Not a fan of Maldonado, but he was the second worst at catching pitches in the regular season (66 WPs + PBs). He just has a bad stretch in the playoffs, but it should have been common knowledge before playoffs. I think before playoffs, Astros fans in general had too high an opinion of Maldonado. After playoffs, I think, Astros fans in general have too low an opinion of Maldonado.
Maldonado has a gun, he can throw out base runners at a elite rate. He could slug a little bit too. Unfortunately ever other thing he did was well below the AA level.
Yup, unless it was a disrespectfully low offer of like $500k each year, I will count this as a strike against our front office. Especially if Wilson Ramos would have later signed for relative peanuts, that would've pissed me off even more. It's a good thing that he and/or his agent are incompetent, and rejected our offer.
It's funny, re-reading his trade thread, how many people were talking up his being a Gold Glove catcher! See: Young, Michael, GG shortstop
I definitely prefer Chirinos to Maldonado. But after seeing how cheap Grandal, Ramos, and Lucroy signed, I really wish Houston had gotten one of them.
I agree, hell I was banging the drum for a Ramos trade last year, instead we went with a catcher that couldn't catch. I agree with you on Grandal and Ramos, but I prefer Chirinos over Lucroy. I am more bullish on Chirinos than most, he is criminally underrated.
He's a good defensive catcher, though. His defensive problem happens infrequently and is only a problem when it happens in bunches. Most of the time, a passed ball here or there goes unnoticed.
What does Maldonado give the Astros that Stassi doesn't? Stassi had double the WAR in about half the games.
Maldonado tried to come back to the table after we signed Chirinos but we basically told him we moved on. Don’t see why that would be any different now but I’m not sure.
The market for Craig Kimbrel has gotten smaller as the once-interested Nats and Braves are no longer "in" on the All-Star closer.
Maldonado to the Royals for $2.5M/1yr, can earn another $1.5M in incentives. Bad agent advice (or misjudging his own value) cost him at least $8M.
My reasoning was Stassi has injury problems and it was pretty bad last year when McCann had to be an intermediary and relay messages between Verlander and Stassi. I don't view Maldonado as much of an improvement over Stassi, but the pitchers seemed to prefer pitching to Maldonado.
Bullet dodged, dude was terrible blocking deuces in the dirt and just catching the random fastball. I remember saying in the RedSox series why steal 2nd base, Maldonado is surely going to give a free pass, maybe all the way to 3rd. Chirinos is going to be serviceable and the young guys need sometime in the show to see what they offer. We should have the division without to much fuss and if need be trade for an experienced back-up/starter by trade deadline. Might have saved enough money on the books in this deal to get DK or another starter here via trade.
Maybe he meant to say Chirinos has injury issues. So if Chirinos gets injured this season, they're have to rely on Stassi to fill in like last year when McCann went down. And if you search Chironos injury, it looks like he gets injured quite a bit in the last couple of seasons.
That may be, but he was responding to my post in which I asked what does Maldonado supply that Stassi doesn't? And considering he typed Stassi three times in his post, I am pretty confident he meant to say Stassi
