Heard this morning on SR610 that he has narrowed his choices down to 4 teams and the Astros are one of the four.
Geez...the White Sox are talking about making another big trade....LOL...they are certainly not resting on their laurels....ahem...any time you're ready Tim....
http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/houston_astros/index.html Nothing about nomar yet, but there is a very good article on Rocket
"According to my Astros source, look for Clemens to return to Houston and start taking advantage of some of his previously negotiated perks. In 2006, Clemens would skip more road trips to stay with his family. Look for Roger to pull a few strings and try to get the Astros to promote his son Koby to the Corpus Christi Hooks (Double A club located in Texas). Third baseman Koby has played just nine games at Class A with the Tri City ValleyCats in New York. In addition, Roger has a ten-year agreement to work for the Astros after retirement to work with the club's young players. After pitching in the World Baseball Classic, expect Clemens to take a few months off and return to the Astros around mid-June. His salary will certainly be less than $18MM, and the team will hopefully have acquired the improved offensive players Clemens desires. " Hmmmmmm
IMO, 2 years $9 mil contract should get it done for Nomar. He's still a stud when healthy (a big IF I know), and for that type of money he's a good deal with high rewards potential. Seriously, let's get this done, the guy is still good people, despite the risks we might be taking, and he's a huge insurance policy in case Bags can't return. Get'r done!
I just read on OrangeWhoopass that Purura said last night on the night shift that Nomar could help the team at either SS or 3B, and that Nomar himself mentioned playing left. Can anyone confirm this? If this is true, I would guess that we were shopping either Everett or Ensberg, isn't he arbitration eligible (ie about to get a big raise)?
"I hate watching Everett make bad throws way over the first baseman's head on a routine play." I'm a huge Nomar fan (at least, before he was a Cub), and he was my favorite Non-Astro for about 6 years before as a Red Sox...Nomar is prone to Airmailing some throws too.
For whatever it's worth, I went to check out Garciapara's hit charts on MLB.com at Fenway and Wrigley as well as the limited numbers at Minute Maid and a scattering of other parks. His history shows him to be a VERY strong dead pull hitter. Almost all of his homers are to right field. (38 of 41 at Fenway, 7 of 8 at Wrigley) and almost all of his doubles are hit either scattered to left, or right down the line to right and just about every triple he had in Boston was to center-left, which is deep at Fenway, just as at Minute Maid. His two homers listed at Minute Maid are to the same location in the Crawford boxes. This leads me to believe that he might be well suited to Minute Maid. The only other discernable trend that I can see is that while at Fenway, his ground outs and fly outs were essentially evenly distributed between center, left and right, his numbers shifted at Wrigley so that all ground outs were pulled to the left side and the fly outs were weighted towards right. Typically flying out to right is a sign of slowing bat speed and excessive ground outs to left a sign of compensation for the same. This concerns me but I guess could be more a sign of injury? Anyway, IMHO the abnormal distribution of his hit charts make me think Minute Maid might be good for him.
Nomar's definitely not a bad hitter...but the guy just can't stay healthy! Go look at his last 3 seasons...in 3 years he hasn't even combined to play 162 games. How can we expect him to give us a full season? I'd rather spend that money elsewhere...as much as I want a bat, he's not worth it. Let Luke Scott and Burke have that spot before overpaying Nomar.
Not that I disagree that he's an injury risk - he is - but this isn't true. He played in 156 games as recently as 2003, actually. It's the last two years that have been injury-ravaged.
If we can get him at a good price, then we need to sign him. He is an upgrade, if healthy, at left field. All we need to do is not let him wear batting gloves because his little routine during his at bats is Annoying.
Is it down to the Dodgers and Astros? The Indians and Yankees are not optimistic. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2260561
Yeah he owns homes out in LA, that is what I was thinking about when I posted about his connections there. I dunno, but LA is not as good as the Stros. He wants to play OF it seems. Who the hell knows.
