This is a very incremental move, but just to play devil's advocate here, what exactly does Maldonado do better than Stassi?
They don’t have faith in his ability to call a game. None of the vets want anything to do with him behind the plate.
Play baseball. Even if it ends up being incremental, it’s a positive step for essentially zero cost. There’s nothing to complain about.
I really hope the yanks acquire kenneth robert "NAILS" giles. To see him implode in the bronx would be too lovely
Work with our pitchers... the reason he doesn't play very much is because hasn't really endeared himself to our veteran starters. This is somewhat speculative, for sure, but there has been enough smoke around this conversation to believe that there's an actual fire. And he hasn't done anything at the plate. At least Machete will give you a big home run every now and then.
I'm picking the Astros too. The MVP is back and healthy. Altuve in his last 20 games has a .384 BA 1.098OPS
Haha. Stassi is one of the best catchers in the league in terms of pitch framing. Not sure what pitcher wouldn't want those extra strikes. Vet pitchers can call their own game - just shake the catcher off.
Watching the games. Verlander’s distaste is well known. Watch Miley’s last game - he’s a guy who’s known for working fast, and Miley was giving Stassi an awful lot of funny looks throughout. There’s a reason Chirinos has been overworked. I agree that they don’t seem to perform poorly with him behind the plate, but it’s pretty clear he can’t get on the same page as them. ... and it’s not surprising a lot of the pundit comments about this trade are about how much the pitchers like pitching to Maldonado.
If the "they" is Astros pitchers, the Astros pitchers not liking pitching to him is based on Astros pitchers not liking to pitch to him. If the they is the Astros FO, the Astros just traded for MM which is either based on trying to appease pitchers or that they agree with pitchers.
