Yeah, I'm not seeing this one. Gallardo will presumably cost almost as much as Kazmir, but his signing results in the loss of a draft pick and not many think he would be better than Kazmir anyway (Kazmir might be a no. 2 for half the season, while Gallardo will likely be a 5 for a full season).
Was just looking at schedule of events forSaturdays fan fest and it says there will be a new jersey reveal at the 1:15 - 1:45 session. Anyone heard anything about that?
I presume it will be a new Sunday/Home-only jersey. The navy batting practice jersey with rainbow sides was taken out of the game rotation last year. Also, Uni-Watch reported the Astros have dropped the 70's-esque all Orange hat (but I still see it in a prominent position of the Hats section of the MLB.com shop). If I remember correctly, MLB may be releasing new batting practice jersey & hat templates this year as well.
I would much, much rather go after Cliff Lee or Fister and see if they can regain form on a smaller deal than give up a pick and a big commitment to an average starter with diminishing peripherals like Gallardo.
Jeebus, Evan Drellich tweeting reponses to Jon Heyman is a vortex of dipsh!ttery that could potentially crash this bbs. I'd avoid those in the future.
Yup. The good news is that if the SP market is this dry, other teams wont be making further upgrades either.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/EvanDrellich">@EvanDrellich</a> Jed Lowrie was dumped because he was a man without a spot.</p>— James Rivers (@jamesatgsu) <a href="https://twitter.com/jamesatgsu/status/689507152378077184">January 19, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/EvanDrellich">@EvanDrellich</a> Valbuena (who they could have moved instead) & Singleton. Reed/White will take over if he struggles. Moran/Duffy also a factor</p>— James Rivers (@jamesatgsu) <a href="https://twitter.com/jamesatgsu/status/689511761813377024">January 19, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> I think it is funny how he can respond to me saying Jed not having a spot claiming he'd be a starter at 1B/3B, but not when I post about the depth at those spots. It was going to be Valbuena or Lowrie at 3B, and the rest trying to claim the 1B job. The reality is Valbuena & Lowrie are both good enough offensively to be starting 3B, but neither is good enough to be a regular 1B. I would like to see Duffy make the roster given how he has handled lefties in his minor league career (2015=.942 OPS, 2014=.899@AAA and 1.308@AA).
Yeah Drellich is such a tool, every tweet of his seems to have some sort or anti-Astros snark. I'm actually pretty optimistic about Valbuena. He started the season hitting all the HR and never getting on base, but that was actually against type. As the season went on his HR rate decreased, but his overall offensive production greatly stabilized. Prior to last season Valbuena was actually a decent OBP guy (.337 in the 2 previous seasons, 12% walk rate in the previous 3), and he was also getting on base for the last 4 months of last season. Having Marwin face lefties certainly helped in that regard as well. If they can limit his AB's against lefties, and a little rebound from the BABIP gods, I could see him get closer to his 2014 line (.249/.341/.435). Give Marwin or Duffy a chance in the platoon preferably Duffy because he has more upside.
http://twitter.com/Enrique_Rojas1/status/690214435017867265 LH Wandy Rodriguez and Astros agree minors league contract with invite
Wandy Rodriguez is 37. Weird. If he makes the team, he can take over the Chad Qualls Memorial Last of the 2005 Astros spot.
As a non roster invitee you could do a lot worse. Plus we could use another southpaw. His peripherals weren't terrible last year, and he was extremely good away from Arlington, although a small sample. Plus he always fared well at MMP. I could see him being worth a look in the spring, maybe stash him in Fresno. Don't think we could count this as adding another starter though.
Welcome back Wandy! Not a bad low risk signing at all. Hopefully he can help contribute in some way and retire an Astro
I feel like everyone just overlooks the whole sell-out for power approach the team had last year. Unquestionably they got the power they wanted but nearly everyone had OBPs below their career marks last year. I wonder if they step back from that this year. Jorge was swinging out of his shoes half the time.
He's a great signing on a minor league deal. He was huge for Texas last season. Threw 8 inning against us, and gave up 1 run. Had an ERA just over 4 as a starter. Hopefully we don't need him, but there is no harm in the signing.
Springer posted a K-rate of 24.2%, which was lower than he had in Lancaster, CC, or OKC. He also posted a very good .367 OBP. Gattis posted a K-rate of 19.7%, the lowest of his career. Valbuena's was 21.5%, highest of his career, and Castro's climbed above 30%. Players posted lower BABIP than their career norms, and our walk rates were down some. I think that contributed to lower OBP than anything else (none of our current roster have a history of great OBP to begin with).
Astros need to stop fooling around and bring some of these classics back: Astros really do have some of the best uniforms in MLB's history, with these, tequila sunrise, even the 1965 was so clean. Wish we would've rebranded with that recently:
The blue and gold starting to look a little dated... that star is huge, very 90's-ish. The fact that those were likely the best Astro teams in franchise history definitely works towards the nostalgia of them. Have no problems with their current uniforms... IMO, the design/color scheme/H in the star, all perfect. Sucks that this wasn't the rebrand when they moved to MMP to begin with (thanks to Drayton), as they could have built it up from scratch within the ballpark (instead of noticeably trying to cover up all the original brick/sand/pinstripe schemes like they did).
Wondering if they are going to try him out as a lefty reliever to replace Perez. Sipp is the only lefty we have in the bullpen. Don't think Wandy's done much bullpen work in his career though.
The MLB trading deadline has been moved to Aug. 1 instead of July 31, since July 31 is a Sunday — Bob Nightengale
