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1 hour ago, tx 3 putt said:

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$3.5m seems on the low end of what I expect in arbitration.  McCormick got $3.4 coming off a -.6 WAR season.  

Posted (edited)
6 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

$3.5m seems on the low end of what I expect in arbitration.  McCormick got $3.4 coming off a -.6 WAR season.  

2nd, 3rd, and 4th year Arbitration salaries are heavily influenced by the prior year’s salary.  Meyers only made $2.3M last season (his first year in arbitration) because he hadn’t had much consistent production his first 3 seasons.  So his $3.5M estimate represents a big raise.  McCormick made more earlier in arbitration because he already had multiple 2+ fwar seasons on his resume going into his first year of arbitration, so his number ended up so high because he started off higher.

Edited by Snake Diggity
Posted

do we lose a game next season ???

 

Four Astros players who the advanced metrics say could be in line for a breakout

Jesús Sánchez

Jesús Sánchez was one of the Astros' biggesttrade deadline disappointments. Acquired from the Miami Marlins to fill the left-handed void Yordan Álvarez's injury caused, Sánchez slashed a miserable .199/.269/.342 down the stretch for Houston. For his career, he's been roughly a league-average bat despite his imposing stature.

But there are some things that Sánchez excels at. His 75.9 miles per hour bat speed was in the 93rd percentile in 2025. At 91.3 miles per hour, his average exit velocity landed in the 79th percentile, and his 11.1 barrel percentage was a 69th percentile mark.

Translation: Sánchez swings with authority and can hit the ball hard. His strikeout and walk rates are both about league average. What holds him back is his launch angle sweet spot (frequency in which he hits balls at angles that typically do damage, which was a bottom 10 percent number this year. If Victor Rodriguez and his team can help Sanchez straighten out his launch angle woes, watch out.

Spencer Arrighetti

Injuries limited Spencer Arrighetti to just 35.1 innings in 2025, but with Framber Valdez likely a goner, Houston will lean on him more now than ever. The small sample means he doesn't qualify for many leaderboards, but he still has some elite underlying metrics.

First is Arrighetti's extension. It has come in at 7.2 feet each of the past two seasons, which is a 96th percentile mark. Extension can help in a variety of ways. First, it can make an average-velocity fastball seem like a high-octane offering. Second, it can really help the breaking pitches confound opposing hitters.

The latter is where Arrighetti has seen success. Arrighetti throws a variety of breakers, and in 2024, when he logged 145 innings, they produced a run value of five, which came in as an 81st percentile performance. Those pitches helped him post a 79th percentile strikeout rate and a 68th percentile whiff rate. Tweaking his fastball to play better off of those breaking balls could truly unlock his potential.

Zach Cole

As of MLB Pipeline's last update, Zach Cole is the 19th-best prospect in the league's 29th-best farm system. In short, he shouldn't be very good. However, a .255/.327/.553 line with four homers in just 52 big league plate appearances would suggest otherwise.

Cole didn't get nearly enough playing time to qualify on the Statcast leaderboards, but his 75.1 miles per hour bat speed, eye-popping 14.8% barrel rate, and stellar 48.1% hard hit percentage were all very solid marks. Cole isn't just a slugger; however, he's got some wheels, too, posting a 28.7 feet per second sprint speed, which was in the 83rd percentile.

You can't anoint Cole just yet. He struck out 38.5% of the time during his cup of coffee, and strikeouts have long been a bugaboo for him throughout his minor league career. He'll need to figure that out, but if he does, he could become a five-tool monster.

Cristian Javier

Cristian Javier likely wasn't at full strength when he returned down the stretch, 14 months after undergoing Tommy John surgery. His 4.62 ERA wasn't the result he or the Astros wanted, but there's some reason to believe what he was slinging out there wasn't nearly that bad.

Like some of the others, Javier's 37 innings pitched weren't enough to qualify, but the metrics are impressive nonetheless. Javier gave up a 38.3% hard hit rate and 6.5% barrel rate, both of which are elite. The result of those metrics was a .212 expected batting average, which, when combined with the other metrics, gave him a 3.41 expected ERA. In fact, Javier was victimised by a laughably low 59.4% left on base rate, which jacked up his actual ERA.

Javier's shown that he can rack up the Ks in the past, and if he can combine the two facets, he can reach new heights in 2026. If that happens, he could fill the No. 2 starter void.

 

 

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