Tyler Ivey

Ivey had a 1.38 ERA and 0.92 WHIP while spending the bulk of his age-23 season at Double-A. However, he only pitched 52 innings and logged five-plus innings in just five of his 14 appearances. He got up to 112 innings in 2018, but minor injuries and a suspension for using a foreign substance held him back last year. This will be a huge year for Ivey to prove he belongs in the rotation. He has starter's stuff -- a low-90s fastball that has sat in the mid-90s in the past, a plus curveball, a promising changeup and a change-of-pace slider -- but he needs to build back up his innings while proving he can consistently go deep into starts. Houston is banking on a couple pitching prospects other than Forrest Whitley emerging as legitimate rotation pieces, and Ivey does not have to be added to the 40-man roster until next offseason, so they will give him every opportunity to make this his breakout campaign.

When delving into under-the-radar pitching prospects with promising MiLB stats, it can be difficult to separate the ones with impact stuff from the ones getting by on deception and pitchability. Ivey falls into that first group. He signed for $597,000 out of community college when the Astros selected him in the third round of the 2017 draft, and while his fielding-independent numbers were good in short-season ball, 2018 was when he established himself as a legitimate prospect. Ivey has good size (6-foot-4, 195 pounds), a plus fastball, plus curveball and a slider that is developing into at least an average third pitch that he can get whiffs with. His 21.5 K-BB% was the top mark in the Carolina League and his 54.5 GB% ranked seventh on the circuit. The one thing to be aware of with Ivey, like most Astros pitching prospects, is he was often piggybacked last season -- only averaging 4.7 innings per start, despite his dominance.