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2023 Houston Astros Thread

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Am I the only one that can't stand the sight of Altuve, Bregman or Tucker?  Something about each one of them just pisses me off.  

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Wulaw Horn

Wulaw Horn 18,980

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Someone posted upthread a bitch about us not doing anything at starting pitcher and that sent me on a deep dive into FA starting pitchers signed this off-season. I’m going to talk about it on the podcast but let’s just say you wouldn’t want to be in the business of trying to sign a FA pitcher in 2023 unless you were from the future.
33 guys got Major league contracts, and they are collectively making 450M this year.   I think you’d say probably at most 12 teams are probably happy with their signings. And of that 12 one was the Japanese guy and 1 was Kershaw, both of those guys probably shouldn’t even count in the analysis. Of the 10 left over 3 or 4 of them are average or worse but the teams probably happy because they are pitching innings (someone has to) on short years and short money. Not someone you’d want to pay 6M to be Blanco for you if you could pay Blanco himself 600k to do that for you.
Leaving apart the international guy and a Kershaw there are only 4/31 pitchers I think Astros fans would be happy with. That’s pretty miserable odds.
i think it made perfect sense to not sign a FA guy this winter. Unless you absolutely knew out of those 31 guys you could sign Nathan E I, Wacha, Taijuan Walker or Zach Effin. And everyone other than Wacha comes with a chance to turn back into a pumpkin and really regret the deal in future years. 

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LCHorn

LCHorn 2,585

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57 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

Unless you absolutely knew out of those 31 guys you could sign Nathan E I, Wacha, Taijuan Walker or Zach Effin.

Fwiw, I said we should have signed a starter but it was very much in hindsight.  I favored Eovaldi because it would have denied him to Texas, he has pitches that play well in the post-season (except against us 😉) and ideally we wouldn’t need more than 120 innings out of him (so his injury history wouldn’t have been too big an issue).  
 

Now do hitters-I haven’t done anything formal but every time I look at our missed connections there it looks like we’d be paying a premium (or HUGE premium) for the same or worse production.  That said, I think we should have added depth, the absence of which makes our trade options more limited.  

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Wulaw Horn

Wulaw Horn 18,980

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39 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

Fwiw, I said we should have signed a starter but it was very much in hindsight.  I favored Eovaldi because it would have denied him to Texas, he has pitches that play well in the post-season (except against us 😉) and ideally we wouldn’t need more than 120 innings out of him (so his injury history wouldn’t have been too big an issue).  
 

Now do hitters-I haven’t done anything formal but every time I look at our missed connections there it looks like we’d be paying a premium (or HUGE premium) for the same or worse production.  That said, I think we should have added depth, the absence of which makes our trade options more limited.  

I will do hitters as well. We will probably talk about both of these on our Thursday pod (dropping 2 this week in honor of the ASG and start of the second half), but will post a high level summary here as well. 

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Wulaw Horn

Wulaw Horn 18,980

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30 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

You can always trade for a pitcher, hitters not so much 

this past FA season was garbage. Too much dumb money being thrown around 

Hitters in walk years are typically the cheapest item found in the trade market. Guys like JD Martinez (when he was great) got traded for next to nothing. 

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Wulaw Horn

Wulaw Horn 18,980

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@LCHorn here is your high level hitter stuff

3+ years and lots of money:  235M (this year only salary- tons more owed) 22.5 WAR prorated for a year.  6 good or fair deals for this year- 4 bad deals.  This is much worse than it looks when you consider you are supposed to massively outperform in the first couple years of the contract to make up for the last couple years of the contract.  Only guy doing that is Dansby Swanson by War, maybe Brendon Nimmo.  interestingly enough for as much shit as some people have given me for pounding the table for Contreras he only got 5/85 (17 per) and he has 1.5 WAR and a 105 OPS+  I know about the STL pitchers. Lets just say that after having to watch the shit show that is Martin Maldonado and hear everyone orgasm about OMG the intagnibles I'm not inclined to believe a pitcher if he told me the sky was blue

2 year deals- decent money:  111M in salary (this year only) and 10.26 War prorated for the year.  7 guys.  2 steals, 2 fair values and 3 no way jose deals.  The steals are Justin Turner and Cody Bellinger.

2 year, small money deals- Disaster!  45M in salary this year, pace for -6.7 WAR.  6 guys, 5 of which are a disaster and Brandon Drury, which is a fucking steal. This is the only category that doesn't come out to basically 1 WAR equals $10M on free agent market.

1 year small money (I've got Brantley here not to make a point but because Bellinger got 17M and Brantley got 12 and I don't think anyone else got anything in between:

19 players- 138.3 M in total salary- 14.04 WAR (projected) for the year.  9 of the 19 players are worth the contract based upon $/War, but I only count JD Martinez, Brandon Belt, Kevin Kiermaier, Adam Frazier Adam Duval, David Peralta, Tommy Pham, and Andrew Mccutchen as guys that we would probably like to play if we were more or less healthy.  Peralta is probably marginal, Kiermaier wouldn't be an offensive improvement nor would Frazier.  So, Pham, McCutchen, Duval Belt and Martinez that would improve our offense.  

There is NO move that we could have made to improve our offense more than deciding to DFA maldonado in the offseason.  The Astros signed a guy in the 3+ big money and lost, and they signed the most expensive guy in the 1 year small money category and lost.  Everything they did was a loss this offseason, but there weren't a ton of wins.  

Also, pretty pretty bad year for FA class when you consider that its only break even on the multi year deals and this should be about as good as it gets.  

 

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Wulaw Horn

Wulaw Horn 18,980

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Listen to the podcast you filthy animals.  This thing is blowing up. Need your help to continue that.  We are almost at triple digits in listenership. Triple digits! Imagine, 100 people.  Mind boggling!

The median podcast has 27 listens and I think 100 would put us in like the top quarter or something.  if we could get to 1,000 listeners (we won't) we could make upwards of $20.00 per episode doing this.  Make that happen for us!

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LCHorn

LCHorn 2,585

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Reading the draft thread on crawfish boxes, someone mentioned Jio Meir and the 2009 draft which really took me down the rabbit hole. 

Some of this is just the state of sports journalism from 15 years ago but we're blessed to have alternatives to "Telvin Nash and Mike Kvasnicka are going to be stars!" that would seem such an illogical conclusion in the face of their performance. 

Some miscellaneous trivia--in that 2009 draft class JD Martinez would unsurprisingly lead in career WAR, Keuchel is #2, #3 is spoilered:

Spoiler

Kike Hernandez

Also, looks like the Rangers had a net negative WAR from their whole draft so it could be worse...

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LCHorn

LCHorn 2,585

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Looking at John Sickels 2018 top prospect list now.  Hector Perez and David Paulino both end up traded with Giles for Roberto Osuna who dropped off the face of the earth after he hit free agency in 2020. 

Looks like he's spent the last two years in Japan.  In 2023 he's pitched 26 innings and has a WHIP of .462.

A couple of over-performers of note:

14) Cristian Javier, RHP, Grade C+/B-: Age 20, signed out of Dominican in 2015; posted 2.25 ERA with 80/27 K/BB in 60 innings between NY-P, Low-A, and High-A, only 38 hits allowed; fastball report was right around 90-91 from Quad Cities but plays up due to strong curve, slider, and change-up; has the component ratios of a power pitcher and should not be under-rated despite the radar readings; like Armenteros, he knows how to pitch. ETA 2020.

16) Framber Valdez, LHP, Grade C+: Age 24, signed out of Dominican in 2015 at the old age of 21; posted 2.79 ERA with 73/29 K/BB in 61 innings in High-A but 5.88 ERA, 53/23 K/BB in 49 innings in Double-A; fastball up to 95-96 but curveball and change-up were less effective in Double-A, though K/rate remained solid; some disagreement about whether he starts or relieves in long run, but he’s a lefty who throws hard, he’ll land somewhere. ETA 2019.

And TNSTAAPP:

1) Forrest Whitley, RHP, Grade A/A-: Age 20, first round pick in 2016 from high school in Texas, outstanding 2017 season at three levels with combined 2.83 ERA, 143/34 K/BB in 92 innings, 78 hits; Texas League observers at end of season were full of praise, noting excellent command of mid-90s fastball and better secondary stuff than most pitchers his age, with slider, curve, and change-up all looking very good; mature mound presence as well; main issue now is building up workload and proving durability; possible top-of-the-rotation arm, may go with a straight Grade A when all the lists and rankings are complete. ETA 2019.

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Wulaw Horn

Wulaw Horn 18,980

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I was thinking about this today and the draft is such a crap shoot, (as are big money international FA) if I could deploy the money however I wanted I think I would spend all $5M that gets spent on the American draft signing Latin players age 18 or older to 10k deals. You could sign like 500 of them and I’d bet you’d come out better then whatever you get from the American draft every year. 

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Wulaw Horn

Wulaw Horn 18,980

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Recap of last week, the first half of the season and then talk about all star game and the best 9 in the world. Fun show in my opinion. 

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