Jump to content

Houston Astros off-season thread


Wulaw Horn

Recommended Posts

1 hour ago, TonyTexas said:

 

If his vesting option kicks in for 8 passed balls he’s a cinch. 
what would Diaz get if he was a free agent right now?  5/125?  Makes sense that Maldy played every day last year based upon that frothing market of his. 

Edited by Wulaw Horn
  • Haha 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Can someone please wake up Dana Brown. Did that fucker just go into hibernation? Crane is not serious! Are we so jammed up with shit contracts we can’t make deals? Go get some pitching and a stick it’s not hard. Has the league just given up, so let’s just crown the Dodgers and Rangers why play a season. Have them meet in season long traveling series like the globetrotters. Play in every town. Then play the bitch ass WS in October.

F Dodger Japanese players and Ichiro for that matter

F the Rangers 

F cheap ass owners that can’t sustain a championship level of ownership 

oh and Happy New Year’s 

Go Stros or what’s left of them 

Edited by TejasPedro
Bitterness
  • Fuck You 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

37 minutes ago, TejasPedro said:

Can someone please wake up Dana Brown. Did that fucker just go into hibernation? Crane is not serious! Are we so jammed up with shit contracts we can’t make deals? Go get some pitching and a stick it’s not hard. Has the league just given up, so let’s just crown the Dodgers and Rangers why play a season. Have them meet in season long traveling series like the globetrotters. Play in every town. Then play the bitch ass WS in October.

F Dodger Japanese players and Ichiro for that matter

F the Rangers 

F cheap ass owners that can’t sustain a championship level of ownership 

oh and Happy New Year’s 

Go Stros or what’s left of them 

There’s so much I’d have liked for us to do this off-season. That said we will (or should) be the betting favorites to win the AL this year even with all that. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Wulaw Horn said:

There’s so much I’d have liked for us to do this off-season. That said we will (or should) be the betting favorites to win the AL this year even with all that. 

Addition by subtraction. We improve greatly simply by losing 2 major pieces of the 2023 team. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, TejasPedro said:

Can someone please wake up Dana Brown. Did that fucker just go into hibernation? Crane is not serious! Are we so jammed up with shit contracts we can’t make deals? Go get some pitching and a stick it’s not hard. Has the league just given up, so let’s just crown the Dodgers and Rangers why play a season. Have them meet in season long traveling series like the globetrotters. Play in every town. Then play the bitch ass WS in October.

F Dodger Japanese players and Ichiro for that matter

F the Rangers 

F cheap ass owners that can’t sustain a championship level of ownership 

oh and Happy New Year’s 

Go Stros or what’s left of them 

Houston has a mature roster with 7 guys making >$15M in 2024 and another 3 making $10-15M.  Crane hasn’t been cheap and they currently have the 6th highest projected 2024 payroll in the league.  Unfortunately the last 4 seasons has decimated the farm system such that they also can’t make big trades (without getting extremely creative/risky).

They were “aggressive” last year and made 3 bad deals, 2 of which (Abreu and Montero) are still on their books and preventing them from making additional moves that require adding 2nd or 3rd tier contracts.  We should be happy Crane and Bagwell aren’t rushing out to give Josh Hader $100M+ or some stupid shit like that.  

I believe Dana Brown will make at least 1 significant move before opening day.  But even if he doesn’t, Caratini will be one of the best backup C in the league and Houston’s roster is on par with any team in the AL; they’re the current odds favorite to win the pennant and go back to the World Series.

  • Hook 'Em 4
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 hours ago, Snake Diggity said:

Houston has a mature roster with 7 guys making >$15M in 2024 and another 3 making $10-15M.  Crane hasn’t been cheap and they currently have the 6th highest projected 2024 payroll in the league.  Unfortunately the last 4 seasons has decimated the farm system such that they also can’t make big trades (without getting extremely creative/risky).

They were “aggressive” last year and made 3 bad deals, 2 of which (Abreu and Montero) are still on their books and preventing them from making additional moves that require adding 2nd or 3rd tier contracts.  We should be happy Crane and Bagwell aren’t rushing out to give Josh Hader $100M+ or some stupid shit like that.  

I believe Dana Brown will make at least 1 significant move before opening day.  But even if he doesn’t, Caratini will be one of the best backup C in the league and Houston’s roster is on par with any team in the AL; they’re the current odds favorite to win the pennant and go back to the World Series.

I don’t even think Abreu was a bad deal/ he was hurt. 
I bet he’s even value this year which by definition is what you expect with a FA signing. 

  • Hook 'Em 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

I don’t even think Abreu was a bad deal/ he was hurt. 
I bet he’s even value this year which by definition is what you expect with a FA signing. 

Agreed. Abreu was a great signing but it turned out shitty because he was hurt. The 2022 BP was the team strength in the WS run, and signing Montero brought all of them back. It was a overspend but that's where the FO was coming from when they made the decision IMO. 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Wulaw Horn said:

I don’t even think Abreu was a bad deal/ he was hurt. 
I bet he’s even value this year which by definition is what you expect with a FA signing. 

Slightly disagree. The AAV isn’t egregiously bad, but the 3rd year at his age takes it into a bad deal for me. Think he’ll be relatively neutral this season, but I’m generally more risk averse when it comes to 3 years for older players. At that price I would’ve liked to see some kind of mutual option for year 3. We were coming off a WS win and didn’t need to overpay (meaning the guaranteed 3rd year) to be an attractive destination.

Edited by IDIOTsavant
  • Hook 'Em 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 minutes ago, IDIOTsavant said:

Slightly disagree. The AAV isn’t egregiously bad, but the 3rd year at his age takes it into a bad deal for me. Think he’ll be relatively neutral this season, but I’m generally more risk averse when it comes to 3 years for older players. At that price I would’ve liked to see some kind of mutual option for year 3. We were coming off a WS win and didn’t need to overpay (meaning the guaranteed 3rd year) to be an attractive destination.

You’re presuming Abreu would make that third year negotiable.  The Astros can’t just insist he sign a contract with their preferred terms.  
 

Abreu appeared to be the best possible signing at the time and pretty much every other available free agent 1B underperformed.  
 

I’m also a little suspicious of the “he was hurt” story.  Sounds too much like “I spoke with Strom and I was tipping pitches” that comes out whoever someone gets lit up.  

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

You’re presuming Abreu would make that third year negotiable.  The Astros can’t just insist he sign a contract with their preferred terms.  
 

Abreu appeared to be the best possible signing at the time and pretty much every other available free agent 1B underperformed.  
 

I’m also a little suspicious of the “he was hurt” story.  Sounds too much like “I spoke with Strom and I was tipping pitches” that comes out whoever someone gets lit up.  

I get that. I’m saying our offer was attractive enough without going to the 3rd year guaranteed. I personally value the flexibility over guaranteeing that extra year. I’m saying I would’ve walked away over it being guaranteed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

46 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

You’re presuming Abreu would make that third year negotiable.  The Astros can’t just insist he sign a contract with their preferred terms.  
 

Abreu appeared to be the best possible signing at the time and pretty much every other available free agent 1B underperformed.  
 

I’m also a little suspicious of the “he was hurt” story.  Sounds too much like “I spoke with Strom and I was tipping pitches” that comes out whoever someone gets lit up.  

He definitely improved at the plate though.  Whether it was swing adjustments or healing.  He had absolutely no power for the first few months of the season.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

46 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

You’re presuming Abreu would make that third year negotiable.  The Astros can’t just insist he sign a contract with their preferred terms.  
 

Abreu appeared to be the best possible signing at the time and pretty much every other available free agent 1B underperformed.  
 

I’m also a little suspicious of the “he was hurt” story.  Sounds too much like “I spoke with Strom and I was tipping pitches” that comes out whoever someone gets lit up.  

I mean- he went on the DL, got some shots for his back, came back and had much better bat speed and his numbers were what you would expect headed into the year. I buy it. And I tend toward cynical. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There’s no way Abreu would be offered a $40M/2yr contract if he were a free agent.  His contract is at least $10M underwater.

He might be a good hitter in 2024-2025, but he is unlikely to be worth his contract.  I don’t think he was hurt at the beginning of last season, I think he just sucked.  But if he’s healthy he might be very good which would be a boon for Houston given the sunk cost.

  • Hook 'Em 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I typically hate the combination of fan fiction/armchair psychoanalysis but for as much as Abreu was supposed to be a great clubhouse guy, I also wonder how much his crying about the batters eye got into other guy's heads about hitting at minute maid.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

I mean- he went on the DL, got some shots for his back, came back and had much better bat speed and his numbers were what you would expect headed into the year. I buy it. And I tend toward cynical. 

When he was really awful was in the spring before any purported injury.  I’m not seeing anything in the statcast data that supports a reduction in bat speed different from June when his bat woke up.  
 

Anyway, I’m not trying to make a hill to die on; I supported the signing at the time and I still think it was the best call in hindsight. 

  • Hook 'Em 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

At the end of the deal Joe answered the kids questions. He said the right things and came off super humble. Couple of questions that were good. I am paraphrasing.

Q: What team do you want to beat the most.

A: The Rangers. We want to win all our games but we want to win our state.

Q: How happy are you to be the manager.

A: Total coach speak about building on the character and culture that Jeff and Dusty built.

I wanted to scream, you better play the deathstar lineup. And fuck dusty. I refrained.

 

He kept mentioning Correa and was showing him as an example for both hitting and fielding.

He also was really high on Ron Washington touting several drills as his.

All around I was super impressed with the guy. Super cool to see how he works coaching. He better figure out the manager role and dominate though.

My son has a signed ball for his shelf at the very least.

Edited by HOOKEM4
ousux
  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Is 2024 the End of the Astros as We Know Them

By: Michael Bauman

Spoiler

The other day I was just noodling around on the site, looking for ideas, when I noticed something interesting on the RosterResource payroll breakdown page. This coming season, the Houston Astros are at $222 million in payroll commitments, which brings them to $237 million and change against the competitive balance tax — just over by a couple hundred thousand.

Next season, Houston has just $65 million committed to the major league payroll. Now, actually clicking through to the team page, you realize that’s a little misleading: Depending on workload, both Justin Verlander and Ryan Pressly can activate lucrative options, and Framber Valdez and Kyle Tucker will both enter their third year of arbitration. I do not want to conceive of a scenario in which either Valdez or Tucker gets non-tendered; no doubt it would be horrifying. So clearly the Astros will be well into the hundreds of millions in 2025 no matter what they do.

 

But upon clicking through, I came to a horrifying realization: Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman will both be free agents after the season. Which just doesn’t seem possible. I remember Bregman’s freshman year in college, and Altuve playing on that terrible contract that the Astros ripped up in order to sign him through what seemed like the end of time. Well, guess what? The end of time is nigh.

I think of the past nine years for the Astros as one unbroken run of success, starting with 2015. That was not quite the fully developed juggernaut that would follow, but 2015 was the rookie year of both Carlos Correa and Lance McCullers Jr., A.J. Hinch’s first year as manager, Dallas Keuchel’s Cy Young season, and — most importantly — Houston’s first winning season since 2008 and first playoff appearance since 2005.

Then in 2017, the Astros started their current run of seven straight trips to the ALCS, including four pennants and two World Series titles. When a team goes on a streak like that… well, actually, it doesn’t happen frequently enough for us to draw conclusions. I’ll rephrase. When a team has a decade-long run of making the playoffs almost every year, it’s understandable to assume that it’s the same team winning all those games every season. Obviously, that’s not the case.

Particularly in the free agency era, players come and go. Organizations that succeed over a long period of time don’t build one good roster. They build several, evolving from one core to the next as veterans age out and prospects come up. That’s a very, very difficult thing to do, especially without any hiccups in the road.

The best recent comparison I can think of to the Astros is the Boston Red Sox, who won titles in 2004, 2007, and 2013. We think of that as being one unified run, because of how constant David Ortiz was and how annoying Boston became as a presence in national pop culture. Had the sign-stealing scandal not left a lasting blemish on the team’s reputation, the Astros’ run could’ve touched off a similar period of cultural hegemony. I regret that this did not happen for Houston, that the zeitgeist did not replace Ben Affleck with Bun B and Dunkin Donuts with Kolache Factory. James Harden’s Rockets finally beat the Warriors and win an NBA title. Manchester by the Sea and CODA are still Oscar-winning movies, but they’re about shrimpers on the Gulf Coast. Congress doubles funding for NASA. We would all have been better off. But I digress.

Anyway, Ortiz is the only player from the 2004 Red Sox who was still around in 2013, but a new generation of stars came in around him and gradually replaced the old ones. The same thing happened in Houston, with Altuve as a 1:4 scale replica of Big Papi and Bregman as an exact clone of Dustin Pedroia.

Consider the Dodgers, who have now made the playoffs 10 years running. The only player from the 2014 Dodgers who’s currently under contract with the team is Miguel Rojas. And he was a reserve on that team, got traded away, spent almost a decade in Miami, where he missed all the fun stuff, and only made his way back to Los Angeles last year. You know how long ago 2014 was? Hanley Ramirez and Josh Beckett were on that Dodgers team. That’s basically closer to Jim Gilliam and Ralph Branca than it is to Shohei Ohtani.

But eventually, the churn ends. To paraphrase that masterpiece of the sports movie genre, Beerfest: The time is approaching when the Astros will have to either scheiße, or get off the crapper.

 
Forthcoming Astros Departures by Year
Year Players Out of Contract
2025 Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, Kendall Graveman
2026 Justin Verlander, Framber Valdez, José Abreu, Kyle Tucker, Ryan Pressly, Rafael Montero, Victor Caratini, José Urquidy
2027 Lance McCullers Jr., Mauricio Dubón, Luis Garcia, Bryan Abreu, Chas McCormick

Not every one of these decisions is going to be a heartbreaker; one imagines the Astros will be happy to be rid of José Abreu when the time comes, and anyone who’s worrying about losing Dubón three years from now needs to eat more fiber and drink more water. But Altuve is the face of the franchise and will be entering his age-35 season when his contract is up. Bregman and Valdez will be on the wrong side of 30, and with a recent track record of vacillating between absolute superstardom and merely being pretty good.

Here it’s useful to remember that the Astros have not only turned over their roster repeatedly, they’ve done the same with their leadership. They’re on their third manager and third front office since this run started. Original GM Jeff Luhnow kept the ball rolling by being pretty ruthless and unsentimental (in addition to either perpetrating or condoning not only the banging scheme but a whole bunch of other morally questionable stuff besides). He was followed by James Click, who kept the ship on course before his ouster at the end of the 2022 season.

But since Click’s departure, the Astros have been run by a third GM, Dana Brown, overseen closely by team owner Jim Crane-Wearing-Jeff Bagwell-Like-A-Backpack. The same Bagwell who, after a team built by Luhnow and Click won the World Series in 2022, voiced a criticism of (waggles fingers menacingly) “analytics” that the authors of Fire Joe Morgan would’ve been bored by in 2009.

This leadership group faces additional challenges: Most pressingly, that the Rangers are both good and well-funded at the same time for the first time since 2016. Outrunning the bear is harder now than it was then.

Over the next 10 to 24 months, the Astros will have to decide the fate of four absolutely crucial players: Altuve, Bregman, Valdez, and Tucker. They’ll probably have to replace Verlander and Pressly as well. There isn’t really a right or wrong answer in terms of sentimentality (though it’d be a shame to see Altuve finish his career in another uniform over a petty fallout), or even the value of empirics. The whole point is to make the decision that puts the Astros in the best position to win.

It’s snuck up on us, but 2024 might actually be the last hurrah for this iteration of the Astros.

 

Edited by Seasick Sailor
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Seasick Sailor said:

Is 2024 the End of the Astros as We Know Them

By: Michael Bauman

  Hide contents

The other day I was just noodling around on the site, looking for ideas, when I noticed something interesting on the RosterResource payroll breakdown page. This coming season, the Houston Astros are at $222 million in payroll commitments, which brings them to $237 million and change against the competitive balance tax — just over by a couple hundred thousand.

Next season, Houston has just $65 million committed to the major league payroll. Now, actually clicking through to the team page, you realize that’s a little misleading: Depending on workload, both Justin Verlander and Ryan Pressly can activate lucrative options, and Framber Valdez and Kyle Tucker will both enter their third year of arbitration. I do not want to conceive of a scenario in which either Valdez or Tucker gets non-tendered; no doubt it would be horrifying. So clearly the Astros will be well into the hundreds of millions in 2025 no matter what they do.

 

But upon clicking through, I came to a horrifying realization: Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman will both be free agents after the season. Which just doesn’t seem possible. I remember Bregman’s freshman year in college, and Altuve playing on that terrible contract that the Astros ripped up in order to sign him through what seemed like the end of time. Well, guess what? The end of time is nigh.

I think of the past nine years for the Astros as one unbroken run of success, starting with 2015. That was not quite the fully developed juggernaut that would follow, but 2015 was the rookie year of both Carlos Correa and Lance McCullers Jr., A.J. Hinch’s first year as manager, Dallas Keuchel’s Cy Young season, and — most importantly — Houston’s first winning season since 2008 and first playoff appearance since 2005.

Then in 2017, the Astros started their current run of seven straight trips to the ALCS, including four pennants and two World Series titles. When a team goes on a streak like that… well, actually, it doesn’t happen frequently enough for us to draw conclusions. I’ll rephrase. When a team has a decade-long run of making the playoffs almost every year, it’s understandable to assume that it’s the same team winning all those games every season. Obviously, that’s not the case.

Particularly in the free agency era, players come and go. Organizations that succeed over a long period of time don’t build one good roster. They build several, evolving from one core to the next as veterans age out and prospects come up. That’s a very, very difficult thing to do, especially without any hiccups in the road.

The best recent comparison I can think of to the Astros is the Boston Red Sox, who won titles in 2004, 2007, and 2013. We think of that as being one unified run, because of how constant David Ortiz was and how annoying Boston became as a presence in national pop culture. Had the sign-stealing scandal not left a lasting blemish on the team’s reputation, the Astros’ run could’ve touched off a similar period of cultural hegemony. I regret that this did not happen for Houston, that the zeitgeist did not replace Ben Affleck with Bun B and Dunkin Donuts with Kolache Factory. James Harden’s Rockets finally beat the Warriors and win an NBA title. Manchester by the Sea and CODA are still Oscar-winning movies, but they’re about shrimpers on the Gulf Coast. Congress doubles funding for NASA. We would all have been better off. But I digress.

Anyway, Ortiz is the only player from the 2004 Red Sox who was still around in 2013, but a new generation of stars came in around him and gradually replaced the old ones. The same thing happened in Houston, with Altuve as a 1:4 scale replica of Big Papi and Bregman as an exact clone of Dustin Pedroia.

Consider the Dodgers, who have now made the playoffs 10 years running. The only player from the 2014 Dodgers who’s currently under contract with the team is Miguel Rojas. And he was a reserve on that team, got traded away, spent almost a decade in Miami, where he missed all the fun stuff, and only made his way back to Los Angeles last year. You know how long ago 2014 was? Hanley Ramirez and Josh Beckett were on that Dodgers team. That’s basically closer to Jim Gilliam and Ralph Branca than it is to Shohei Ohtani.

But eventually, the churn ends. To paraphrase that masterpiece of the sports movie genre, Beerfest: The time is approaching when the Astros will have to either scheiße, or get off the crapper.

 
Forthcoming Astros Departures by Year
Year Players Out of Contract
2025 Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, Kendall Graveman
2026 Justin Verlander, Framber Valdez, José Abreu, Kyle Tucker, Ryan Pressly, Rafael Montero, Victor Caratini, José Urquidy
2027 Lance McCullers Jr., Mauricio Dubón, Luis Garcia, Bryan Abreu, Chas McCormick

Not every one of these decisions is going to be a heartbreaker; one imagines the Astros will be happy to be rid of José Abreu when the time comes, and anyone who’s worrying about losing Dubón three years from now needs to eat more fiber and drink more water. But Altuve is the face of the franchise and will be entering his age-35 season when his contract is up. Bregman and Valdez will be on the wrong side of 30, and with a recent track record of vacillating between absolute superstardom and merely being pretty good.

Here it’s useful to remember that the Astros have not only turned over their roster repeatedly, they’ve done the same with their leadership. They’re on their third manager and third front office since this run started. Original GM Jeff Luhnow kept the ball rolling by being pretty ruthless and unsentimental (in addition to either perpetrating or condoning not only the banging scheme but a whole bunch of other morally questionable stuff besides). He was followed by James Click, who kept the ship on course before his ouster at the end of the 2022 season.

But since Click’s departure, the Astros have been run by a third GM, Dana Brown, overseen closely by team owner Jim Crane-Wearing-Jeff Bagwell-Like-A-Backpack. The same Bagwell who, after a team built by Luhnow and Click won the World Series in 2022, voiced a criticism of (waggles fingers menacingly) “analytics” that the authors of Fire Joe Morgan would’ve been bored by in 2009.

This leadership group faces additional challenges: Most pressingly, that the Rangers are both good and well-funded at the same time for the first time since 2016. Outrunning the bear is harder now than it was then.

Over the next 10 to 24 months, the Astros will have to decide the fate of four absolutely crucial players: Altuve, Bregman, Valdez, and Tucker. They’ll probably have to replace Verlander and Pressly as well. There isn’t really a right or wrong answer in terms of sentimentality (though it’d be a shame to see Altuve finish his career in another uniform over a petty fallout), or even the value of empirics. The whole point is to make the decision that puts the Astros in the best position to win.

It’s snuck up on us, but 2024 might actually be the last hurrah for this iteration of the Astros.

 

This is what kills me:

But upon clicking through, I came to a horrifying realization: Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman will both be free agents after the season. Which just doesn’t seem possible. I remember Bregman’s freshman year in college, and Altuve playing on that terrible contract that the Astros ripped up in order to sign him through what seemed like the end of time. Well, guess what? The end of time is nigh.


this is what kills me. I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news of Altuve’s deal.

fucking Covid season 

 

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.



×
×
  • Create New...