Well, he did hit 22 homers and 25 doubles in only 378 at bats and a slugging over .500, plus he was young for triple a players. The problem we have with Singleton and Villar is that we can't give these guys at bats to develop in the majors as we are playoff contenders. I think they have values in trades. A good trading partner are the Rockies, as they have problems at 1b and SS. We could trade Villar and Singleton to Colorado for a guys like Jairo Diaz and Sam Moll
Sigh. You can make ANY team seem mediocre, save perhaps the Cardinals, if you eliminate their best 25-game stretch and focus on the other 137 (in your words, "the majority"). That's just how the sport works. The Astros' expected W/L record, given their production, was 94-68. Barring extreme injuries, a .500 record for the same or comparably talented team seems very unreasonable.
So you are assuming that Correa and Springer do not take steps forward? If they do anything at all different with 1st and 3rd it is almost by default an upgrade. A healthy Gomez with at worst Rasmus and Springer is a dominate outfield. Catcher should really be our only negative position. Splurge on a closer and i think this team could be pretty good. But sure, go glass half empty.
Exactly, people don't realize how unlucky the Astros were in terms of their record. They lost so many 1-run games but their run differential suggests they were a mid 90 win team, also evidenced by their performance in the playoffs.
The loss of Springer was huge.. Kazmir sucked.. and the bullpen failed. Maybe the bully was overworked. I think one extra arm there (a real closer), adding one of our 1B prospects, getting a real DH, and health will put us at 95 wins easily. We only need to add 2 players outside the organization.. maybe one if they just DH Tucker. Kazmir's arm can be replaced with VV. He struck out during batting practice and was fired.
I made two points wrt to the Astros after their fast start: they played 500 ball they significantly upgraded their roster The latter point is troubling, especially projecting for next year. I do get that underlying numbers implied the Astros should have had a better record. But their record was their record (and that just how the sports work). I am not sure I trust the underlying numbers.
The bullpen was not overworked, as we had a very good rotation, the bullpen was not used as most are. The innings pitched by our bullpen is low in comparison with others. The problem is we never had a real good 8th inning guy, able to get lefties and righties out. When we tried Harris there, he struggled. We need 1 closer or 8th inning guy, and Madson could be the answer.
Thats why i put a lot of blame on Hinch, as those 1 run games the decisions by the manager USUALLY make a difference, for good or bad.
The latter point was missing Springer. They upgraded the roster, but lost the only high OBP guy on this team (and Altuve slumped for a long while in there). The upgrades did not help get more guys on base. So I think the upgrades were not balanced, and so it's hard to say that the team at the end was significantly better offensively (until Springer was back and healthy) than they were in the early season when some sluggers could cover others
I agree with you, this team was average for most of the year, and at the end, we were awful. We were great at the beginning, average in the middle, and awful in September. Then in October, in the playoff, we did like the middle of the year, .500. We won 1 game vs Yankees and lost 3 of 5 vs Royals, meaning, 3 and 3 record in the playoffs, .500. I think we need to improve the bullpen, and then we are going to be able to win those 94 games others expect us to win.
Except that it's not entirely true: keep in mind, they played 61 games without George Springer, who was their best all-around hitter last year behind Correa. They were 57-44 with him in the starting line-up (91-win pace); 29-32 without him. Springer's full-year WAR pace was ~6.0; his extended loss was significant.
I agree with you on that note, Springer is a potent bat and when not playing is a big hole in the lineup. Also, we should expect a much better year from Carlos Gomez.
Your record is your record. It describes what happened. However, there are things that predict your record in the future better than your record..and that is just how sports works. A lot of teams may have something that causes them to outperform there record. However, more teams future performance is governed by the underlying stats. Off the 10 or teams that are skeptics of the underlying stats...not one made the playoffs. Moneyball has won. It has been 7 or 8 years since the last team that wasn't heavily into the underlying stats won a World Series.
Madson would be awesome. I still wouldn't want Gregerson closing though. Luke had good numbers against lefties and righties allowing a .606 and .537 OPS respectively. Get a fireballing strikeout artist to close and drop Luke to the 8th.
If we can get both, and have Madson in the 7th, Gregerson in the 8th and a top closer (Miller, Storen, Melancon) then we could compete with Royals bullpen.
dont get this rubish "astros dont definitively expect to go after top flight players" stuff. The roayals didnt go after cueto, zobrist and a bullpen? We have such a low payroll, no reason why we cant go after a big bat with a good ba.
