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2023 Official Astros World Champs Offseason Thread


tx 3 putt

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1 hour ago, TonyTexas said:

Fair enough. But I think their preseason win total will be closer to 100 than 93

I think the Astros should open at 98.   I'd actually have to see 101 before I'd even begin to consider betting the under personally, and still probably wouldn't bet the under unless I could get 103 or 104.  If the Astros open as the 2nd highest win total it will be something like 97.5-99.  If they open as 6th or 7th highest total (which I've seen a lot of around, including in what I linked) it will be more like 93.  Vegas trusts those projections systems a ton.  

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94 is probably my number.

pitching is going to be rough. Lose the Cy young winner. Lose Framber to the shift (I fear he is going to regress in a baaad way) and practically the entire bullpen coming off a career year.

94 feels right and you get to 100+ if Javier can pull a 2022 Framber for a full season and Brown pulls a 2022 Javier.

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26 minutes ago, UTexasFight said:

94 is probably my number.

pitching is going to be rough. Lose the Cy young winner. Lose Framber to the shift (I fear he is going to regress in a baaad way) and practically the entire bullpen coming off a career year.

94 feels right and you get to 100+ if Javier can pull a 2022 Framber for a full season and Brown pulls a 2022 Javier.

I think yall are too overly worried about Framber and the shift.  Keeping the ball on the grand an extraordinary amount of time is still a HUGE advantage, shift or no shift.  Shift going away will help LHH the most and Framber being a LHP has the benefit on that same handedness so that should help him as well.  Plus, he's just durable and a total bitch for the other team to really put a lot of runs on.  They are still going to have to string together 3 hits/walks in an inning.  Will that be a little easier now?  Yeah.  But it's not open the flood gates shit. 


We replace a lot of Odosucki starts with LMJ starts.  We replace a lot of JV starts with Hunter Brown.  By my calculations both of those are huge wins for 2023 Astros as Hunter Brown is likely to have a 0.79 ERA over 200 innings (at least) and make JV's 1.76 era look like the trash it really was.  

Bullpen won't likely be as good.  Bullpen will likely still be a strength.  We are ok.  94 would be a big disappointment to me.  That's how much I believe in this roster. 

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High 90s feels right. The new scheduling format should help as the AL West strengthens. I know we like to laugh at the Mariners, but if you included the regular season and the playoff, no team played the Astros tougher. 

The Stros are getting clapped by the national media for not retaining Verlander. The same shit happened when Cole left. 

I think we'll be fine, but the bullpen and starting pitching won't be as good. Hitting should be better with Abreu and no shift. 

 

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4 minutes ago, billfromlaketravis said:

High 90s feels right. The new scheduling format should help as the AL West strengthens. I know we like to laugh at the Mariners, but if you included the regular season and the playoff, no team played the Astros tougher. 

The Stros are getting clapped by the national media for not retaining Verlander. The same shit happened when Cole left. 

I think we'll be fine, but the bullpen and starting pitching won't be as good. Hitting should be better with Abreu and no shift. 

 

Pissed they choose to leave a gaping fucking hole at catcher when they could have been excellent for 20M and they could have gotten to average at 7M, and signing Uncle Mike when we don't know if he's broken or not seems like a shitty option compared to just giving Conforto his option or signing Hanniger to 3/43 or whatever not unreasonable amount of money he made, but if we see improvement from Pena, Tucker, and Chas or Jake, plus some health from Brantley, plus Abreau continuing to be rock solid consistent, as long as Altuve and Bregman don't fall off a cliff you are looking at a great offensive team again, instead of the merely good offensive team we were in 2022.   Less questions this year than last year in my mind on offense for sure.  
I have zero fears about the bullpen being a strength. I have very few fears about the rotation not being a strength. I think we have 4 top 30 starters next year in LMJ, Javier, Brown and Framber, along with a top 60 guys and a top 100 guy in Garcia and Urquidy.  And even they have upside to be top 30 guy and top 50 guy if everything breaks right.  LMJ seems like the only real injury risk, even though any pitcher at any time can go down for 18 months if you get unlucky.  

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1 minute ago, Wulaw Horn said:

Pissed they choose to leave a gaping fucking hole at catcher when they could have been excellent for 20M and they could have gotten to average at 7M, and signing Uncle Mike when we don't know if he's broken or not seems like a shitty option compared to just giving Conforto his option or signing Hanniger to 3/43 or whatever not unreasonable amount of money he made, but if we see improvement from Pena, Tucker, and Chas or Jake, plus some health from Brantley, plus Abreau continuing to be rock solid consistent, as long as Altuve and Bregman don't fall off a cliff you are looking at a great offensive team again, instead of the merely good offensive team we were in 2022.   Less questions this year than last year in my mind on offense for sure.  
I have zero fears about the bullpen being a strength. I have very few fears about the rotation not being a strength. I think we have 4 top 30 starters next year in LMJ, Javier, Brown and Framber, along with a top 60 guys and a top 100 guy in Garcia and Urquidy.  And even they have upside to be top 30 guy and top 50 guy if everything breaks right.  LMJ seems like the only real injury risk, even though any pitcher at any time can go down for 18 months if you get unlucky.  

It feels like they're enamored with Lee's arm and they're willing to play out the string. He was a first round pick in 2019, so they need to see what they have there. 

But yeah, Conforto was a head scratcher. If they're willing to give Uncle Mike $16 million, Conforto for $18 million a year seems OK. They really need to hit on Gilbert and/or Melton in 2024. 

The LMJ tipping stuff concerns me. We'll see how he looks in spring training. 

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56 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

I think yall are too overly worried about Framber and the shift.  Keeping the ball on the grand an extraordinary amount of time is still a HUGE advantage, shift or no shift.  Shift going away will help LHH the most and Framber being a LHP has the benefit on that same handedness so that should help him as well.  Plus, he's just durable and a total bitch for the other team to really put a lot of runs on.  They are still going to have to string together 3 hits/walks in an inning.  Will that be a little easier now?  Yeah.  But it's not open the flood gates shit. 


We replace a lot of Odosucki starts with LMJ starts.  We replace a lot of JV starts with Hunter Brown.  By my calculations both of those are huge wins for 2023 Astros as Hunter Brown is likely to have a 0.79 ERA over 200 innings (at least) and make JV's 1.76 era look like the trash it really was.  

Bullpen won't likely be as good.  Bullpen will likely still be a strength.  We are ok.  94 would be a big disappointment to me.  That's how much I believe in this roster. 

Good points.

But would also counter that we lose 11% of our schedule (6 series) against the Rangers, Angels and A’s with all of that getting replaced by the better league (NL) on paper. 
Sure we should beat up on the dregs of the NL Central and NL West but on balance will the additional games against the NL be won at something close to the .684 clip that we dominated the bottom of the AL West last year?

 

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14 minutes ago, billfromlaketravis said:

It feels like they're enamored with Lee's arm

Arm strength for a catcher is going to become more and more important with some of the rule changes. Bigger bases and the limit on pick off moves are going  to cause an uptick in steal attempts. The need for framing skills are going to disappear sooner than later. He can learn from Maldy on better managing games. He’ll be fine at catcher. I just hope he can hit some. 

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2 minutes ago, UTexasFight said:

Good points.

But would also counter that we lose 11% of our schedule (6 series) against the Rangers, Angels and A’s with all of that getting replaced by the better league (NL) on paper. 
Sure we should beat up on the dregs of the NL Central and NL West but on balance will the additional games against the NL be won at something close to the .684 clip that we dominated the bottom of the AL West last year?

 

684 is pretty ambitious- that's like what- a 112 win pace?  doubt we get there against the league as a whole, but against the NL Central I could see it.  Against the Marlins, Nationals, Dbacks, Rockies why not?  Those teams aren't appreciably better than the Angels, A's and Rangers imo.  

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i don't have the energy to quote everybody, but anyone who thinks the vegas total will be at or even near 100 wins hasn't experienced how futures betting works in regards to mlb win totals.

it was like 93 last year (i took the over and am happy to look it up later).  i don't see it being higher than 95 this year.  gun to my head, i would guess 93.5.  not sure how much the schedule balancing will play into it.

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1 hour ago, henrygandorf said:

i don't have the energy to quote everybody, but anyone who thinks the vegas total will be at or even near 100 wins hasn't experienced how futures betting works in regards to mlb win totals.

it was like 93 last year (i took the over and am happy to look it up later).  i don't see it being higher than 95 this year.  gun to my head, i would guess 93.5.  not sure how much the schedule balancing will play into it.

Yep- that's why I had 92-94.  I'd hammer the over anywhere at 95 or less.  I'd bet the over cautiously from 95-100. I'd stay away from betting at 101-105. I'd bet under 105-110. 

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On 12/26/2022 at 9:41 PM, Issiecol said:


I don’t remember where I read it, but there was an article 7-8 years ago that talked about how MLB saw the way the Astros were rebuilding and set about changing several rules in order to basically stop them from developing a dynasty. Makes me endlessly happy that they managed to build one anyway, despite MLB’s efforts.

If anyone has examples of what rule changes occurred, that’d be interesting to see how the Astros worked around them.

The first 6 picks of the draft will now be a lottery, similar to the NBA draft, to avoid the all-out tanking that the Astros were doing.  The bottom 18 teams all have a chance of jumping up to the top 6, then the rest goes in order of placement.  The first year they did the lottery was for the upcoming 2023 draft. The Pirates won the 1st pick, followed by the Nats, Tigers, Rangers, Twins and A's.  You can see the Twins jumped from 13th pick to the 5th pick due to the lottery. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Major_League_Baseball_draft

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10 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

pitching will be at a premium at the trade deadline and the astros might be taking calls .....

 

Dumb question immunity.. When the media yammers on about how shitty of a farm system the Astros have does that take into account our Dominican league and international players? 

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Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't see any way this team goes from 106 wins to 94.  Yeah, JV and his 18 wins are gone.  And maybe the bullpen regresses some.  But the lineup is significantly better.  We're gonna turn a few 3-2 losses into 4-3 wins along the way.

If the over/under is 94, I'ma rob a damned bank so I can put it on the over.  This team is still stacked and you know we'll make moves at the deadline if we need to.

Put me down for 101.

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10 minutes ago, TexArcher said:

Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't see any way this team goes from 106 wins to 94.  Yeah, JV and his 18 wins are gone.  And maybe the bullpen regresses some.  But the lineup is significantly better.  We're gonna turn a few 3-2 losses into 4-3 wins along the way.

If the over/under is 94, I'ma rob a damned bank so I can put it on the over.  This team is still stacked and you know we'll make moves at the deadline if we need to.

Put me down for 101.

Another factor working against us is the time off/fatigue from playing into November 2 years in a row. And this year you add in the WBC which players have to report even earlier. I'm on the 101 train if there are no serious injuries like Yordan or Breggy, but I think 96 is more realistic as there are several on out roster with a history of missing significant time throughout the season. 

 

 

 

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