Dierker thinks they should move Luke to 3rd? I know he's always been an outside-the-box thinker, but this is just plain strange.
I think its cuz his offensive skills are more in line with a third baseman. And thanks for correcting me, i always get the gm and manager confused in baseball, my bad. I mean luke has a good arm and maybe playing in the infield could reduce the amount of wear on his body so he can have less injuries (i think outfielders are more prone to injuries). I would prefer to have speedy guys in the outfield so we can add that 1st to 3rd running element to our lineup. If we added luis castillo to this lineup, we'd could have 4 speedy guys in the lineup at once with pence, castillo, everett and abercrombie/ anderson while having 4 sluggers pence, berkman, scott, lee.
looks like JR Towles is for sure going to be on the big league club... the brewers picked up Munson from waivers.
I would say instead of focusing on big names on the free agent market, work on the farm system. Look at this postseason and the teams that were contending for a playoff spot this year. Can somebody mention who was the big free agent acquisition made by the Rockies this year? Indians? I mean, Kenny Lofton, Joe Borowski, Trot Nixon, Josh Fogg... Those aren't exactly your marquee free agents. Focus on draft and Latin America scouting, develope that young talent, keep the core of Pence, Berkman, Oswalt and Lee, find out how good are really are Patton, Gutierrez, Paulino, Towels, etc. to figure out what this team really needs and wait for a couple of years because, admit it, financially, the Astros have to be very creative to compete on the open market against the Red Sox, Yankees, Mets, Angels, etc. Besides, out of the 4 teams still alive in the postseason, 3 of them are on the bottom 10th in payroll.
you realize the inherent contradition in these points, right?? the astros have won as many pennants as the yankees, red sox and angels in the last 5 years. they've been quite competitive.
When I said compete, I meant financially. For example, let's say Santana becomes a free agent. Do you think the Astros will be able to match any offer the Yankees, Mets, Red Sox make to him? But I agree, I made it sound as a contradiction
What about getting barfield from the indians to play 2B? He'd be cheap, he's young, he's fast, he had a bad year in cleveland but im gonna say that was because he changed to the american league. It would be a good low risk pick up for the astros that could work out well for us.
Burke had a higher OPS than Barfield in 2006 (.767 to .741), which was Barfield's good season. Even in Burke's terrible 2007, he was still far superior to Barfield (.666 to .594). Why is this a good idea?
Barfield was brought up by Kevin Bass on the radio today, that's probably why it's being brought up in here. And Cat, are you going to defend Burke in that same tone of baseball knowledge superiority you used whenever people said something negative about Ensberg? I think you were the same way about Jason Jennings, I could be wrong.
Since when are stats ever a perfect predictor 100 percent of the time? I didn't realize I had said or implied that. The odds were high that Ensberg would be a serviceable player last season. He wasn't. That's random luck, and it happens sometimes. Same can be said with Jennings' elbow. But by and large, statistical analysis -- particularly numbers that are all-encompassing (OPS, OPS+, VORP, BABIP, etc.) -- gives you a good indication of how a player can be expected to play in the future. If someone says something the opposite of that without making much of a logical case for it, I'm going to debate my side, yes. By the way, I wasn't exactly endorsing Burke there. I'm certainly not opposed to signing a Luis Castillo, or even starting Loretta at second. I was just pointing out that as much criticism as Burke has received, Barfield has been an even worse player over the course of the last two years, and it's not all that close.
Some guys said in the astros.com forum that we traded ty wiggington to the angels for ss prospect brandon wood. Dont know if its true. Dont shoot the messenger. This guy sounds crazy and his name is cowscrotum. But if this is legit, it would be awesome.
I dunno the rockets had a secret deal for mike james that they waited until the offseason to announce. Maybe its another wink wink nod nod thing. Maybe its not.
