Jump to content

2019 Houston Astros Thread

Planet Houston

By Planet Houston
in Baseball

 Share

Recommended Posts

  • Replies 41.6k
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • tx 3 putt

    3624

  • UTexasFight

    2380

  • Scraps

    2293

  • WBT

    1999

Popular Days

Top Posters In This Topic

Popular Days

Popular Posts

SEC
SEC

My mom was diagnosed with breast cancer 3 weeks ago. Tomorrow she starts her treatment. She's been a wreck ever since the diagnosis. I mentioned a few pages back how a friend of the family manage

Rustic Horn
Rustic Horn
Mez2
Mez2

Newest Astro fan was born earlier today at 12:09 am Mez3, holla!

Posted Images

UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9381

Posted
Posted

The grienke trade grabs the headlines, and rightfully so, but I can’t get over that Blue Jays trade.
In exchange for an outfielder completely blocked in the Astros organization we got two pitchers I fully expect to see Strom/ analytics team do great things with. reliever under team control until 2023 and starter until 2021
And from what I’ve read so far, a guy that seems like a younger version of the outfielder we’re sending to Toronto....plus speed, good defense, low strikeout rate. We’ve basically reset the clock on fisher by ~2 years and renamed him Cal.

Joe Biagini

Looks like a Strom Special.

Biagini - a 29-year old reliever - won't be a free agent until 2023. In 50IP in 2019, he has allowed 50H/21ER, 50K:17BB, 3.78 ERA / 3.80 xFIP. He has an 81% LOB rate this season, AND his HR/9 rate has declined from 2018 to 2019.

Aaron Sanchez

Sanchez - a 27-year old righty starter - has had some, uh, issues this year, but he looks like another project for the analytics team and Strom. Sanchez is 3-14 with a 6.07 ERA belied by a 5.04 FIP and a 5.09 xFIP. In 112.1IP he has allowed 131H/76ER, with 99K:59BB. The Astros have likely seen something fixable in all of that. He won't be a free agent until 2021.

Sanchez also has three options remaining, so maybe the Astros don't bring him up immediately and instead send him to Triple-A.

Cal Stevenson

Stevenson - a 22-year old lefty-hitting outfielder - is hitting .298/.388/.393 in High-A. He was the Blue Jays' 10th Round pick in 2018, so this is just his second professional season, and his first full pro season, in baseball.

http://www.astroscounty.com/2019/07/wait.html?m=1

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Mez2

Mez2 4021

Posted
Posted

Fun read from theringer.com

The Zack Greinke Trade Makes the Astros the Clear-Cut World Series Favorites

While other contenders stood still, Houston pried the former Cy Young winner from Arizona at the trade deadline, giving them the scariest rotation in baseball

By Ben Lindbergh  Jul 31, 2019, 8:23pm EDT
 

AstrosMoves_Getty_Ringer.0.jpgGetty Images/Ringer illustration

With seconds to spare at the August 31, 2017, waiver trade deadline, the Houston Astros struck, acquiring Tigers ace Justin Verlander. The then-34-year-old Verlander, who’d recently returned to peak form after a slow start to the season, was under team control for the 2018-19 seasons at annual salaries approaching $30 million. The Astros, who’d struggled in August and seen their staff thinned by injuries, picked up most of that money to fuel their playoff push. The investment was well worth it: Verlander dominated down the stretch and pitched well in the playoffs, helping propel the Astros to the franchise’s first championship and anchoring their rotation in the two seasons since.

Having watched one aggressive upgrade pay dividends, the Astros decided to do it again. The waiver deadline is dead, but just before the July 31 consolidated trade deadline, the Astros struck again, trading a package of four prospects to the Arizona Diamondbacks for 35-year-old starter Zack Greinke, who’s posted a 2.90 ERA and a 3.21 FIP in 146 innings this season. For the second time in three summers, Houston has acquired a well-preserved and well-compensated future Hall of Fame righty with two-plus years of team control remaining. Unlike last time, though, the Astros haven’t added an ace to a rotation that lacked one; they’ve added an ace to a rotation that already boasted two, forming the majors’ most formidable playoff pitching powerhouse.

 

Your 2019 leaders in WHIP:
1-Justin Verlander 0.81
2-Zack Greinke 0.94
5-Gerrit Cole 1.00

That's your Game 1-2-3 starters in Houston. Scary.

 
 
 
 

Entering Wednesday, the 69-39 Astros owned the American League’s best run differential and an eight-game lead on the A’s in the AL West, making them virtual locks to win their division. Although their needs were less acute than most other contenders’, they did have two possible playoff vulnerabilities: the bullpen, and the end of the rotation behind Verlander, Gerrit Cole, and lefty Wade Miley. With Lance McCullers out for the season following Tommy John surgery late last year, top prospect Forrest Whitley alternately injured and ineffective, Collin McHugh demoted from the rotation after a shaky start to the season, Brad Peacock and Josh James nursing injured shoulders, and last year’s high-impact deadline addition, reliever Ryan Pressly, going on the IL on Wednesday with a sore knee, the Astros sought reinforcements. They got them not only in Greinke, but in Blue Jays pitchers Aaron Sanchez and Joe Biagini, as well as glove-first catcher Martín Maldonado, who joins the Astros for the second consecutive deadline (this time replacing even lighter-hitting backstop Max Stassi, offloaded on the Angels).

Not only did the Astros address their deficiencies in one day, they did it without surrendering top prospects Kyle Tucker or Whitley. Greinke cost them their third-, fourth-, and fifth-ranked prospects, according to MLB.com—2018 first-rounder Seth Beer, 2017 first-rounder J.B. Bukauskas, and Corbin Martin, who made his big league debut in May but had T.J. surgery earlier this month—plus 22nd-ranked Joshua Rojas. The Astros will also assume $53 million of the $77 million remaining on Greinke’s contract, which runs through 2021, with the Diamondbacks sending $24 million to Houston to defray the righty’s cost (some of which is deferred to 2022-26). The price for the two Toronto arms was Derek Fisher, a former top prospect who hasn’t hit much in the majors and was buried behind Tucker on the organizational depth chart. The quartet of prospects the Astros extracted for Greinke will bolster Arizona’s rebuild, which began in earnest with last winter’s Paul Goldschmidt trade, but none of the four is a consensus top-100 guy or MLB-ready right now. The Astros could afford to deal that kind of depth, especially as their industry-leading player-development methods keep the farm flush.

In Greinke and Verlander, the Astros now feature two of the three 35-and-older pitchers to amass at least three wins above replacement this season. (The third, Rays starter Charlie Morton, was an Astro from 2017 to 2018.) Unlike Verlander, whose fastball still sits in the mid-90s, not far from where it was at his peak, Greinke has made concessions to age: His once-blistering four-seamer has averaged only 89.8 mph this season, fourth-slowest among righties with at least 100 innings pitched. (One of those three slower throwers, Mike Leake, went to Arizona in a separate deadline trade.)

 

Even when his stuff was unsurpassed, though, Greinke had a finesse pitcher’s brain in a flamethrower’s body; during his 2009 Cy Young season, he regularly backed up his heat with 60-something curves, and he threw pitches at everymile-per-hour increment between 60 and 100. He no longer reaches the top end of that range, but diminished velocity has hardly held him back. He’s compensated by throwing more off-speed stuff and mixing his offerings relentlessly: According to Pitch Info’s classifications, Greinke has thrown eight different pitch types this season, and hitters have a hard time predicting whether they’ll see changeups, sliders, or shape-shifting curves when behind in the count. Greinke’s command and control are among baseball’s best, and among pitchers with at least 100 innings thrown this season, only Hyun-Jin Ryu and Leake have bested his career-low 3.7 percent walk rate.

 

In recent years, the analytical Astros have shown a knack for improving pitchers—reclamation projects like McHugh and Morton and formerly pedestrian pitchers like Pressly, yes, but even erstwhile aces like Cole and Verlander. Greinke, an inveterate tinkerer who scouted for the Diamondbacks pro bono and has always eagerly embraced information, may already be maxing out his abilities, but no pitcher would make a more attentive pupil for Houston’s high-tech pitching seminar. On the other hand, moving to the AL will sap some value at the plate, where Greinke has honed himself into one of the best-hitting pitchers of the past three decades. Greinke has recorded a career 59 WRC+ in almost 600 plate appearances, and his nonpitching contributions have tacked on five WAR to his total since the Royals traded him to Milwaukee after 2010.

Even if the singular Greinke doesn’t benefit from an Astros-style tune-up, he’s already put himself on a path to Cooperstown through endurance and resisting decline; he’s never hit the IL with an arm injury, and he’s made at least 26 starts in every season since 2008. In the 2017 playoffs, the Astros made up for an iffy relief corps by using starters in relief; this time around, they may just stick with their starters deep into games. Among the 102 pitchers with at least 80 innings out of the rotation this year, Verlander, Greinke, and Cole rank second, eighth, and 15th, respectively, in innings per start.

 

Zack Greinke gives the #Astros four starting pitchers with an ERA+ over 140 (Verlander, Cole, Miley)

No team has had four starters with an ERA+ over 140 since the 1907 Cubs https://www.baseball-reference.com/tiny/Wx542 

View image on Twitter
 
 
 
 

Cole, Miley, and McHugh are all impending free agents, so Greinke gives the Astros some certainty even beyond this season. So does Sanchez, who, like Greinke, is the Astros’ to control through 2020. The 27-year-old Sanchez, a 2016 All-Star and Cy Young contender, has fallen on hard times since, struggling to stay on the mound amid repeated blister problems. Although the blister bug hasn’t put him on the IL this season, it has flared up a few times, and when he has been on the mound, he’s been one of baseball’s least effective starters. Sanchez leads the majors in losses and the AL in earned runs, and his fastball has lost two ticks since 2016.

However, his high-spin curve—an Astros signature—moves more than most pitchers’. If the Astros use him in relief, the combination of the curve and what would be a high-90s heater in short bursts could make him a nasty late-inning arm, while also potentially decreasing the strain on his fingers’ sensitive skin. (Only three starters in the aforementioned group of 102 arms have averaged fewer innings per start than Sanchez, so it’s not as if Houston would be losing a lot of length.) The 29-year-old Biagini, meanwhile, has ridden his increased cutter usage to a career-high K rate, providing additional depth.

The Astros’ late activity salvaged a deadline that seemed destined to be underwhelming overall. Until intrepid rumormonger Ken Rosenthal broke the Greinke trade—and nearly broke Baseball Twitter—13 minutes after the 4 p.m. ET deadline, it appeared that the best players dealt would be Marcus Stroman and Trevor Bauer. Although the unified deadline put pressure on teams to make moves that once might have waited until August, the uncertain state of the standings kept some clubs on the sideline. The graph below—based on Baseball-Reference transaction data compiled by baseball analyst and author Scott Lindholm—shows that this slow-starting July was actually the most active on record in terms of trades made, trailing only the past two deadlines in total players exchanged. But until the Astros acted, those swaps were sorely lacking in impact potential.

 

image1__3_.jpg

The Astros’ aggressiveness stands in stark contrast to the relative inactivityof a few of the teams they’re most likely to match up with in the playoffs, most notably the Yankees, Red Sox, and Dodgers, none of whom made many (if any) significant trades. In isolation, the Astros’ moves made them much better. In conjunction with other top contenders’ failure to keep pace, though, the Astros activity either established them as World Series favorites or solidified that status. The Astros’ willingness to supplement at midseason has already helped them win one title, and no other club looks scarier right now.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites
UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9381

Posted
Posted

They might be on par with the Orioles or Tigers, but still a bit impressive the Astros have fielded half of another MLB team dispersed amongst the other 29 teams within the past month:

OF Fisher
OF/2B Kemp
1B White
DH Reed
C Stassi


And then there’s this... awwwwkward:

“The Astros are playing the Indians in Cleveland, so Stassi will remain there until he officially joins the Halos' roster before the series opener on Friday at Progressive Field.”

Stassi is definitely the biggest loser of the day. Goes from a squad with the inside track on a 2nd World Series ring in 3 years to... a full 7 day stay in...Cleveland

Link to comment
Share on other sites
UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9381

Posted
Posted

If the playoffs started today,

JV

Cole

Grienke?

 

Or

JV

Greinke

Cole?

 

I’m loving the idea of splitting up the heat with someone a little softer, especially after the analytics group fine tunes/reduces those 8 different pitches Grienke has thrown this year

 

 

Also, holy shit the fact that we can ask this question...

Link to comment
Share on other sites
UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9381

Posted
Posted

We won’t have them together as long as Maddux/Smoltz/Glavine, but pretty badass to have 3 future hall of famers on the same staff.

Greinke should get his 200th career win in late August.
Cole on pace for 300 Ks at end of Sept. first Astros since Scott in ‘86.
JV with an outside chance to get 3,000th career K at end of Sept. (I’d settle for him getting this when we raise the banner on opening day next April).

Enjoy the next 3 months, boys.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
WBT

WBT 20425

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, UTexasFight said:

Cal Stevenson

Stevenson - a 22-year old lefty-hitting outfielder - is hitting .298/.388/.393 in High-A. He was the Blue Jays' 10th Round pick in 2018, so this is just his second professional season, and his first full pro season, in baseball.
 

Cal Stevenson and his dog spot...close enough?

 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites
GHOSTUSER

GHOSTUSER 361

Posted
Posted (edited)
4 hours ago, Pimphand said:

When they are claiming they are fucked they are the best shit ever...

I loved when the one guy said getting Greinke was a nuke and was reduced to murmuring silently in the background hahaha 

Edited by Iconoclast Texan
  • Like 1
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
Chuckie Finster

Chuckie Finster 22600

Posted
Posted (edited)
8 hours ago, UTexasFight said:

If the playoffs started today,

JV

Cole

Grienke?

 

Or

JV

Greinke

Cole?

 

I’m loving the idea of splitting up the heat with someone a little softer, especially after the analytics group fine tunes/reduces those 8 different pitches Grienke has thrown this year

 

 

Also, holy shit the fact that we can ask this question...

For the World Series, I imagine Greinke's spot will depend on if we have home field: Game 3 if we do and Game 2 if we don't.  Make sure he gets those NL park at-bats.  (Another underrated part of this deal: Greinke has higher OPS than Yuli.)

Edited by Chuckie Finster
Link to comment
Share on other sites
tx 3 putt

tx 3 putt 76422

Posted
Posted (edited)

I’m still buzzing about yesterday but I need more details on the fisher trade. Did the blue jays call up and offer one guy for fisher and Lunhow just laughed ?

they came back and offered two guys and Lunhow told them, ‘you’re getting warmer !’

blue jays just look at each other saying ‘what the fuck ???’

they dig deep and offer 3 prospects for fisher and Lunhow says ‘sounds good but we want these three !’ ??????

Edited by tx 3 putt
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites
UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9381

Posted
Posted

They love fisher.
Luhnow exploited it.
...and helps that Sanchez is sucking this year and Blue Jays we’re selling low on him.
I’m sure they, like the Mets, realize there is a real possibility he could be good again with us, but unlike the Mets, their GM apparently isn’t concerned about the backlash in that event and just doing what he feels is best for his team

Link to comment
Share on other sites
TexArcher

TexArcher 37533

Posted
Posted
9 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

He’ll be able to hit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 

Maybe the lake will catch on fire again ? You don’t see that everyday 

have to be some great bratwurst spots around town ?

fresh pirogies spots on every block I bet ? 

 

 

I've been to Cleveland multiple times.  The best way to see that city is to fly there in the morning, get to the R&RHOF when it opens, spend all day there, glance out the windows at Lake Erie, then go immediately to the airport and never, ever go back.

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
 Share
Go to topic listing


Football ... Basketball ... Baseball ... Other Sports ... Futbol ... 🤫995🤫 ... Gambling ... Movies & TV ... Music ... Hobbies ... Lulz ... Food & Travel ... Daily Texan ... Business and Markets ... Cloak Room ... Help ... For Sale ... Board Discussion ... Subscribe!... Donate!... Advertise... COOKIE MONSTER!

×
×
  • Create New...