When baseball’s draft wrapped Wednesday after three days and in 40 rounds, the Astros still looked to be among the biggest winners because of their three pulls on day one: Alex Bregman (No. 2 overall), Kyle Tucker (No. 5) and Daz Cameron (No. 37).
The very next Astros picks that followed coincidentally were tied to an Astros’ draft choice of similar potential 14 years earlier.
Kirk Saarloos was a third round pick of the Astros in 2001 who pitched two years for the team, from 2003-04, as part of seven seasons in the bigs. Today, he’s the pitching coach at TCU, the school that groomed 2015 Astros third-rounder, junior Riley Ferrell, a righty closer powered by a fastball and slider.