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Either we are saving up to try and money whip someone, or Dana's board is just really different than the "consensus."  Lot of seemingly under slot draftees so far.image.thumb.png.cb8f930e61647f1da040fb73e4bf7675.png

Edited by Chuckie Finster

off topic, I just saw this really rare rookie card and was wondering what its value was

Screenshot_20230710_120408_Firefox.thumb.jpg.1062dcc4ebd4d3ae19fe7991cbb24a28.jpg

Someone posted upthread a bitch about us not doing anything at starting pitcher and that sent me on a deep dive into FA starting pitchers signed this off-season. I’m going to talk about it on the podcast but let’s just say you wouldn’t want to be in the business of trying to sign a FA pitcher in 2023 unless you were from the future.
33 guys got Major league contracts, and they are collectively making 450M this year.   I think you’d say probably at most 12 teams are probably happy with their signings. And of that 12 one was the Japanese guy and 1 was Kershaw, both of those guys probably shouldn’t even count in the analysis. Of the 10 left over 3 or 4 of them are average or worse but the teams probably happy because they are pitching innings (someone has to) on short years and short money. Not someone you’d want to pay 6M to be Blanco for you if you could pay Blanco himself 600k to do that for you.
Leaving apart the international guy and a Kershaw there are only 4/31 pitchers I think Astros fans would be happy with. That’s pretty miserable odds.
i think it made perfect sense to not sign a FA guy this winter. Unless you absolutely knew out of those 31 guys you could sign Nathan E I, Wacha, Taijuan Walker or Zach Effin. And everyone other than Wacha comes with a chance to turn back into a pumpkin and really regret the deal in future years. 

3 minutes ago, rvm96 said:

Another senior sign in round 9.

His name is Jeron and he looks like this.

image.jpeg.9ec7b14fd11d4637f0612f53c5d59c71.jpeg

Now I think they're just fucking with us.

57 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

Unless you absolutely knew out of those 31 guys you could sign Nathan E I, Wacha, Taijuan Walker or Zach Effin.

Fwiw, I said we should have signed a starter but it was very much in hindsight.  I favored Eovaldi because it would have denied him to Texas, he has pitches that play well in the post-season (except against us 😉) and ideally we wouldn’t need more than 120 innings out of him (so his injury history wouldn’t have been too big an issue).  
 

Now do hitters-I haven’t done anything formal but every time I look at our missed connections there it looks like we’d be paying a premium (or HUGE premium) for the same or worse production.  That said, I think we should have added depth, the absence of which makes our trade options more limited.  

You can always trade for a pitcher, hitters not so much 

this past FA season was garbage. Too much dumb money being thrown around 

Should be some fireworks in the 11th round for the Astros after another senior sign in the 10th.

39 minutes ago, LCHorn said:

Fwiw, I said we should have signed a starter but it was very much in hindsight.  I favored Eovaldi because it would have denied him to Texas, he has pitches that play well in the post-season (except against us 😉) and ideally we wouldn’t need more than 120 innings out of him (so his injury history wouldn’t have been too big an issue).  
 

Now do hitters-I haven’t done anything formal but every time I look at our missed connections there it looks like we’d be paying a premium (or HUGE premium) for the same or worse production.  That said, I think we should have added depth, the absence of which makes our trade options more limited.  

I will do hitters as well. We will probably talk about both of these on our Thursday pod (dropping 2 this week in honor of the ASG and start of the second half), but will post a high level summary here as well. 

30 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

You can always trade for a pitcher, hitters not so much 

this past FA season was garbage. Too much dumb money being thrown around 

Hitters in walk years are typically the cheapest item found in the trade market. Guys like JD Martinez (when he was great) got traded for next to nothing. 

53 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

 

 

 

The BYU guy will be arb eligible when he's 33.

@LCHorn here is your high level hitter stuff

3+ years and lots of money:  235M (this year only salary- tons more owed) 22.5 WAR prorated for a year.  6 good or fair deals for this year- 4 bad deals.  This is much worse than it looks when you consider you are supposed to massively outperform in the first couple years of the contract to make up for the last couple years of the contract.  Only guy doing that is Dansby Swanson by War, maybe Brendon Nimmo.  interestingly enough for as much shit as some people have given me for pounding the table for Contreras he only got 5/85 (17 per) and he has 1.5 WAR and a 105 OPS+  I know about the STL pitchers. Lets just say that after having to watch the shit show that is Martin Maldonado and hear everyone orgasm about OMG the intagnibles I'm not inclined to believe a pitcher if he told me the sky was blue

2 year deals- decent money:  111M in salary (this year only) and 10.26 War prorated for the year.  7 guys.  2 steals, 2 fair values and 3 no way jose deals.  The steals are Justin Turner and Cody Bellinger.

2 year, small money deals- Disaster!  45M in salary this year, pace for -6.7 WAR.  6 guys, 5 of which are a disaster and Brandon Drury, which is a fucking steal. This is the only category that doesn't come out to basically 1 WAR equals $10M on free agent market.

1 year small money (I've got Brantley here not to make a point but because Bellinger got 17M and Brantley got 12 and I don't think anyone else got anything in between:

19 players- 138.3 M in total salary- 14.04 WAR (projected) for the year.  9 of the 19 players are worth the contract based upon $/War, but I only count JD Martinez, Brandon Belt, Kevin Kiermaier, Adam Frazier Adam Duval, David Peralta, Tommy Pham, and Andrew Mccutchen as guys that we would probably like to play if we were more or less healthy.  Peralta is probably marginal, Kiermaier wouldn't be an offensive improvement nor would Frazier.  So, Pham, McCutchen, Duval Belt and Martinez that would improve our offense.  

There is NO move that we could have made to improve our offense more than deciding to DFA maldonado in the offseason.  The Astros signed a guy in the 3+ big money and lost, and they signed the most expensive guy in the 1 year small money category and lost.  Everything they did was a loss this offseason, but there weren't a ton of wins.  

Also, pretty pretty bad year for FA class when you consider that its only break even on the multi year deals and this should be about as good as it gets.  

 

1 hour ago, Scraps said:

 



if he’s in cc, I’ll be there 

Edited by tx 3 putt

Sugar Land is at home for like 9 days so not sure why he would go to CC

Listen to the podcast you filthy animals.  This thing is blowing up. Need your help to continue that.  We are almost at triple digits in listenership. Triple digits! Imagine, 100 people.  Mind boggling!

The median podcast has 27 listens and I think 100 would put us in like the top quarter or something.  if we could get to 1,000 listeners (we won't) we could make upwards of $20.00 per episode doing this.  Make that happen for us!

Did Framber not make the trip. I know they said he wasn't pitching, but Dusty said he was still gonna attend. I don't see him in any of the photos they are posting, or the team photo

5 minutes ago, Scraps said:

Did Framber not make the trip. I know they said he wasn't pitching, but Dusty said he was still gonna attend. I don't see him in any of the photos they are posting, or the team photo


he took the pic 

Full House 90S Tv GIF
 

 

IMG_5716.jpeg

18 minutes ago, Scraps said:

Did Framber not make the trip. I know they said he wasn't pitching, but Dusty said he was still gonna attend. I don't see him in any of the photos they are posting, or the team photo

He said he’s already taken a picture on that field 

 

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11 minutes ago, billfromlaketravis said:

This has to be worst sports week of the year right? No real basketball, baseball, or football for a full 5 days. 


only two days of the year without professional sports 

Reading the draft thread on crawfish boxes, someone mentioned Jio Meir and the 2009 draft which really took me down the rabbit hole. 

Some of this is just the state of sports journalism from 15 years ago but we're blessed to have alternatives to "Telvin Nash and Mike Kvasnicka are going to be stars!" that would seem such an illogical conclusion in the face of their performance. 

Some miscellaneous trivia--in that 2009 draft class JD Martinez would unsurprisingly lead in career WAR, Keuchel is #2, #3 is spoilered:

Spoiler

Kike Hernandez

Also, looks like the Rangers had a net negative WAR from their whole draft so it could be worse...

12 minutes ago, billfromlaketravis said:

This has to be worst sports week of the year right? No real basketball, baseball, or football for a full 5 days. 


only two days of the year without professional sports 

Looking at John Sickels 2018 top prospect list now.  Hector Perez and David Paulino both end up traded with Giles for Roberto Osuna who dropped off the face of the earth after he hit free agency in 2020. 

Looks like he's spent the last two years in Japan.  In 2023 he's pitched 26 innings and has a WHIP of .462.

A couple of over-performers of note:

14) Cristian Javier, RHP, Grade C+/B-: Age 20, signed out of Dominican in 2015; posted 2.25 ERA with 80/27 K/BB in 60 innings between NY-P, Low-A, and High-A, only 38 hits allowed; fastball report was right around 90-91 from Quad Cities but plays up due to strong curve, slider, and change-up; has the component ratios of a power pitcher and should not be under-rated despite the radar readings; like Armenteros, he knows how to pitch. ETA 2020.

16) Framber Valdez, LHP, Grade C+: Age 24, signed out of Dominican in 2015 at the old age of 21; posted 2.79 ERA with 73/29 K/BB in 61 innings in High-A but 5.88 ERA, 53/23 K/BB in 49 innings in Double-A; fastball up to 95-96 but curveball and change-up were less effective in Double-A, though K/rate remained solid; some disagreement about whether he starts or relieves in long run, but he’s a lefty who throws hard, he’ll land somewhere. ETA 2019.

And TNSTAAPP:

1) Forrest Whitley, RHP, Grade A/A-: Age 20, first round pick in 2016 from high school in Texas, outstanding 2017 season at three levels with combined 2.83 ERA, 143/34 K/BB in 92 innings, 78 hits; Texas League observers at end of season were full of praise, noting excellent command of mid-90s fastball and better secondary stuff than most pitchers his age, with slider, curve, and change-up all looking very good; mature mound presence as well; main issue now is building up workload and proving durability; possible top-of-the-rotation arm, may go with a straight Grade A when all the lists and rankings are complete. ETA 2019.

Mature mound presence.  If only that applied to any other part of his life.

I was thinking about this today and the draft is such a crap shoot, (as are big money international FA) if I could deploy the money however I wanted I think I would spend all $5M that gets spent on the American draft signing Latin players age 18 or older to 10k deals. You could sign like 500 of them and I’d bet you’d come out better then whatever you get from the American draft every year. 

With all this draft talk/Latin American signee reminiscence, it's worth noting that former hotshot SS prospect Freudis Nova opted to retire from professional baseball today at the age of 23.

Friday 8:38 can’t get here fast enough 

Daffy Duck Waiting GIF

Edited by tx 3 putt

13 minutes ago, Gourmand said:

With all this draft talk/Latin American signee reminiscence, it's worth noting that former hotshot SS prospect Freudis Nova opted to retire from professional baseball today at the age of 23.
 

 

So i can throw all his baseball cards away i guess

That Whitley ETA was juuuust a little off, unless we're talking about this arrival at the Disappointment Hall of Fame (located in College Station, by the way)

Day 3 kicks off now.  We are about to find out who (if anyone) we are going to try to moneywhip with our savings (if any) from likely going under slot all through the first 10 rounds.  

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