Jump to content

Recommended Posts

Posted
58 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

Notable names unprotected for the Rule 5 Draft:

- Jadher Areinamo
- Kahlil Watson
- Hendry Mendez
- Miguel Ullola
- Nick Morabito
- Andry Lara
- James Triantos
- Edwin Arroyo
- Esmerlyn Valdez
- Joshua Baez
- Marco Luciano
 

Where are you seeing that?  Rule 5 rosters don’t get set until 11/18.

Posted
12 minutes ago, kevwun said:

Gonna need a wellness check on Wulaw if he's not.

I will be very surprised if the Astros don’t trade at least one of Blubaugh, Pecko, or Ullola this offseason.  Same for them trading at least one of Matthews, Melton, Cole, or Dezenzo.  They’ve currently only got about $15M to work with and they have 3 glaring holes (2 SP and a backup C).

Posted
22 minutes ago, Snake Diggity said:

I will be very surprised if the Astros don’t trade at least one of Blubaugh, Pecko, or Ullola this offseason.  Same for them trading at least one of Matthews, Melton, Cole, or Dezenzo.  They’ve currently only got about $15M to work with and they have 3 glaring holes (2 SP and a backup C).

We damn near have to. 

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted (edited)
On 11/2/2025 at 8:37 PM, tx 3 putt said:

2025 Gold Glover, he stepped up huge last year, all over the field ...

Utility: Mauricio Dubón, Astros

Dubón was the quintessential utility player for Houston in 2025, appearing at seven positions during the season -- left field (48 games), second base (46), shortstop (33), third base (24), center field (17), first base (four) and right field (three). Overall, he finished sixth in MLB with +20 OAA from all positions combined.

Yeah people can talk all the shit they want about Dubon, but he's the kind of guy that every team needs and most teams don't have. Stating the obvious here, but he's  almost an everyday player who gives the manager a lot of flexibility, and he's done the job very well ... basically a gold glover at whatever position you wanna stick him in. 

Edited by wood
  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Like 1
Posted
On 11/3/2025 at 12:55 AM, tx 3 putt said:

trade him !!!

 

36. Christian Walker, 1B, Astros | $40MM through 2027

Speaking of Walker, it seems there’s a good chance Houston will try to take a mulligan on this contract in the offseason. The Astros reacquired Carlos Correa at the trade deadline and will install him as their everyday third baseman. That pushes Isaac Paredes off his position. Paredes has some experience at second base but is a better fit at first base. Plus, Houston has to decide where Jose Altuve will play. After saying he’d play left field primarily in 2025, Altuve struggled enough on the grass that he split his time pretty evenly between his new position and his traditional spot at second base.

One could argue that the move here is to trade Paredes, not Walker. He’d fetch a return of some note, whereas the Astros would need to pay down some of Walker’s salary after he turned in a .238/.297/.421 batting line. Walker popped 27 homers, but his overall production was about average on a rate basis, thanks largely to that meager .297 on-base percentage. And, after years of ranking as one of the best defensive first basemen in all of MLB, his defensive grades plummeted in his new surroundings.

There’s no easy way to alleviate this logjam of pricey players, but eating some of Walker’s contract and finding a new home for him would be the best path toward fielding a complete roster in 2026. Walker may very well bounce back — he hit .264/.318/.489 (123 wRC+) in his final 305 plate appearances — but Paredes is younger, more affordable and offers more reliable offense.

Yeah I really wanna keep Paredes and really don't want Walker & his extreme streakiness. Make it so.

  • Hook 'Em 2
  • Like 1
Posted
25 minutes ago, wood said:

Yeah people can talk all the shit they want about Dubon, but he's the kind of guy that every team needs and most teams don't have. Stating the obvious here, but he's  almost an everyday player who gives the manager a lot of flexibility, and he's done the job very well ... basically a gold glover at whatever position you wanna stick him in. 

He also doesn't need 400 PAs, because he's awful at hitting. He's also 30 and this is last season of team control. He's not a guy that you give a long term deal to, so trade him.

  • Like 1
Posted
1 hour ago, HtownHorn said:

He also doesn't need 400 PAs, because he's awful at hitting. He's also 30 and this is last season of team control. He's not a guy that you give a long term deal to, so trade him.

 

bench guy that can play 8 positions ...

2025 Regular Season

AB AVG HR RBI SB OPS
369 .241 7 33 3 .644
 
he'll get picked up after we cut him loose 
  • Like 1
Posted
7 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

 

bench guy that can play 8 positions ...

2025 Regular Season

AB AVG HR RBI SB OPS
369 .241 7 33 3 .644
 
he'll get picked up after we cut him loose 

He sucks at hitting, especially at getting on base. You can get another guy that can play multiple positions for less than $6.5M which is his likely arbitration number. You already have a better version of him on your roster in Ramon Urias.

  • Hook 'Em 1
  • Fuck Around and Find Out 1
Posted (edited)

hold up....I was told dildo was a manager of the year candidate....didn't even make top 3 

 

Manager of the Year

American League

  • John Schneider (Blue Jays)
  • Stephen Vogt (Guardians)
  • Dan Wilson (Mariners)
Edited by Scraps
Posted

a healthy 2025, we win it all. sweep city

50% less injuries, we win it all, but not all sweeps 

yordan's health was massive 

a healthy 2026, we should be top team in the AL. the roster is very set, couple of open spots. 

Posted
1 hour ago, tx 3 putt said:

it's on the hc to call bunts and such. not the hitting coach 

Yeah I was just looking for anything. Here's a little more, fwiw ...

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/2024/09/15/padres-showing-unprecedented-power-without-even-trying/

Quote

 

SAN FRANCISCO — The Padres are on the verge of breaking the franchise record for home runs hit at home.

They will do it by accident.

At least, as they begin their final homestand of the season on Monday, they certainly have not done it on purpose.

New hitting coach Victor Rodriguez came to the job in the offseason having seen on a few occasions — and heard on many more — how difficult it was to hit home runs at Petco Park.

The approach he would instill was simple.

“So if it’s hard to hit homers, why would we look for homers?” Rodriguez said Sunday. “Let’s focus on line drives. Let’s get doubles. So that’s when we came up with ‘Petco Park hitting.’”

That was even the name of a drill in spring training in which targets were set up near the area where the second baseman and shortstop would stand. The philosophy of hitting the ball hard on a line was constantly preached and is still reinforced regularly in meetings.

“Let’s focus on hitting line drives, not homers,” Rodriguez said. “By thinking less power, you might have more power.”

The season-high seven doubles the Padres hit Saturday night were a product of the approach.

“It doesn’t matter where we are at,” Rodriguez. “When we say ‘Petco Park hitting,’ it means line drive, gap to gap.”

The home runs are also a result of the approach. And it is not as paradoxical as it sounds.

“We’re not playing in a ballpark that every fly ball is going to go out,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said Sunday after hitting a home run on a fly ball that was just high enough to not qualify as a line drive. “So, you know, as we try to build as a lineup a contact team, and we have, and we also have power. But we have emphasized being better hitters than power hitters. So I feel like that has given us a lot this year.”

Tatis, who missed 2½ months of the season with a stress reaction in his right femur, is one of six Padres with at least 16 home runs. (He has 18 homers, Manny Machado 26, Jackson Merrill 23, Jurickson Profar 22, and Kyle Higashioka and Jake Conrneworth 16). That ties the Padres with the Diamondbacks and Orioles for most players in the majors with at least 16 homers.

The Padres have hit 99 home runs at Petco Park this season, two shy of the team home record set in 2019.

The 173 total home runs they have hit this season does not have them on a record pace. But it does rank sixth all-time, 46 shy of the record 219 hit by the ‘19 squad.

The Padres hit 205 home runs last season, but just 91 at Petco Park.

Line drives, it would seem, are the difference.

The Padres’ 20.8 percent line drive rate is second in MLB to the Dodgers’ 21.3 percent. The 1,053 line drives the Padres have hit are most in the major leagues, as are their 28 line drive home runs. (Of those, 17 have come at home.)

Still, the Padres rank just 12th in the league in home runs and are getting just 39.9 percent of their runs from homers, which ranks 16th. So the real manifestation of what is preached by Rodriguez (and assistant hitting coaches Morgan Burkhart, Mike McCoy and Pat O’Sullivan) is the Padres’ MLB-leading batting average (.265).

“That was the goal from spring training,” Rodriguez said. “I was not expecting to break anything. We were expecting just to keep hitting line drives, doubles, hits. And we have done it. … I knew that if you focus on staying short to the ball and drive the ball, you have a chance to hit more homers, because you are in a better position to drive the ball. And hitting is driving the ball.”

 

 

Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, HtownHorn said:

Hopefully the approach improves from pull everything into the Crawford Boxes we have seen in the last 4 years.

Seriously. And from what little I've read, it seems like a reasonable approach. The focus on contact, contact, contact rings true to me, having watched this 2025 team not put the ball in play so many times when that was pretty much all that needed to happen.  I doubt that will hurt HR numbers, and will probably help imho, like what they saw in SD. Get the sluggers making more contact, and at minimum imho what you end up with is sluggers with more hits, better OBP, more RBI, & the same or more HR & extra base hits. I.E. the more Yord, Altuve, Paredes etc hit the ball, the more HR you'll see. Get the other guys getting on base, and that's more guys to get knocked in. See more pitches, get more/better hits, work the other teams' pitchers more, etc, etc. This 2025 team was a walk in the park for the other teams' pitchers in terms of pitch count, getting us to chase, etc. It was silly.

Edited by wood
Posted
1 hour ago, wood said:

Get the sluggers making more contact, and at minimum imho what you end up with is sluggers with more hits, better OBP, more RBI, & the same or more HR & extra base hits.

Someone should have thought of that before

  • Hook 'Em 1
Posted (edited)
1 hour ago, WBT said:

Someone should have thought of that before

For sure it's been thought of. Nothing new, really, but analytics say just swing for the fences all the got damn time, strikeouts be damned. So I think a whole lot of people have gotten away from some basic hitting tenets. We see it in damn near any MLB game we watch these days. IMHO if you get those big eaters swinging shorter & more direct, more for line drives & fewer strikeouts, they're still gonna hit their share of bombs, or maybe more. I think disciplined, selective guys like Yordan & Paredes already do it a lot, but I could see the benefit of reinforcing that mindset & spreading it around to the rest of the team.

Extreme example: Kinda reminds me of a kid I coached for a few years. Big, strong kid. Catcher. When he was 13, he was a good hitter. Good slug. Good avg, etc. Then we went to Cedar Park and he hit a bomb over one of those tall LF fences. He got fixated on the long ball and started trying to hit more of em. Not only did he not hit another bomb, I literally can't remember him getting solid contact in a game the rest of the year. Seriously, not even once. He was a complete mess. That HR ruined him as a hitter for the rest of that season and most of the next. If he had stayed focused on contact & driving the ball, he'd have hit more of 'em and kept hitting for avg, too.

Edited by wood

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...