Nice review. Thanks Snake. I doubt Luhnow regrets any of those moves. JD and Villar got their chances on bad teams and Velasquez has pretty much done what was expected, flash excellence mixed in with durability concerns. He hasn't significantly outperformed while Giles has overall met expectations too.
No other thread is really on this topic, so I'll place it here (because the Brewers were considering recalling Hader for this start). On Friday, the Brewers are starting a lefty pitcher for the first time in 474 games. Pretty absurd. Would've loved to see Hader get the start. Their last lefty start was Tom Gorzelanny in August of 2013 (story below): Spoiler
From Twitter: Both of David Stearns' Astros imports have reached nice, round numbers tonight: 50 steals for Villar, 30 homers for Carter.
Yet defensive blunders and lack of OBP hurt them respectively. Glad to see then doing well for their own sakes, but they just weren't the answer.
Brett Oberholtzer is starting tonight... for the Angels. Apparently the Phillies waived him earlier this month.
one dude some were wishing we still had earlier this year..in case you missed it (I either did or forgot), Daniel Mengden went back down to AAA a month ago. After a 5.73 ERA over 48 innings in the ML this year, including a 9.00 across his last 23 innings. He's done well in AAA though and I'm sure will get another shot. TBD on whether he translates longterm.
For those wondering about how April's star is doing since May 1st: Spoiler Velasquez's K rate is still there at just over 10K/9, but his 17 HRs allowed is proving to be the nail in the coffin for him. There was a point where we thought that the Giles trade was a fleecing, but VV has come back down to earth for the remainder of the year. Giles still has a .2 WAR to Vinny's 1.5, but one would think that we may not have seen Devenski (2.0 WAR) or Musgrove in that starter spot if VV was here. All in all, the trade still has a few years on it before knowing how it really turned out. As for the rest of the trade... Spoiler ARod fan Brett Oberholtzer is no longer with the Phillies and put up a -.2 WAR in his brief stint. Thomas Eshelman has an ERA above 5 in AA with a WHIP above 1.60 in 12 starts. Both his H/9 and BB/9 have bumped up a tick since making the jump. Mark Appel has been out since late May after having a bone spur removed, but his numbers were far from impressive in AAA as he only went 6 innings once in 8 starts while still strugging to show control. And... Spoiler Derek Fisher, rumored to originally be in the deal, has put up a .779 OPS in AAA in his 18 games there so far in 2016 at the age of 22. If he can improve his K rate, it would be hard to imagine him not being included in an off season deal for another piece. Jonathan Arauz is 17 and... lets just give him some more time.
Atta boy Carlos! <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Rangers Carlos Gomez now 0 for last 12 with seven strikeouts.</p>— Anthony Andro (@aandro) <a href="https://twitter.com/aandro/status/769984483227467779">August 28, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Vince would have fit in pretty darn well in our rotation. VV: 1.5 WAR Fiers: .3 WAR Mchugh: -.4 WAR Keuchel: .4 WAR Fister: 1.9 WAR McCullers: 1.6 WAR
Hammering Hank ended his season with the Durham Bulls on a dribblers back to the mound. He barely got out of the batter's box before being thrown out at first.
That 2012 draft was amazing: MLB: 1 Correa 1 McCullers 3 Rodgers 4 Ruiz 7 Tucker AAA: 2 Fontana (40 man) 5 Aplin (40 man) 8 Heineman 13 Holmes 17 West 33 Jankowski 34 Hauschild 21 Wik is in High A 6 Phillips is a top prospect for Milwaukee 26 Hinojosa is a good prospect for the Giants 37 Dimock is in the Padres system 38 Remillard is in the White Sox system 40 Shaw is in the Mets system
Wow, Chris Carter is at 36 HR and a smooth .815 OPS. That type of production would be sweet in the Astros. But prospect fools gold strikes again. Reed was all the hype and was gong to be a world beater. Now we'll need to ride the roller coaster with him, argg... And by the time he's ready to hit his stride no doubt we'll have another highly touted first baseman we need to get playing time. Again, Astro fans went through the growing pains with a player just to have them flourish somewhere else. If anything Carter was never an easy out, he could work a walk, which is why he'd strike out so much. A feast or famine type of player who could make pitchers shake.
