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24/25 Astros Offseason thread


Wulaw Horn

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9 minutes ago, Snake Diggity said:

It is incredibly difficult to begin an effective rebuild when a team has 2 hall of fame caliber players (like Altuve and Alvarez) under long term control.  When you have 2 players that good, the overwhelming odds favor building around them immediately.  You don’t trade players like Framber or Tucker in that situation.  Pressly may very well be traded, but it would be mostly a salary dump; his return will likely not have a meaningful impact on the farm system.  The Astros underwent a shitload of bad injury luck in 2024.  Without that they likely win the division going away and are in the ALDS.  Heck, even with all the injuries, if Jose Abreu hits like he did prior to 2023, they are probably in the ALDS and nobody is talking about rebuilding.  You don’t tear things down when you’re that close.  If they were going to do a pre-emptive rebuild, the time to do it was last offseason, when they could have gotten monster hauls for Framber, Tucker, and Bregman, and entered 2025 with the top farm system in baseball.  That ship has sailed.  Another thing to note is that their farm has been recovering from lost draft picks for 3-4 seasons now.  After the next draft will be the first time the Astros will have had a full complement of prospects in their farm since 2020.  And despite that the farm has continued to produce 2nd and 3rd tier major leaguers. 
 

The Astros have ~$40M to spend and need 2-3 good players in order to be legit contenders.  Crane needs to stay out of roster construction decisions.  But it’s doable.

You can do a player by player comparison of the organization in 2005 vs today and it’s light years difference.  There was no Yordan-level player with 4 years of control in 2005.  The farm in 2005 had been utterly neglected by McLane for years and was completely barren; that’s not the case today.

The Astros are surefire playoff contenders next season.  The moves they make over the offseason will determine if they improve into championship contenders.  Even if 2025 doesn’t work out, they can enter 2026 with a clear payroll and 2 extra picks in the upcoming draft, plus another year of Brown restocking the farm. 
 

One other opinion: Framber and Tucker don’t have much more value now than they will in July, so Houston may as well see if they can make one more run for a ring, because they can also start the rebuild at the deadline if things don’t go their way.

 

6 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

 

this team has much better pitching 

I actually agree with all the above. That's why I said the current situation reminds me "a bit" of 2005. It's absolutely not an exact overlay — more a reference to this being a time of key decisions that will dictate where we find ourselves a few years out. Most franchises could say that at any time, I guess, but to me it's critical that we gain several solid pieces via trade AND free agency. As much as I love Framber, I trust him little more in October than I did JV. As for Tucker, just get all you can, when you can.

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I did a quick Pareto analysis of the surplus value of the organizational roster going into 2017 vs 2025.  Here’s a summary:

1. The 2025 org has much less payroll flexibility, even if they have comparable total surplus value.

2. The 2017 org had significantly more surplus value in its MLB lineup, but the 2025 org makes up for almost all of that with more surplus value in its MLB pitching staff.  In total, the difference at the big league level amounts to one really good player under cheap long term control.

3. The difference in the farm systems boils down to 2-3 elite prospects.  The depth is very comparable (with the benefit of hindsight).  2017 had Tucker, Alvarez, Framber, and Javier in the system, but at that point only Tucker was thought of as an elite prospect.  2017 was a highly rated farm, but many of the top prospects like Francis Martes, Forrest Whitley, David Paulino, Derek Fisher, and others didn’t pan out.

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2 hours ago, Gut Wagon said:

As much as I love Framber, I trust him little more in October than I did JV. As for Tucker, just get all you can, when you can.

Damn memories are short around here.  Framber carried us on the pitching side to the '22 ring.

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20 minutes ago, HtownHorn said:

We really need two from the following list to become a dependable MLB caliber players ala Pena or Diaz.

Whitcomb, Dezenzo, Melton, and Matthews.

Reality is that if Houston wants to contend after next season, they need at least one legit superstar prospect to emerge or 2-3 stars to emerge.  As good as Pena and Diaz are, they are nowhere near as valuable as Altuve, Correa, Bregman, Tucker, Springer and Alvarez were when they came up.  Houston needs a guy in that tier to develop if they wanna withstand losing Framber and Tucker, unless Crane goes full Cohen.

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6 minutes ago, Snake Diggity said:

Reality is that if Houston wants to contend after next season, they need at least one legit superstar prospect to emerge or 2-3 stars to emerge.  As good as Pena and Diaz are, they are nowhere near as valuable as Altuve, Correa, Bregman, Tucker, Springer and Alvarez were when they came up.  Houston needs a guy in that tier to develop if they wanna withstand losing Framber and Tucker, unless Crane goes full Cohen.

You are underrating Pena big time here. He's not seen as the same as Correa, but has outproduced him in WAR 12.9 to 10.4 over the last 3 years.

The biggest flaw in Pena's offense is his BB%, which is fixable. Likely with a different hitting coaches than the Astros currently have, those two guys saw regression across the board, they should be fired for it.

He also had the 5th most chances among SSs in baseball and all their fielding percentages where in the same ballpark, except Tovar who had an incredible defensive season.

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28 minutes ago, WBT said:

Damn memories are short around here.  Framber carried us on the pitching side to the '22 ring.

Oh, I remember. He was really good that fall. I'm just trying to project how he's likely to perform in postseasons to come. That's obviously conjecture, but his random hiccups in big moments since '22 have given me pause. So I wouldn't mind trading him between now and the '25 deadline and seeing what he'd fetch. Unlike Valdez, Brown still has a lot of room to grow and already is TOR quality.

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17 minutes ago, Gut Wagon said:

Oh, I remember. He was really good that fall. I'm just trying to project how he's likely to perform in postseasons to come. That's obviously conjecture, but his random hiccups in big moments since '22 have given me pause. So I wouldn't mind trading him between now and the '25 deadline and seeing what he'd fetch. Unlike Valdez, Brown still has a lot of room to grow and already is TOR quality.

He had random hiccups before '22 and then a great start in the '21 ALCS to get us to that WS.  Playoff performance is a crapshoot, just like any other 2-3 game sample would be.

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1 hour ago, HtownHorn said:

You are underrating Pena big time here. He's not seen as the same as Correa, but has outproduced him in WAR 12.9 to 10.4 over the last 3 years.

The biggest flaw in Pena's offense is his BB%, which is fixable. Likely with a different hitting coaches than the Astros currently have, those two guys saw regression across the board, they should be fired for it.

He also had the 5th most chances among SSs in baseball and all their fielding percentages where in the same ballpark, except Tovar who had an incredible defensive season.

Pena is 1800 pa into his career and is an exactly league average hitter.  His defense regressed for the 2nd consecutive season.  He is a good, valuable player, but he is not a star; he was the 20th most valuable SS in the league this season (fwar).   True contenders have a guy like Pena as their 7th or 8th best hitter and 5th or 6th most valuable position player.  Guys like that supplement an open competitive window, they don’t keep it open.

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1 hour ago, Snake Diggity said:

Pena is 1800 pa into his career and is an exactly league average hitter.  His defense regressed for the 2nd consecutive season.  He is a good, valuable player, but he is not a star; he was the 20th most valuable SS in the league this season (fwar).   True contenders have a guy like Pena as their 7th or 8th best hitter and 5th or 6th most valuable position player.  Guys like that supplement an open competitive window, they don’t keep it open.

And according to bWAR he was the 33rd most valuable player in all of baseball, and it's interesting you mentioned that he was 20th ranked SS in fWAR but that put him at 71st in all of baseball. Nice use of statistics to tell your side of the story. I never said he was a star, but we aren't missing Correa with him at SS either, and was the main offensive reason we won a title in 2022.

Edited by HtownHorn
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9 hours ago, HtownHorn said:

And according to bWAR he was the 33rd most valuable player in all of baseball, and it's interesting you mentioned that he was 20th ranked SS in fWAR but that put him at 71st in all of baseball. Nice use of statistics to tell your side of the story. I never said he was a star, but we aren't missing Correa with him at SS either, and was the main offensive reason we won a title in 2022.

There’s no argument that Pena is an adequate replacement for Correa in a vacuum. For 3 of his 7 seasons in Houston, Correa was one of the 4 best SS in the game; for the others, he was still more valuable than Pena has ever been.  Pena has been fine and Houston has continued to win with him at SS, but that’s because of how incredible Yordan and Tucker (and to a lesser degree Altuve and Bregman) have been in making up the difference.  
 

Pena was actually the 87th most valuable position player in the league (fwar, all players), putting him in a group with such studs as…Miguel Rojas, Nathaniel Lowe, Josh Smith, and Jonathan India.

He’s a good player; an exactly average hitter who fields the toughest position on the field at an above average level.  But he’s not somebody keeping the window open, he’s a significant downgrade from Correa, and he’s at the age and experience where we can’t expect him to be more than that.  You can say we haven’t missed Correa, but I think this teams fortunes sure would have been different this season if they’d had Correa instead of Pena.
 

Last thought that is worth mentioning: Pena has been excellent against LHP.  He is a star level player against lefties.  But he’s a league average SS against RHP.

Edited by Snake Diggity
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On 10/3/2024 at 5:01 PM, Snake Diggity said:

Pena is a star hitter against lefties but a below average hitter against righties

Yeah because lefties can't get throw him a 2-strike slider or sweeper that's  6" to a foot off the plate, knowing he'll chase it every.single.time. FML.

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On 10/3/2024 at 10:38 PM, David Dennison said:

I started going to Astros games in the 70s. I've really, really, really enjoyed being spoiled rotten for the better part of a decade.

 

Este. Nearing 50 years of Astros fandom for me, too.

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