Starfleet Command

How about we just bench Straw and try Tucker in Center with Diaz in RF? Tucker is a pretty good defender and might be okay in CF if they are willing to give him a chance.

He definitely has better stuff than I thought he had playing at Texas - i've read his curveball spin is over 3000 RPM for instance, which is about what Framber spins his at and Framber's is one of the best curveballs in the game. It's odd for a pitcher to go from 7.6 SO/9 in D1 to 12+ SO/9 in the NYPL. Not a good look for the Texas coaching staff at all.

Blair Henley getting the opening day start tonight for Asheville. He's performed better as a prospect than I would have expected given his tenure at Texas.

What was BWG’s alternative direction? It wasn’t Ivey was it? That would be too humorous. I think part of why BWG and some others like Haley are a little skeptical of Bead has to a lot to do with Beard’s style of play and how incongruent it is with the direction basketball is heading. If Beard can keep stacking talent I’m not sure how much that will matter. IMO, talent acquisition > development/deployment.

I doubt they believe Leon is a viable candidate to replace Correa. They odds of him being good enough to play SS at an MLB level (outside of an occasional spot start) within a year are remote. There is also plenty of money to sign someone like Semien or someone even better to fill that hole. The Rays do stuff like this a lot because of their unforgiving budget constraints but i'm not sure of what use the strategy will have here and it could be counterproductive if it delays his entry into the majors given the lack of other internal options the Astros have for CF.

Some speculation that since Dusty said “reasons” rather than “protocols” that maybe he didn’t test positive and simply is feeling side effects from his second dose, which isn’t all that uncommon. Who knows though. In other news, I’m very surprised the are starting Leon at SS in Corpus. If you want to fast track him to the majors why dick around with cross-training him at SS?

He was down 5-6 mph in Denver for almost the entirety of his start. I was worried that he was injured but I guess the weather made him that uncomfortable. The shape of his breaking pitches has improved a lot since he first arrived but he doesn't have the ability yet to keep them down. I think he has a higher ceiling than what he's shown so far if he can make a few tweaks.

Six regular players this season with an OPS > .800 in Melendez, Zubia, Williams, Daly, Antico, and Hodo with three of those being over .900. Texas hasn't had that many players with that high of an OPS since prior to 2016 (the earliest year D1Baseball provides data). Also, interesting to note that Melendez has a slightly higher OPS than Kody did in his final season at Texas. If he can learn to field 3B competently he could be an interesting prospect to follow after he leaves Texas.

To be fair, the adults in the Soprano crime family were all more or less heavily flawed in different ways outside of maybe Sal. Tony was one of the smarter and more grounded members of the family and he basically destroyed the family by the end of the show through his impulsiveness and poor leadership. No perfect people on the Sopranos.

Smith is almost 40 and has lost another couple of mph to bring him down to 85-85 on his fastball. Of course Dusty didn't notice this and used him like he was 2019 Smith until he got blasted two or three times. If he can recapture his velo he might be of some use but if not blowouts are the only games in which he should be pitching.

I think his arm is his biggest issue as a fielder. He can at least offset his poor instincts somewhat with his speed but there is nothing to be done about his arm.

I don't know, elder Carmine was maybe the best boss on the show and his son - well, it's common knowledge the guy's retarded.

This has nothing to do with Baez having COVID. Simply put, offering that high of an AAV for a reliever of Baez's caliber was a waste of resources especially in view of how tight the money was and how thin the team is at CF. They could have easily signed someone like McGee, Petit, Melancon, etc., for less than half of what they paid Baez. Relievers with a solid but unspectacular track record like Baez are about as fungible as players get in baseball. They also have several guys in the upper minors who are ready for MLB innings like Solomon and Ivey. As for the CF issue, Straw was a sub-replacement level player in 2020 and is performing as a sub-replacement level player so far this season and has flat out cost them critical runs in several games. What makes the matter worse is that there are no other legitimate internal options to which the Astros can turn should Straw keep playing at this level - neither McCormick (who isn't even a CF) nor Dawson project to be better than replacement level. Obviously you can't sign a star CF with a $3-5M AAV but you can sign someone like Pillar or Hernandez whom will be far less of a gamble than a AAAA player with below average instincts/routes in CF and absolutely zero pop in his bat.

Click shitting his pants after Hendricks signed that big deal and giving Baez $6M+ AAV is looking like a very serious error. They could have signed another solid reliever and a veteran CF for that money. Spending money on Castro when Dusty refuses to play him also looks like a waste. There wasn’t enough money at play this past offseason for Click to screw it up that much but he, with an assist from Dusty, he might have done just that.

He hung that slider and and gave up a missile. Straw has sucked at CF but Abreu didn't do him any favors there.

I perused the recruiting rankings on perfect game and I’m surprised how low Texas is ranked for several of the recent classes given the level of talent in the freshman and sophomore classes. It seems we finally have a fair amount of power up and down the lineup and there are plenty of high upside arms on this staff including a likely top 15 pick in Madden.

Red Bull looks like they may be ready to put up a fight this season. Too bad Perez couldn’t keep his car on the track.