Longtime Astros scout adds 1st-round Draft pick to stellar résumé

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HOUSTON -- Jim Stevenson’s scouting résumé already includes a Cy Young Award winner in Dallas Keuchel, along with several other players who reached the big leagues with the Astros. But the one thing Stevenson hadn’t been able to brag about in 30 years as a scout was having one of his players drafted in the first round.

Until this year.

When the Astros selected Texas Tech outfielder Logan Hughes with the No. 17 overall pick in the 2026 MLB Draft, the scouting group congratulated Stevenson, who had scouted Hughes for two seasons. Getting a player taken in the first round is a big deal for a scout, especially when you have three decades of Drafts under your belt without one.

“I’ve been so close before and so many guys have been almost there, and you get pickpocketed right in front of you sometimes, too,” Stevenson said. “I thought it was going to happen several times before in the past, and it never did, so I wasn’t expecting it this year.”

When the Astros were on the clock at No. 17, Stevenson was hoping they would take Hughes because he didn’t think he would be available with the club’s No. 28 overall pick (which they used for Notre Dame pitcher Jack Radel).

“It was a pretty good moment,” said Stevenson, who's spent the last 18 years with Houston and was previously with Milwaukee and Cleveland.

Stevenson, 63, lives in Tulsa, Okla., and is assigned to the state of Oklahoma, North Texas, Kansas and the western halves of Arkansas and Missouri -- an area which includes Texas Tech, the University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, TCU, Kansas, Kansas State, the University of Arkansas and many more. Stevenson estimates there are three or four first-round picks per year in his area.

Hughes, who’s from Florida, began his college career at Stetson University, which was the only school to offer him a scholarship. He wound up transferring to Tech for his sophomore and junior seasons, and that’s where Stevenson took notice. As a junior last season, Hughes batted .375 with 18 home runs and 70 RBIs, showing good plate discipline with 50 walks and only 33 strikeouts.

“We scouted him quite a bit,” Stevenson said. “We started around the Big 12 Tournament, and he was in a small group of guys we were going to really scout and do our work on.”

What really won the Astros over was when Hughes came to Daikin Park for a pre-Draft workout and put on a show with the bat in front of general manager Dana Brown, advisor Jeff Bagwell and the rest of the scouting group, including Stevenson.

“I knew he had power, and I thought, ‘He's going to get a lot more,’ but what he did that day was eye-opening,” Stevenson said. “He has a really good swing and stays on the barrel consistently, just over and over again. He was hitting balls in the first round [of batting practice], just going the other way and driving in the gap, and then started pulling some baseballs.

“In the last two rounds, it was like somebody said, ‘Hey, let me see what you got with the power,’ because all of a sudden he decided to start going into the upper deck and going over the bullpen into the second level. I’m like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ He did it, like, four or five times in a row, and he didn’t mishit. … His barrel accuracy is so good.”

Keuchel, taken in the seventh round out of Arkansas in 2009, won the 2015 AL Cy Young Award with the Astros and is one of 15 players that Stevenson scouted who reached the big leagues. That includes Logan VanWey, who made his Major League debut last year for Houston, along with former Astros Ramón Laureano, Abraham Toro, Jack Mayfield, Adrian Houser, Dean Deetz and Parker Mushinski.

“I was just hoping Dallas would get a cup of coffee or pitch in Triple-A for a few years as a seventh-round guy. I didn’t think he was going to go out and win a Cy Young,” he said.

Stevenson, who grew up in Toronto, was speaking Thursday from the area code games in Long Beach, Calif., his last assignment before a well-deserved break. In a few weeks, he’ll be back on the hunt for the next first-round pick for the Astros.

“I've still got the same ambition and the same compete level, and jumping in the car and putting in the miles and seeing the extra games and doing everything,” he said. “Nothing changes.”