to what Cosart has done in the minors (good stuff, bad results).
The big takeaway here is that of the top five players, all five have joined the organization in the past year and four of the five have joined in the past two months. That should dramatically increase Houston's farm rankings this winter, but we'll have to wait a bit to see if those rankings mean anything for the big league club.