Yes the health issue is clear. On the other topic - I would consider trading some of our 1b/3b prospects for a more proven bat. Our window is here right now, and I put that ahead of grooming prospects.
Listing it out the way you did makes it sound more than it is. Feldman and Fister are competing for 1 SP spot and Astros have 4 guys competing for it. Hard to see that being a hard spot to fill even if a guy is only a 1 WAR guy. Marisnick can start and provide near Rasmus value. Gomez could be a tough loss. Bregman and Moran will get shot at third or get traded for help. Valbuena is good, but doesn't set the bar so high such that a huge drop should be expected. Catcher could be a problem. Neshek...replaceable. 1B... Reed should be here in 2016 and 2017..so little change. I expect a lot of stuff happens so I doubt the above is even a third right. Some unexpected bad things will happen. Some unexpected good things will happen. Of the guys Astros could lose, Gomez and Castro losses look to hurt most. That said, I expect enough good stuff happens that they only need free agent dollars to patch holes even if we don't know exactly where those holes will be a year out.
The team that's really loaded are the Cubs. The Astros added Giles and Fister and got rid of some players that were a liability. It will be interesting to see if Reed can win the 1st base job.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">GM <a href="https://twitter.com/jluhnow">@jluhnow</a> on the 2016 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Astros?src=hash">#Astros</a>: "This team is built to go the distance this year." <a href="https://t.co/skAwlM2mi6">pic.twitter.com/skAwlM2mi6</a></p>— Mark Berman (@MarkBermanFox26) <a href="https://twitter.com/MarkBermanFox26/status/692898178668978177">January 29, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
We aren't "grooming prospects" in a way that encourages losing. The teams that win don't always have 1-9 guys that hit/field/do it all. You can still win while looking at the future as well--all depends on the team. Letting Singleton/Reed/White/etc. compete for a job is combining building a current contender with considering longterm success. It's ok to have guys like them slot into the 7 hole in the order and produce at that level. Let's hope one of them develops into a top of the order guy, but this team can win while they're down there, as evidenced by last year. More importantly, if one of them pans out, it gives the team a lot of flexibility going forward to continue building a winner.
Wish that would end all the Jim Crane is cheap talk, the payroll was like 25 million when the rebuild game was started. And this is in spite of hundreds of games over the last 2-3 years being south of 10k in attendance.
All that matters to me now is that he does not go Drayton on us and lose existing players to free agency while they are still young and cores members of this team. With even just Darryl Kile I feel like we could have won the World Series in 1998. Stupid San Diego Steroids.
That's silly. Everyone loses players to free agency. The Dodgers just lost Greinke in a competing time. The Red Sox lost Ellsbury a couple of years ago. The Nats just lost Jordan Zimmermann to go with a more recent example of a homegrown product on a contender. If you have a good young core that pans out really well, you won't be able to keep everyone. That's why you have a farm system...you need some cost-controlled talent at all times to balance out. I can't see the Astros letting Keuchel or Correa go. Aside from that, it will depend on how guys develop / what the rest of the needs and depth look like when everyone gets expensive. Something like DK free agency will happen.. you gotta be ready for it.
If you're talking about tickets sold (which is how it's measured, and all that matters if we're talking about dollars for payroll), I don't believe they've had even one game south of 10K over the last 2-3 years. I'm with you on your point about payroll, though.
Not with the way we scored runs that series. Hard to win a series when you only have 1 game in a 4 game series where you score more than 1 run.
They've done exactly what they said they would, in regards to payroll. However, $100 million is not what it once was... Several smaller markets (smaller than Houston) have teams with greater payrolls. Eventually should expect payroll to reflect the size of the overall market... Which would probably end up around league median.
DK may have been able to get a hit off the tremendous pitching of one of the all-time greats...Sterling Hitchcock.
While the Astros did not go out and sign a $100,000,000 free agent (it wasn't going to happen after Rasmus took the QO), I do suspect that they will be very active at the trade deadline again. I wouldn't be surprised if they let the positional battles go until the deadline, and if no one takes advantage, they then make a move.... it costs less and still fills their needs in the post season.
$100,000,000 is not a very high payroll in a vacuum. It is about what the Pirates and Twins have, and is in the bottom 1/3. Only the Phillies are a comparable market that have a smaller payroll. However from the beginning we knew the Astros were unlikely to be a big spender. Crane has a lot of investors to answer to, there was the bankruptcy fiasco and purging of the team leading to low attendance numbers for years. I don't think that Crane is actually cheap. I do believe he is playing catch up with his investors, and knows he will need money saved up on the back end for when the prospect well slows down and home grown players get more expensive as their arbitration clock ticks.
I do not think that is it. I think that Luhnow has no choice but to take the long view. The Astros have players that they will want to keep 3 years out and it would suck hard (Carlos Lee hard) to pay David Price et al $25 large per year as his talent wanes and our home grown talent walks. I do agree that if Rasmus had not accepted his QO, the Astros would have taken that $16 large and went after a big name FA like maybe Alex Gordon.
Come on now Max Ive suppressed the memory of ******** ********* successfully for ages, please don't ever post references again.
That.. and the absurd schedule that featured a day off between each of the first 3 games that allowed Brown to come back for pivotal game 3 (instead of a usual game 4 or 5).
Added him to my Astros franchise on MLB TheShow. Hopefully he's as good in real life as he is on the video game. 8 innings of 1-run baseball last night.
