{"id":319137,"date":"2025-11-30T19:21:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T19:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/319137\/"},"modified":"2025-11-30T19:21:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T19:21:08","slug":"astros-have-promising-pitching-prospect-in-2024-fourth-round-pick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/319137\/","title":{"rendered":"Astros Have Promising Pitching Prospect in 2024 Fourth Round Pick"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Houston Astros farm is developing some very notable young names in their minor league system. With names like Brice Matthews<\/a>, Xavier Neyens<\/a>, and Kevin Alvarez<\/a>, the young talent the farm has offensively can make it easier to overlook the pitching prospects within their system.<\/p>\n

One of those pitching prospects that is off to a promising start in his professional career is a former fourth-round pick from the 2024 MLB draft. Rice product Parker Smith enjoyed a solid debut season with the Astros organization.<\/p>\n

Coming into the 2024 draft, Smith was ranked as the No. 149 overall prospect in his draft class by Baseball America<\/a>. His secondary offerings, particularly the slider and changeup, were graded as his best pitches, with plus control as well.<\/p>\n

Smith appeared in 18 games this season, making 14 starts, and pitching 68.1 innings across the 2025 season between the Complex and Low-A. The 6-foot-4, 230 pound right hander recorded a 3.16 ERA with 63 strikeouts, and a 5-3 record.<\/p>\n

When looking at his advanced<\/a> stats from this past season, Smith struck out batters at just above a 21% rate, while walking batters at a rate slightly above 10%. He generated swing-and-miss at an efficient rate as well, and has proven that he still has room to grow into an even better prospect.<\/p>\n

The control has been solid to start his pro career. Keeping the BB\/9 below 4.00 is a promising sign for Houston to see, and even more promising, his BB\/9 was 3.77 during his time in Low-A this season.<\/p>\n

Smith has been great at obtaining ground-ball contact, posting a 51.6% GB% throughout the 2025 season. He was more notably even better at limiting the long ball, not surrendering a single home run in his almost 70 innings pitched.<\/p>\n

While Smith is a long way from the Major Leagues at just 22 years old, it’s going to be tough for Astros fans not to get excited about the future for this right-hander. An arm that gets ahead of the count at an efficient rate while limiting the long ball makes for an incredibly intriguing prospect.<\/p>\n

For a former draft pick of the organization, a Rice alumni, and a native of Houston, Smith should develop into a fan favorite. A successful career with the Astros would make for an incredible story, and after his debut season, he’s left a lot for the Houston faithful to be excited about.<\/p>\n

More Astros News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Houston Astros farm is developing some very notable young names in their minor league system. With names…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-319137","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}