{"id":709,"date":"2013-06-19T13:41:00","date_gmt":"2013-06-19T13:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.stub.com\/hq\/news\/astros-strike-deal-with-no-1-pick-appel\/"},"modified":"2013-10-30T20:36:05","modified_gmt":"2013-10-30T20:36:05","slug":"astros-strike-deal-with-no-1-pick-appel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/astros-strike-deal-with-no-1-pick-appel\/","title":{"rendered":"Astros strike deal with No. 1 pick Appel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Houston, TX (Sports Network) &#8211; The Houston Astros announced Wednesday that they have officially signed Stanford pitcher Mark Appel, the top overall pick in the 2013 MLB First-Year Player Draft.<\/p>\n<p>Financial terms were not disclosed by the team, though Baseball America reported that Appel will receive a $6.35 million signing bonus that is considerably less than MLB&#8217;s assigned slot value of $7.79 million for the No. 1 overall choice.<\/p>\n<p>The Astros also owned the top pick last year and passed on Appel, who was selected by Pittsburgh with the No. 8 pick. The right-hander returned to Stanford after failing to come to terms with the Pirates.<\/p>\n<p>Appel, 21, went 10-4 with four complete games and a 2.12 ERA as a senior this season at Stanford. He compiled 130 strikeouts in 106 1\/3 innings and held opposing hitters to a .203 batting average.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Drafting and signing Mark Appel was a top priority for our organization this year,&#8221; Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow said in a statement. &#8220;We are an organization focused on winning championships in the future and we expect Mark to be a big part of that effort.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Appel, a Houston native, is Stanford&#8217;s all-time strikeout leader with 372.<\/p>\n<p>The Astros have yet to determine where Appel will begin his pro career, though he&#8217;s expected to pitch in the minors at some point this summer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Houston, TX (Sports Network) &#8211; The Houston Astros announced Wednesday that they have officially signed Stanford pitcher Mark Appel, the top overall pick in the 2013 MLB First-Year Player Draft. Financial terms were not disclosed by the team, though Baseball America reported that Appel will receive a $6.35 million signing bonus that is considerably less [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[44,43,42],"class_list":["post-709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb","tag-astros","tag-houston","tag-houston-astros"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=709"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":728,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709\/revisions\/728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}