2023 Official Astros World Champs Offseason Thread

[tx 3 putt 77395]

It’s a great day for the us and our ‘window’ 

Back2Back !

[tx 3 putt 77395]

[Pimphand 5867]

2 minutes ago, kevwun said:

The Contreras thing is very confusing with all of the stories how Dusty and at least part of the front office didn't want him at the trade deadline.

I thought that was around not wanting to give up Urquidy and his 3 year contract for someone who was a short term rental far more than it was about not liking Contreras the person/player.

[kevwun 15879]

It was both.  There were also concerns about how he would fit in.

Edited November 28, 2022 by kevwun

[Seasick Sailor 3747]

5 minutes ago, kevwun said:

The Contreras thing is very confusing with all of the stories how Dusty and at least part of the front office didn't want him at the trade deadline.

IIRC, Duty's hesitation had more to do with not wanting to bring in a guy in a contract year who was used to starting and have him fill the backup catcher role. With Yordan playing more LF, there should be plenty of starts for Contreras between C and DH. 

[RGBIII 22840]

Abreu is an absolute dream fit on this team. Fuck Bellinger forever but I get it since he can play first and OF. Benintendi makes a ton of sense too, good contact, still young, can play all 3 outfield positions. 
 

Altuve

Peña

Yordan

Bregman

Abreu

Tucker

Benintendi (or other FA OF/DH)

Chas

Machete

lets run this fucking thing back bitch!

[TonyTexas 10525]

7 minutes ago, kevwun said:

The Contreras thing is very confusing with all of the stories how Dusty and at least part of the front office didn't want him at the trade deadline.

I’m also having a hard time deciphering the fit. He’s doesn’t have positional flexibility. No matter what anyone imagines, he’s not an outfielder or 1st baseman. And it’s not generally a good idea to have your backup catcher at DH. 

[kevwun 15879]

3 minutes ago, Seasick Sailor said:

IIRC, Duty's hesitation had more to do with not wanting to bring in a guy in a contract year who was used to starting and have him fill the backup catcher role. With Yordan playing more LF, there should be plenty of starts for Contreras between C and DH. 

Yes on Dusty, but there are front office guys who are presumably still in the org that didn't want him in the locker room.  This was all supposed to be one of the sources of conflict between Click and Crane.

[BrazilHorn 6632]

Just got this finally delivered today. Will be enjoying a tasty beverage in it this evening.

[Guadaloopy 11013]

23 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

 

 

 

wouldn’t be shocked if we end up retiring his number 

His reaction after the swing is the chef's kiss.  So nonchalant.  He may be the coolest cat to ever wear the H-star.  

[TexArcher 38052]

8 minutes ago, RGBIII said:

Altuve

Peña

Yordan

Bregman

Abreu

Tucker

Benintendi (or other FA OF/DH)

Chas

Show me an out!

[Scraps 13570]

With Yordan playing more LF, there should be plenty of starts for Contreras between C and DH. 

This was a Click said thing. Who knows if this actually happens. I hope it doesn't. I am good with him playing like 70 games in LF

[Pimphand 5867]

6 minutes ago, Guadaloopy said:

His reaction after the swing is the chef's kiss.  So nonchalant.  He may be the coolest cat to ever wear the H-star.  

He also was a pretty barometer for how far the team got.  If he didn't play well we tended to lose the series only real exception was the 2019 World Series where he played extremely well and we still lost

Fortunately he had an exceptional run over the past 6 seasons

[Soliver465 405]

Watching MLB now and they can’t stop slobbering over Click, and bringing up 2017 at every opportunity.

 

Fuck them!

[Scraps 13570]

Today's signing is almost making me want to book a trip to sit in 40 degree weather(at most) for first road trip of the season to Minnesota

[tx 3 putt 77395]

Crane just gave the dodgers the green light to lower their verlander offer, imo 

[Wulaw Horn 19149]

15 minutes ago, Seasick Sailor said:

IIRC, Duty's hesitation had more to do with not wanting to bring in a guy in a contract year who was used to starting and have him fill the backup catcher role. With Yordan playing more LF, there should be plenty of starts for Contreras between C and DH. 

And he could even play some 1B I bet.  I mean, I know Abreu is practically Cal Ripken out there, but he's getting older and the idea of him playing 140 games and Contreras getting something like 60 starts behind the plate, 60 starts at DH and 20 starts at 1B is pretty solid use of him.  That would mean no more bats if that was the plan for Contreras.  

[Limp Brisket 546]

Just now, tx 3 putt said:

Crane just gave the dodgers the green light to lower their verlander offer, imo 

At least let them think it anyway.

[Wulaw Horn 19149]

I'm so glad to have fuck face Click gone.  It's like the clouds have parted and heavens have opened up.  If he was still here we'd have seen Abreu sign with the Padres for 3/54 and we'd be pinning our hopes on trading for some Pirates scrub at the deadline if they would accept his offer of a shag bag of used baseballs, 4 pouches of big league chew and a PTBNL. 

[UTexasFight 9528]

6 minutes ago, Scraps said:

Today's signing is almost making me want to book a trip to sit in 40 degree weather(at most) for first road trip of the season to Minnesota

I’d settle for the season opener. At home…against the White Sox 

[Scraps 13570]

1 minute ago, UTexasFight said:

I’d settle for the season opener. At home…against the White Sox 

well that is a given

[Pimphand 5867]

3 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

I'm so glad to have fuck face Click gone.  It's like the clouds have parted and heavens have opened up.  If he was still here we'd have seen Abreu sign with the Padres for 3/54 and we'd be pinning our hopes on trading for some Pirates scrub at the deadline if they would accept his offer of a shag bag of used baseballs, 4 pouches of big league chew and a PTBNL. 

Tell us how you really feel next time.  This holding shit back stuff is for the birds.  Also I think the Pads are kinda fucked TBH

[RGBIII 22840]

16 minutes ago, TexArcher said:

Show me an out!

Altuve
Peña 
Yordan
Bregman
Abreu
Tucker
Benintendi 
Chas
Catcher

God damn I need this. I count at least 4 dudes that hit over .300 and 7 hit over .275 with 20+ bombs

[TonyTexas 10525]

11 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

And he could even play some 1B I bet.  I mean, I know Abreu is practically Cal Ripken out there, but he's getting older and the idea of him playing 140 games and Contreras getting something like 60 starts behind the plate, 60 starts at DH and 20 starts at 1B is pretty solid use of him.  That would mean no more bats if that was the plan for Contreras.  

Contreras has only played 51 innings at first. And do you really want your backup catcher DHing 60 games. That’s going to fuck you more than a few times by losing the DH. 

[Chuckie Finster 22728]

You're not gonna believe this, but Keith Law hates the move.

First sentence gives away his whole game: 

So is this what happens when you get rid of your successful, respected GM, and try to Jerry Jones your way through the offseason?

Spoiler

Signing a 35-year-old first baseman/DH to a three-year deal, even off a year when some signs of age crept into his performance and his batted-ball stats, is some 1980s George Steinbrenner malarkey. It’s also rather contrary to the way James Click, and other execs from the Tampa Bay Rays front-office tree, try to build their rosters. First base and DH are spots you can easily fill in the lower end of the free-agent market, or use to accommodate players you already have who might be blocked elsewhere. If you’re not signing an elite player — put a pin in that for a moment — you go for a less expensive one and spend that money elsewhere.

 

 

It is quite likely, however, that the Astros, whether Jim Crane or his factotums or Reggie Jackson or whoever is making these decisions, believe they got an elite player in José Abreu. The Cuban infielder won the AL MVP in 2020 (despite being nowhere near the league’s best player) and appeared to bounce back in 2022 after a down year in between, boosting his batting average 43 points to .304, cutting his strikeout rate to a career-low 16.2 percent and generating about 4 WAR, his best full-season showing in either of the major WAR metrics since 2017. You can wave your hands a little bit and argue that the Astros got a top-tier first baseman — he was fifth in the majors among first basemen in fWAR and rWAR last year.

I’m not arguing that Abreu was less than elite last year, because that’s beside the point. The Astros aren’t buying Abreu’s 2022 performance. They’re buying his 2023-2025 performances, and those are extremely likely to be worse, starting in year one and declining sharply from there. For one thing, he’ll play at 36 this year, and his production outside of 2022 hasn’t been elite for some time; from 2018-21, he had just a .340 OBP, .336 if you take out the intentional walks. He did show consistently strong power output, averaging 33.7 homers per 162 games in that stretch, making him above-average but putting him in the 2-3 WAR range.

In 2022, his production changed, and it’s something we’ve seen before. He lost some bat speed and started to struggle on four-seamers for the first time in his MLB career. His contact quality went down on four-seamers, and the harder the pitch, the more likely he was to whiff. He actually hit the fewest homers of any season since he first signed with the White Sox a decade ago, just 15, fewer than he hit in the 60-game 2020 season. He put the ball on the ground more and went the other way a lot more, which, in an older player, is often a sign that he can no longer get around on pitches he used to pull or hit back up the middle.

Fortunately for Abreu, he made up for some of the lost power with a big boost to his plate discipline, notably on pitches well outside the zone. He chased those pitches at the lowest rate of his career and was close to league average (45th percentile, per Baseball Savant) for the first time as a big leaguer. That led to more walks, with a career-high 60 unintentionals, and a career-high OBP of .378. It turns out that you can lose half your homers — he went from 30 in 2021 to 15 last year — and still be more valuable by getting on base at a much higher clip.

 

When a young hitter does this, it’s almost always a positive, as we assume that the newfound plate discipline will lead to better swing choices and any power lost will return. When an older hitter does this, it may be that he’s compensating for a loss of bat speed: I can’t hit the ball as hard as I used to, and I can’t turn on pitches I used to eat for lunch, so I have to lay off more pitches and hope I either draw a walk or the pitcher makes a mistake.

 

 

Abreu can still hit mistakes, at least for now, and I don’t think he’s going to stop drawing walks tomorrow. But he’s very, very unlikely to post a .350 BABIP again with the slippage in his batted-ball data, not with a career BABIP of .327 either, and all the projections I’ve seen have him dropping to under 3 WAR in year one of the deal. I’d give him an over/under of around 5 WAR for the three years, but with a significant chance that he follows Yuli Gurriel’s path, where he’s fine one year and completely toast the next — Gurriel went from a 132 wRC+ in his age-37 season to an 85 wRC+ in his age-38 season, making him a 3 WAR player one year and then below replacement level in the second. He did that for the Astros, by the way. You’d think they’d remember.

There aren’t many other first-base options in free agency this winter, however, which may have driven Houston’s urgency here. Josh Bell was the best of the candidates, and after this contract and the two-year deal Anthony Rizzo signed with the Yankees for a $20 million AAV, Bell should at least be looking for comparable money and three years since he’s younger than either of the other two players.

The White Sox, meanwhile, have an opening at first base for the first time since 2013, but they do have some internal options they could try, starting with moving Andrew Vaughn back to the dirt and hoping he shows more of the exceptional plate discipline that was his calling card in college. Vaughn has played out of position for most of his MLB time in the last two years, and, unsurprisingly, he’s done it very badly, rating as the worst defender in baseball last year by Outs Above Average, with -17 OAA just in his time in left and right field. I don’t know if moving him to his natural position of first base will help him hit better, but he’ll cost the team a lot less with his glove if they do so.

They also have Gavin Sheets, who has more raw power than Vaughn but is probably a platoon bat and isn’t a very good defender at first. A rebuilding team would be fine giving these guys the time at first and DH while also using the latter spot to rest guys like Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert and try to keep them healthy. I’m not sure if the White Sox view themselves that way, and they may end up going after Bell or someone in a trade who offers more predictable production.

 

[Pimphand 5867]

Why do we keep talking about Contreras as backup catcher? Either sign him and make him the starter or don't tie up the money.

[Wulaw Horn 19149]

1 minute ago, TonyTexas said:

Contreras has only played 51 innings at first. And do you really want your backup catcher DHing 60 games. That’s going to fuck you more than a few times by losing the DH. 

51 innings, 15 or 20 games- it's not a big deal man- you or I could play 1b 15 or 20 times without inviting total and complete disaster out there.  
If the plan was to DH Contreras 60 times then I think you probably carry Y Diaz or something like that for the situation you are talking about with potentially losing the DH.  He's not much of a catcher but he could do it occasionally like that.  

If you take the tactic that no regular season game means shit all in reality then losing the DH 1 or 2 or 3 times due to injury or the desire to PH for Maldy late late late in a game is an exceedingly small price to pay to not have to roster a backup catcher that most likely sucks dick at the plate.  That roster versatility probably wins you more games than losing the DH loses you.  

Of course, this would not be the way to go in the playoffs, but since it's been conclusively proven that you don't need 13 pitchers, and even if you do you don't need a 5th OF- it is really easy to add a 3rd catcher at that point in time when it matters. 

[Murfdogg21 4423]

4 minutes ago, TonyTexas said:

Contreras has only played 51 innings at first. And do you really want your backup catcher DHing 60 games. That’s going to fuck you more than a few times by losing the DH. 

[ignorant rules commentary] now that there’s a universal DH, why don’t they make DH like the 10th position in the field so the DH can replace a fielder or vice versa after a pinch hit or injury, rather than “losing the DH” and making the pitcher start batting. It would also allow Ohtani to be both DH and pitcher and stay in the game as DH (if he wanted) after he is replaced as pitcher. 

[Scraps 13570]

24 minutes ago, Scraps said:

Today's signing is almost making me want to book a trip to sit in 40 degree weather(at most) for first road trip of the season to Minnesota

well that took me about 20 mins to commit to....flight booked.  

[Wulaw Horn 19149]

4 minutes ago, Pimphand said:

Why do we keep talking about Contreras as backup catcher? Either sign him and make him the starter or don't tie up the money.

I'd sign him to be primary. It's just that he should be signed even as a secondary if you need to get Maldy catching 90 games b/c you still have plenty of opportunities to get his bat in the lineup. 

[TonyTexas 10525]

I could get behind this. Chas would still get plenty of playing time as CF and RF backup and splitting starts in LF with Yordan. 

 

Edited November 28, 2022 by TonyTexas

[Macklemore 2873]

26 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

I'm so glad to have fuck face Click gone.  It's like the clouds have parted and heavens have opened up.  If he was still here we'd have seen Abreu sign with the Padres for 3/54 and we'd be pinning our hopes on trading for some Pirates scrub at the deadline if they would accept his offer of a shag bag of used baseballs, 4 pouches of big league chew and a PTBNL. 

Amen. We both were the biggest Click haters on this board and it is good to see that one of the biggest impediments to us extending this championship window and hopefully repeating is gone. Anyone crying about Click leaving is an idiot. 

Edited November 28, 2022 by Macklemore

[henrygandorf 29194]

7 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

You're not gonna believe this, but Keith Law hates the move.

First sentence gives away his whole game: 

So is this what happens when you get rid of your successful, respected GM, and try to Jerry Jones your way through the offseason?

  Reveal hidden contents

Signing a 35-year-old first baseman/DH to a three-year deal, even off a year when some signs of age crept into his performance and his batted-ball stats, is some 1980s George Steinbrenner malarkey. It’s also rather contrary to the way James Click, and other execs from the Tampa Bay Rays front-office tree, try to build their rosters. First base and DH are spots you can easily fill in the lower end of the free-agent market, or use to accommodate players you already have who might be blocked elsewhere. If you’re not signing an elite player — put a pin in that for a moment — you go for a less expensive one and spend that money elsewhere.

 

 

It is quite likely, however, that the Astros, whether Jim Crane or his factotums or Reggie Jackson or whoever is making these decisions, believe they got an elite player in José Abreu. The Cuban infielder won the AL MVP in 2020 (despite being nowhere near the league’s best player) and appeared to bounce back in 2022 after a down year in between, boosting his batting average 43 points to .304, cutting his strikeout rate to a career-low 16.2 percent and generating about 4 WAR, his best full-season showing in either of the major WAR metrics since 2017. You can wave your hands a little bit and argue that the Astros got a top-tier first baseman — he was fifth in the majors among first basemen in fWAR and rWAR last year.

I’m not arguing that Abreu was less than elite last year, because that’s beside the point. The Astros aren’t buying Abreu’s 2022 performance. They’re buying his 2023-2025 performances, and those are extremely likely to be worse, starting in year one and declining sharply from there. For one thing, he’ll play at 36 this year, and his production outside of 2022 hasn’t been elite for some time; from 2018-21, he had just a .340 OBP, .336 if you take out the intentional walks. He did show consistently strong power output, averaging 33.7 homers per 162 games in that stretch, making him above-average but putting him in the 2-3 WAR range.

In 2022, his production changed, and it’s something we’ve seen before. He lost some bat speed and started to struggle on four-seamers for the first time in his MLB career. His contact quality went down on four-seamers, and the harder the pitch, the more likely he was to whiff. He actually hit the fewest homers of any season since he first signed with the White Sox a decade ago, just 15, fewer than he hit in the 60-game 2020 season. He put the ball on the ground more and went the other way a lot more, which, in an older player, is often a sign that he can no longer get around on pitches he used to pull or hit back up the middle.

Fortunately for Abreu, he made up for some of the lost power with a big boost to his plate discipline, notably on pitches well outside the zone. He chased those pitches at the lowest rate of his career and was close to league average (45th percentile, per Baseball Savant) for the first time as a big leaguer. That led to more walks, with a career-high 60 unintentionals, and a career-high OBP of .378. It turns out that you can lose half your homers — he went from 30 in 2021 to 15 last year — and still be more valuable by getting on base at a much higher clip.

 

When a young hitter does this, it’s almost always a positive, as we assume that the newfound plate discipline will lead to better swing choices and any power lost will return. When an older hitter does this, it may be that he’s compensating for a loss of bat speed: I can’t hit the ball as hard as I used to, and I can’t turn on pitches I used to eat for lunch, so I have to lay off more pitches and hope I either draw a walk or the pitcher makes a mistake.

 

 

Abreu can still hit mistakes, at least for now, and I don’t think he’s going to stop drawing walks tomorrow. But he’s very, very unlikely to post a .350 BABIP again with the slippage in his batted-ball data, not with a career BABIP of .327 either, and all the projections I’ve seen have him dropping to under 3 WAR in year one of the deal. I’d give him an over/under of around 5 WAR for the three years, but with a significant chance that he follows Yuli Gurriel’s path, where he’s fine one year and completely toast the next — Gurriel went from a 132 wRC+ in his age-37 season to an 85 wRC+ in his age-38 season, making him a 3 WAR player one year and then below replacement level in the second. He did that for the Astros, by the way. You’d think they’d remember.

There aren’t many other first-base options in free agency this winter, however, which may have driven Houston’s urgency here. Josh Bell was the best of the candidates, and after this contract and the two-year deal Anthony Rizzo signed with the Yankees for a $20 million AAV, Bell should at least be looking for comparable money and three years since he’s younger than either of the other two players.

The White Sox, meanwhile, have an opening at first base for the first time since 2013, but they do have some internal options they could try, starting with moving Andrew Vaughn back to the dirt and hoping he shows more of the exceptional plate discipline that was his calling card in college. Vaughn has played out of position for most of his MLB time in the last two years, and, unsurprisingly, he’s done it very badly, rating as the worst defender in baseball last year by Outs Above Average, with -17 OAA just in his time in left and right field. I don’t know if moving him to his natural position of first base will help him hit better, but he’ll cost the team a lot less with his glove if they do so.

They also have Gavin Sheets, who has more raw power than Vaughn but is probably a platoon bat and isn’t a very good defender at first. A rebuilding team would be fine giving these guys the time at first and DH while also using the latter spot to rest guys like Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert and try to keep them healthy. I’m not sure if the White Sox view themselves that way, and they may end up going after Bell or someone in a trade who offers more predictable production.

 

i stopped reading after he said abreu's mvp was not deserved.  who gives a shit.  that's not why we signed him.

also nobody seems to mention (when bringing up rizzo) that we don't have to give up a draft pick/int'l cash for this.  that's a big deal for a team that "didn't get any punishment for 2017" and needs all the draft picks we can get.

if the padres signed abreu, we'd be reading about what a shrewd move it was.  abreu is getting added to a franchise that doesn't need him to carry the team.  it wasn't an overpay, and the market for bats is shitty.

then when jv signs someplace else, people will blame the abreu move.  what the fuck ever.  go look on twitter and see what yankee fans think of the move.  it's not pretty.

[Wulaw Horn 19149]

1 minute ago, TonyTexas said:

I could get behind this. Chas would still get plenty of playing time as CF and RF backup and splitting starts in LF with Yordan. 

 

Holy shit Holy Shit Holy Shit.  It's like Crane stole the diary I keep by my bedside when I write down all my Astros related fantasies as I drift off to sleep.  He's actually been my #2 (after Abreu) fantasy but figured it wasn't likely to happen and moved on to Contreras and Conforto as a backup instead.  If you signed him then I really would have zero problem with Brantley on a make good $5M type deal loaded with incentives and fuck Contreras.  

[Scraps 13570]

2 minutes ago, Macklemore said:

We both were the biggest Click haters on this board 

cough cough 

[HtownHorn 14774]

1 hour ago, tx 3 putt said:

my choice : resign a healthy brantley and then let the kids play. You can get better deals at the trade line 

Most recovery timelines I have seen on Brantley have him missing the start of the season. There are healthier option available.

[henrygandorf 29194]

4 minutes ago, TonyTexas said:

I could get behind this. Chas would still get plenty of playing time as CF and RF backup and splitting starts in LF with Yordan. 

 

am i the only one that doesn't understand the nimmo hype? 

[kevwun 15879]

Keith Law isn't going to have a very fun 2023 season.  I used to enjoy reading his articles, now he writes schlock pining over a gm he didn't give 2 shits about a month ago because he can use it to try to make the Astros look bad.

[Chuckie Finster 22728]

"A power hitter adjusted his approach and became a better hitter in every aspect except home runs.  Here's why that's bad."

[Fudge Nuggets 19220]

16 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

If you’re not signing an elite player — put a pin in that for a moment — you go for a less expensive one and spend that money elsewhere.

What Mr. Law fails to take into account is this team has no other weakness than 1B/DH and CF.  If you got some money burning a hole in your pocket and limited weaknesses then yeah... you might as well drop your balls on the table for a 1B.

 

2 hours ago, Wulaw Horn said:

Altuve (4), Alvarez (DH), Bregman (5), Tucker (9), Abreu (3), Contreras (2), Conforto (7), Pena (6), Chas (9). 

Pena bats second.  FOR-EV-ER.  And going with two RF's and no CF is an interesting strategery 😎

 

[kevwun 15879]

2 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

"A power hitter adjusted his approach and became a better hitter in every aspect except home runs.  Here's why that's bad."

And he'll turn around in a few weeks and sing the praises of whatever team gives Judge 8 years.

[TonyTexas 10525]

11 minutes ago, henrygandorf said:

i stopped reading after he said abreu's mvp was not deserved.  who gives a shit.  that's not why we signed him.

I also chuckled at this observation.

 It’s also rather contrary to the wayJames Click, and other execs from the Tampa Bay Rays front-office tree, try to build their rosters. 
 

Does he really think  we are trying to be Tampa Bay?  

[Wulaw Horn 19149]

5 minutes ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

What Mr. Law fails to take into account is this team has no other weakness than 1B/DH and CF.  If you got some money burning a hole in your pocket and limited weaknesses then yeah... you might as well drop your balls on the table for a 1B.

 

Pena bats second.  FOR-EV-ER.  And going with two RF's and no CF is an interesting strategery 😎

 

Chas is the CF obviously.  I anticipated and acknowledged your argument to hit literally the 2nd worst bat in that proposed lineup in the #1 most important spot in the lineup due to superstition and hocus pocus when I said I'm just going to give you the sabermetrically correct lineup here and yall can do what you want with it. 

Truthfully, if those were your 9 names on the lineup card you could hit them in the least optimal order every day  and still probably win 105 or 110 games. 

Edited November 28, 2022 by Wulaw Horn

[Guadaloopy 11013]

21 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

You're not gonna believe this, but Keith Law hates the move.

First sentence gives away his whole game: 

So is this what happens when you get rid of your successful, respected GM, and try to Jerry Jones your way through the offseason?

  Hide contents

Signing a 35-year-old first baseman/DH to a three-year deal, even off a year when some signs of age crept into his performance and his batted-ball stats, is some 1980s George Steinbrenner malarkey. It’s also rather contrary to the way James Click, and other execs from the Tampa Bay Rays front-office tree, try to build their rosters. First base and DH are spots you can easily fill in the lower end of the free-agent market, or use to accommodate players you already have who might be blocked elsewhere. If you’re not signing an elite player — put a pin in that for a moment — you go for a less expensive one and spend that money elsewhere.

 

 

It is quite likely, however, that the Astros, whether Jim Crane or his factotums or Reggie Jackson or whoever is making these decisions, believe they got an elite player in José Abreu. The Cuban infielder won the AL MVP in 2020 (despite being nowhere near the league’s best player) and appeared to bounce back in 2022 after a down year in between, boosting his batting average 43 points to .304, cutting his strikeout rate to a career-low 16.2 percent and generating about 4 WAR, his best full-season showing in either of the major WAR metrics since 2017. You can wave your hands a little bit and argue that the Astros got a top-tier first baseman — he was fifth in the majors among first basemen in fWAR and rWAR last year.

I’m not arguing that Abreu was less than elite last year, because that’s beside the point. The Astros aren’t buying Abreu’s 2022 performance. They’re buying his 2023-2025 performances, and those are extremely likely to be worse, starting in year one and declining sharply from there. For one thing, he’ll play at 36 this year, and his production outside of 2022 hasn’t been elite for some time; from 2018-21, he had just a .340 OBP, .336 if you take out the intentional walks. He did show consistently strong power output, averaging 33.7 homers per 162 games in that stretch, making him above-average but putting him in the 2-3 WAR range.

In 2022, his production changed, and it’s something we’ve seen before. He lost some bat speed and started to struggle on four-seamers for the first time in his MLB career. His contact quality went down on four-seamers, and the harder the pitch, the more likely he was to whiff. He actually hit the fewest homers of any season since he first signed with the White Sox a decade ago, just 15, fewer than he hit in the 60-game 2020 season. He put the ball on the ground more and went the other way a lot more, which, in an older player, is often a sign that he can no longer get around on pitches he used to pull or hit back up the middle.

Fortunately for Abreu, he made up for some of the lost power with a big boost to his plate discipline, notably on pitches well outside the zone. He chased those pitches at the lowest rate of his career and was close to league average (45th percentile, per Baseball Savant) for the first time as a big leaguer. That led to more walks, with a career-high 60 unintentionals, and a career-high OBP of .378. It turns out that you can lose half your homers — he went from 30 in 2021 to 15 last year — and still be more valuable by getting on base at a much higher clip.

 

When a young hitter does this, it’s almost always a positive, as we assume that the newfound plate discipline will lead to better swing choices and any power lost will return. When an older hitter does this, it may be that he’s compensating for a loss of bat speed: I can’t hit the ball as hard as I used to, and I can’t turn on pitches I used to eat for lunch, so I have to lay off more pitches and hope I either draw a walk or the pitcher makes a mistake.

 

 

Abreu can still hit mistakes, at least for now, and I don’t think he’s going to stop drawing walks tomorrow. But he’s very, very unlikely to post a .350 BABIP again with the slippage in his batted-ball data, not with a career BABIP of .327 either, and all the projections I’ve seen have him dropping to under 3 WAR in year one of the deal. I’d give him an over/under of around 5 WAR for the three years, but with a significant chance that he follows Yuli Gurriel’s path, where he’s fine one year and completely toast the next — Gurriel went from a 132 wRC+ in his age-37 season to an 85 wRC+ in his age-38 season, making him a 3 WAR player one year and then below replacement level in the second. He did that for the Astros, by the way. You’d think they’d remember.

There aren’t many other first-base options in free agency this winter, however, which may have driven Houston’s urgency here. Josh Bell was the best of the candidates, and after this contract and the two-year deal Anthony Rizzo signed with the Yankees for a $20 million AAV, Bell should at least be looking for comparable money and three years since he’s younger than either of the other two players.

The White Sox, meanwhile, have an opening at first base for the first time since 2013, but they do have some internal options they could try, starting with moving Andrew Vaughn back to the dirt and hoping he shows more of the exceptional plate discipline that was his calling card in college. Vaughn has played out of position for most of his MLB time in the last two years, and, unsurprisingly, he’s done it very badly, rating as the worst defender in baseball last year by Outs Above Average, with -17 OAA just in his time in left and right field. I don’t know if moving him to his natural position of first base will help him hit better, but he’ll cost the team a lot less with his glove if they do so.

They also have Gavin Sheets, who has more raw power than Vaughn but is probably a platoon bat and isn’t a very good defender at first. A rebuilding team would be fine giving these guys the time at first and DH while also using the latter spot to rest guys like Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert and try to keep them healthy. I’m not sure if the White Sox view themselves that way, and they may end up going after Bell or someone in a trade who offers more predictable production.

 

I'd agree with Law if we needed Abreu to be elite and anchor the lineup.  He just needs to be productive and a little bit dangerous.  That's what makes the lineup elite.

[HtownHorn 14774]

9 minutes ago, henrygandorf said:

am i the only one that doesn't understand the nimmo hype? 

Yes.

[Wulaw Horn 19149]

Just now, TonyTexas said:

I also chuckled at this observation.

 It’s also rather contrary to the wayJames Click, and other execs from the Tampa Bay Rays front-office tree, try to build their rosters. 
 

Does he really think  we are trying to be Tampa Bay?  

James Click sure did.  It was my worry from the word go about bringing in a Tampa guy- hey, a $ per win title is interesting and all, but sometimes you just pay premium prices b/c you can and it's worth it.  

[Wulaw Horn 19149]

10 minutes ago, henrygandorf said:

am i the only one that doesn't understand the nimmo hype? 

He's really good man. He's miles better than any other CF on the market.  Short of turning back the clock to 2020 and giving Springer 6/150 (which we should have done!) he's the best option available in CF by a ton. Paying him 5/125 or whatever he was rumored to get isn't any big deal or overpay.  

[Guadaloopy 11013]

2 minutes ago, TonyTexas said:

I also chuckled at this observation.

 It’s also rather contrary to the wayJames Click, and other execs from the Tampa Bay Rays front-office tree, try to build their rosters. 
 

Does he really think  we are trying to be Tampa Bay?  

Yeah... I count two WS championships for Crane's org compared to TB's none.  And the window is still wide open for Houston.  

Just now, Wulaw Horn said:

He's really good man. He's miles better than any other CF on the market.  Short of turning back the clock to 2020 and giving Springer 6/150 (which we should have done!) he's the best option available in CF by a ton. Paying him 5/125 or whatever he was rumored to get isn't any big deal or overpay.  

Also seems like a great clubhouse guy and fun to root for.  I'm in.

[Fudge Nuggets 19220]

4 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

Truthfully, if those were your 9 names on the lineup card you could hit them in the least optimal order every day  and still probably win 105 or 110 games. 

Sunday afternoon batting orders should be filled out by the random number generator.

[Halohal 502]

Going strong. Have not peaked... Let's go.