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Hank Chinaski

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Everything posted by Hank Chinaski

  1. Dubon is striking out way less than he has throughout his career. We should know if this is real or not in the next few weeks (he’s also walking less, but not by much). For now, his contact rates are up. He’s not hitting the ball any harder or barreling it more frequently, though his “weak” contact is down. He’s hitting more ground balls and line drives so far. Also hitting it to opposite field more. We’ll see if he has made real adjustments and if they continue to pay off. His .346 BABIP is likely to come down (his career rate is .278), and with a sub-4% BB rate, so will his offensive value. Still, it’s not out of the question that he has made some changes/improvements, and he could perhaps be an average-ish hitter.
  2. I mean, you’re right…calling someone “Chris Simms 2.0”, and believing that this is somehow a negative thing/implies failure, is fucking idiotic; but in fairness to these dipshits, half of our own fan base would think the same thing.
  3. Right, words don’t exist (in English anyway) to describe it. I think I first realized this in earnest when I witnessed them trying to rationalize the 2005 season. If asked, they’d tell you that VY wasn’t even a real QB, Mack was a bad coach, and the rest of the players were overrated. But they’d also say that the success of any of those three entities (VY, Mack, rest of team) was made possible only by their being buoyed by other two (who they’d discredit if taken individually). It truly was (and remains) a step beyond just regular, everyday cognitive dissonance.
  4. Wait, are they under the impression that Manning is competing for the starting QB job on 2023? Wtf.
  5. I mean, he went to a WS with each of them, and won one.
  6. Or with a mediocre pitching staff.
  7. Agreed, they’re the only opponent who has failed to win their series against the Astros in 2023.
  8. Together, they should play an elite third base.
  9. Yes, but a 25% K rate is a signal, and we get new data points every day.
  10. They’ve had stretches like this the last few years for sure. Thing is, Springer, Correa, Verlander, Cole, Altuve (for a long time) aren’t walking through that door.
  11. What you’re saying is reasonable and I hope you’re right; but I disagree with this part. Fangraphs projects 88 wins right now, and that’s based on nothing but objective data. Now obviously they don’t always nail it, but it is objective support for my subjective forecast. I am probably not as high on Brown (at least for this year) as others, and he’s essentially replacing the best performing pitcher in baseball. Again, if he allows twice the runs JV did (per inning), I’d be ecstatic. I’d bet the over. I’m also not that high on Pena. He’s good (not great) defensively (gold glove notwithstanding) and he’s not a very good offensive player. I don’t see any reason to assume he’ll improve at the plate just because he has a year in the bigs. He’s probably a 100 wRC+ guy unless he stops swinging at bullshit (which, to this point, he’s shown no inclination to do).
  12. Loss of Verlander’s 1.75 ERA over 175 innings + loss of Altuve and his career-best OPS+ for at least 40% of the season (and what we do get is unlikely to be as good as last year) + regression from the bullpen. That all adds up. Over 95? What am I missing here?
  13. What management? We didn’t need management this off-season because we’re the Astros.
  14. Fair enough. That’s what I thought before Altuve injury. I’m seeing 85-88 at this point. This team seems maybe a tick better than mediocre.
  15. How many wins do you think they finish with? Give me a number or a small range. If you had to bet.
  16. So through today, the Astros’ offense as a team has a K rate of 25.4%. Last year’s was 19.5%. That’s a pretty significant jump. K% and BB% tend to reach their level fairly quickly in season. Hopefully this isn’t it. But probably this offense is significantly worse than last year’s. And it’s extremely likely the pitching will be worse too. Wheeee.
  17. He may just not be a very good hitter.
  18. Reminder that we’re actively choosing to lead off every day with a guy who has a sub-.300 career OBP. But this doesn’t matter, we shouldn’t actually try to maximize our chances of winning games because we have so much room for error, right? We can skip an entire off-season because the logo on the hat means everything will just fall into place? Cool.
  19. Probably, but the crazy ass Mets owner might make him a offer that other teams won’t match…
  20. This is pretty much the root of all my annoying and long-winded rants of the past week. Perhaps I’m wrong, but I agree here that there just didn’t seem to be any sort of cohesive plan to construct the roster for 2023. I’m not suggesting any sort of major overhaul, but signing a 1B, bringing back an injured, 1-dimensional vet, and overpaying to retain a reliever and calling it an off-season seemed somewhat negligent, and taking our sweet-ass time to hire a GM reeked of problematic hubris. But you knew you were losing the pitcher who had the best season in MLB. You knew the McCullers was an injury wild card. You let your only offensively-competent utility guy walk. You sign Brantley, who is also an injury wild card. The depth suffered. I think they hired a good GM and agree that long-term, things are in good hands. The problem is that it feels like they failed to maximize a championship-caliber team’s odds of adding another title this year, again, due to their hubris. That’s frustrating because, great as this team has been for a long time now, you don’t always have these opportunities. (And yes, I’m willing to allow for the possibility that I’m wrong and the org did have a plan that included Hensley and Meyers and Julks and Diaz and Brown at the depth I’m saying is missing. I hope this is true. I’d still question the rotation depth even if I assume Brown will be a good pitcher across 150 innings, which I don’t. There’s still no margin for error.)
  21. The Chas thing only makes sense if (1) they just don’t like him that much from a personal/clubhouse perspective, or (2) the org still just really thinks it has reason to believe in Meyers. Or I guess if it could be a combo of those. I had an indirect connection to the team for a while until this past winter. (Not saying this makes me any sort of “insider” or anything like that, or that it validates my opinions in any way.) I did hear that Chas was kind of a weirdo and rubbed some guys the wrong way when he came up as a rookie. No idea if that has anything to do with anything. I’d hope that by now it’s a non-issue, and I assume it is. But from where I sit, not giving him the everyday job just doesn’t really compute.
  22. Agree, though I’d still take Pena out of #1 and place him behind Tucker. Bregman should be #1. We all liked George at leadoff, right? Springer: .269/.357/.492 Bregman: .276/.374/.494
  23. 1) Yes, Chas is under appreciated. As we’ve discussed here, he shown to be a good player over about a full season’s worth of PAs. He should be the everyday CF. 2) The comparison is dumb, considering Acuna was coming off ACL surgery last year and it was clearly the worst season of his career (and likely to be an aberration when all is said and done), not his normal season. He is a “generational talent.” A better set of comparisons would be to simply point out that in 2021-2022, Chas was in the same wRC+ neighborhood as Castellanos, Haniger, Joc Pederson, Benintendi, Austin Meadows, Hunter Renfroe…guys who aren’t competing for playing time on their teams, who’ve been all-stars, and who aren’t better than Chas.
  24. On a 1-year deal, for a top-tier team? Yes. Going rate for free agents is generally about $8mm per win. Profar with about 200-300 PAs is almost certainly at least a 1-win player.
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