Miss the days of having three stud closers at once with Lidge, Dotel, Wags. Now I feel like my 13 year old nephew can close better than the garbage we have now
Gustave is straight up better than giles in my opinion. Let martes come up and be your closer. Anything.
Giles is a good closer. He is just not mariano rivera. The astros have had more wrong than giles this year.
He has been a good closer before, but he wasn't one this year. His ERA and WHIP are both too high to be classified as "good" by closer standards. In fact, I can only think of a handful who have been worse this year. You can't really sugarcoat it. I think he is better than he has shown this season, and I expect that he will bounce back, but he has not been a "good" closer this year at all.
Once that era balloons over 4 or your save rate is less than 75% I'm out. Time to give someone else a try. Ideally I'd like the closer to be under 3.00 era and save rate around 85%, as that would be good for the Astros. Right now his WAR is negative. I'd say Harris is most qualified to close at this point, but suspect Gregerson will have the gig if Giles is injured.
Our investment in Giles is too great to expect anything other than him being the opening day closer in 2017. If he gets gets rocked hard in April/May of 2017, then I could see other possibilities being explored. I am just waiting for someone(s) to decree that Giles is why we missed the playoffs
sign chapman, put giles in the 8th and harris in the 7th, and have dotel-lidge-wagner all over again.
Giles has not been a good closer for the Houston Astros. I'm on record here. Not a Giles fan. Hope he works out, but I'm not a believer. I'm sure a stats geek can tell me I'm wrong though. Looking forward to that.
The 2 true reasons we missed the playoffs is because (first) our rotation was, simply put, terrible, especially considering we did have two 20+ game winners last season; and (second), we were the Texas Rangers whipping boys for yet another season.
Texans are a much bigger disappointment, but yeah, two years now the Astros bullpen have done them in. Last year just a couple of outs from the AL championship. This year, with two starters injured, the bullpen has been stretched and finally imploded.
Giles isn't far behind on the list. His failure began before the season even started. If he'd done his job, the Luke-Harris failure never happens.
Was it that big of an investment, though? If they were to get a Chapman or another proven top closer this off season, all it does is make our pen that much better. I don't think what they gave up for Giles prevents them from making another move.
Its hard to imagine we would target a major RP (closer) in the offseason given our more glaring needs such as 1B, DH and #1 starter. But, I could see us putting one of Harris/Neshek/Gregorson out there as bait. We seem to have plenty of setup men, so cashing one in for a closer could make some sense I suppose. I didn't mean to imply we didn't have moves to make. More so, that if our relief staff remains unchanged through the offseason, I see the closer spot as Giles to lose, despite his 2016 shortcomings.
How are the Texans a much bigger disappointment? I suppose it depends on what your expectations were for both. But lots of baseball media saw Astros as a favorite to win division. SI made them cover boys. I haven't seen anything like that for Texans; and Texans have lost 1 game out of 3 so far.
1. Rockets laid the biggest egg ( even though it was a decent year ) 2. The Dynamo are meeting low expectactions 3. The Astros pretty much met expectations ( although Keuchel fell short ) 4. The Texans are pretty much meeting expectations ( win the division ) 5. The Cougars exceeded expectations by winning a NY6 bowl. And the train keeps rolling.
I assumed a year older for the Astros would mean a year better. I assumed they'd get some help from guys they brought up through the vaunted Death Star system. Astros didn't meet my expectations at all. And I'm sure they didn't meet their own expectations.