Hank Chinaski

So through today, the Astros’ offense as a team has a K rate of 25.4%. Last year’s was 19.5%. That’s a pretty significant jump. K% and BB% tend to reach their level fairly quickly in season. Hopefully this isn’t it. But probably this offense is significantly worse than last year’s. And it’s extremely likely the pitching will be worse too. Wheeee.

He may just not be a very good hitter.

Reminder that we’re actively choosing to lead off every day with a guy who has a sub-.300 career OBP. But this doesn’t matter, we shouldn’t actually try to maximize our chances of winning games because we have so much room for error, right? We can skip an entire off-season because the logo on the hat means everything will just fall into place? Cool.

Probably, but the crazy ass Mets owner might make him a offer that other teams won’t match…

This is pretty much the root of all my annoying and long-winded rants of the past week. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I agree here that there just didn’t seem to be any sort of cohesive plan to construct the roster for 2023. I’m not suggesting any sort of major overhaul, but signing a 1B, bringing back an injured, 1-dimensional vet, and overpaying to retain a reliever and calling it an off-season seemed somewhat negligent, and taking our sweet-ass time to hire a GM reeked of problematic hubris. But you knew you were losing the pitcher who had the best season in MLB. You knew the McCullers was an injury wild card. You let your only offensively-competent utility guy walk. You sign Brantley, who is also an injury wild card. The depth suffered. I think they hired a good GM and agree that long-term, things are in good hands. The problem is that it feels like they failed to maximize a championship-caliber team’s odds of adding another title this year, again, due to their hubris. That’s frustrating because, great as this team has been for a long time now, you don’t always have these opportunities. (And yes, I’m willing to allow for the possibility that I’m wrong and the org did have a plan that included Hensley and Meyers and Julks and Diaz and Brown at the depth I’m saying is missing. I hope this is true. I’d still question the rotation depth even if I assume Brown will be a good pitcher across 150 innings, which I don’t. There’s still no margin for error.)

The Chas thing only makes sense if (1) they just don’t like him that much from a personal/clubhouse perspective, or (2) the org still just really thinks it has reason to believe in Meyers. Or I guess if it could be a combo of those. I had an indirect connection to the team for a while until this past winter. (Not saying this makes me any sort of “insider” or anything like that, or that it validates my opinions in any way.) I did hear that Chas was kind of a weirdo and rubbed some guys the wrong way when he came up as a rookie. No idea if that has anything to do with anything. I’d hope that by now it’s a non-issue, and I assume it is. But from where I sit, not giving him the everyday job just doesn’t really compute.

Agree, though I’d still take Pena out of #1 and place him behind Tucker. Bregman should be #1. We all liked George at leadoff, right? Springer: .269/.357/.492 Bregman: .276/.374/.494

1) Yes, Chas is under appreciated. As we’ve discussed here, he shown to be a good player over about a full season’s worth of PAs. He should be the everyday CF. 2) The comparison is dumb, considering Acuna was coming off ACL surgery last year and it was clearly the worst season of his career (and likely to be an aberration when all is said and done), not his normal season. He is a “generational talent.” A better set of comparisons would be to simply point out that in 2021-2022, Chas was in the same wRC+ neighborhood as Castellanos, Haniger, Joc Pederson, Benintendi, Austin Meadows, Hunter Renfroe…guys who aren’t competing for playing time on their teams, who’ve been all-stars, and who aren’t better than Chas.

On a 1-year deal, for a top-tier team? Yes. Going rate for free agents is generally about $8mm per win. Profar with about 200-300 PAs is almost certainly at least a 1-win player.

I think he signed same day. But he was available for 4 months up to that point, and Dubon was the only defensively versatile player in the roster at that point.

I’d assume that he’ll regress to his expected/established major league performance level. Just like I do with Alex Bregman.

I would have rather brought back Diaz or signed Profar to have a defensively versatile guy on the roster who is also a competent offensive player. Or upgraded elsewhere (C, OF, etc).

Oh I don’t think signing either of those guys made sense. I’m talking about a guy like Syndergaard or Heaney or someone like that, who could have been had for cheap, to add depth to the rotation. We have exactly 5 starters now, one of whom is a totally unproven rookie. There’s no room for error there. Even if he is an upgrade, is there a reason that it took the entire off-season to make the hire? I’ve no problem with Brown (agree he should be good), but the timing felt like an unforced error. Agreed. We decided to roll with Maldy, probably with the idea that Lee and Diaz are capable too. I think that’s OK, but not if you’re also accepting subpar offense at so many other positions… The problem with Dubon is that he’s an atrocious offensive player. He’s fine as the last guy in the roster. But nothing was done to prevent from having to depend on him most days. Brantley is fine but you knew going in that you weren’t getting a full season from him. So the problem isn’t Brantley per se, it is that you signed him to fill a role that he’ll be unable to fill for an undefined amount of time, with no other plan. Again, any individual off-season move (or non-move) in a vacuum is defensible. But the moves need to make sense taken together, and these didn’t…which is unsurprising given that, again, we decided it was fine to not have a GM.

This is the result, as has been discussed, of sitting on the sidelines for the entire off-season without a GM (and thus, without any coherent plan). If you are going to lose Verlander and his 1.75 ERA, maybe you shouldn’t assume that the pitching results will be consistent in ‘23. And if you accept that, perhaps you should (1) bolster the rotation, at least in terms of depth, via free agency, to mitigate risk; (2) bolster the lineup and position player depth to mitigate the effect of the pitchers almost inevitably allowing more runs; or preferably (3) some combination of both. Signing Abreu was a fine move and represents an upgrade at 1B. But nothing was done to address issues related to depth (particularly utility, OF, DH) or on the pitching side. So you’re left in a situation in which you’re depending on guys every day who are unlikely to be good. Altuve’s injury is exposing the lack of quality depth. @Wulaw Horn was alluding to this all offseason. The way that the GM thing was handled never made sense; the result is a roster that is pretty flawed and didn’t really have to be.

I mean, the lineup is fine (with Chas, Hensley, maybe Diaz) if the pitching is what it was in 2022; problem is, it almost certainly will not be that good. Regression from the pitching staff (which is a near certainty) can be overcome with a better offense; problem is, we’re replacing an MVP-caliber player with Dubon and Hensley, and are rotating quad-A players in the DH spot (to go along with the C who can’t hit and the SS who isn’t a good offensive player either). There is nothing hyperbolic, or even pessimistic, about stating that this team/roster is clearly worse than last year’s, because it is probable that the pitching results will be significantly worse and the offense is unlikely to offset that regression. This just doesn’t seem controversial.

Yes.

Pena isn’t a good offensive player. I’m glad he got hot in the playoffs though.

Yes…and the odds of the exact same pitchers matching their historically good results last year were very low. Then we lost the best one. Perhaps we shouldn’t have punted on the off-season?

Oh. Well yeah, that’s not going anywhere. But seriously, look at the lineup again.

Which part?

The problem is that the season has started. These games count. These are part of this year’s team. So yeah, it’ll be nice when Altuve, Brantley and McCullers play. But the 2023 Astros don’t have Altuve, they have (Altuve * 0.6). And I’ll be stunned if either Brantley or McCullers contribute anything if significance this year.

JV threw 175 innings with a 1.75 ERA. The probability that Brown matches that is astronomically low. We’d all be thrilled if he threw that many inning with a 3.50 ERA. that’s giving up twice as many runs. That equates to more losses.

We’ll see. Replacing Verlander with a rookie is a bigger deal than anyone seems to acknowledge.

It’s not freaking out to acknowledge that this team is significantly worse than last year.

‘15-‘16 I guess were the only years both were good while in the same division.