Yulieski Gurriel agrees to 5/$47M deal with the Astros

As long as he's a professional hitter and keep his bat speed it'll still be a great signing. If it lands his brother too, might be the best move of the Luhnow era.

 

Looks like he sat out tonight

Poor guy must be worn out from all that travel

 

I don't get it. He only plays every other game and only half a game sometimes at that?

 

Lol

Of this is true, and no reason to believe it isnt

The dude is 32 and can't play back to back days yet, and we are "counting" on him to help at the MLB level soon?

For some reason I'm picturing a dude with a Cuban cigar sitting back counting 40 mill

 

This is strange. Starting to be with some of you guys about this process. If he is in uniform he should at least DH every game. Baffling unless he took Live BP for 3 hours before the game and took a bunch of grounders.

 

He has the reputation of being a very hard worker and taking care of his body.

Having said that, he is 32 years old and has never played baseball in the USA and hasn't played organized baseball in some time.

I don't really have a problem with the approach they are taking with him. To expect him to immediately contribute a lot is overly optimistic.

The good news is that the reports from scouts have been overall very positive, with a confirmation that he still has elite bat speed.

 

Better to break him in slowly and ramp things up over time than it would be to wear him down in A/AA and have him get hurt before he even gets to the bigs. Even of he only plays 4 days a week for the first 2-3 weeks in the bigs, that's still better than what we've had to trot out there since Valbuena went down.

 

takes more than 4 days to come up after a year off from baseball and never being in this country or the MLB -- board flips out

takes a day off -- board flips out

wipes his butt standing up -- board flips out

He'll come up fairly soon, and the goal is to help in the playoff push this season. The Astros aren't actively trying to screw that up. Trust that much. How do you (those worried) think you have more insight into this process to micromanage the day-to-day decisions here? It's certainly not typical.

 

If he isn't going to be able to make a major contribution this year, that is fine. Maybe the biggest part of signing him was getting his brother. We don't really know any of those answers.

But when the GM of the organization defends his lack of moves at the deadline by saying "we already made a big move by signing Gurriel, who will be a big part of our success this year" some of us might expect the guy to at least be able to play baseball two days in a row, 3 weeks after he was signed.

It's ok to be critical of your team sometimes. I like Luhnow overall, but we don't have to just praise every move he makes and feel like we can't complain about anything they do. In the end, without people like us watching on TV and going to the ballparks, there would be no mlb.

 

Nicely said

 

Good post we have to be able to flip out if he wipes standing up.

 

But he looks more of a wipe while sitting kind of guy. I mean, he is 32, he should be wiser than standing up and wiping. Come on guys...

 

This is really puzzling to me...he's 32, not 52...and he's been signed for a few weeks. He should have already been in decent shape before he was signed, so the fact that he hasnt been playing back to back is mind boggling. Baseball isnt a very demanding sport. You stand in a spot 90% of the time. This shouldnt be a challenge at all.

I was all for keeping Gurriel in the minors for a few weeks, but that was with the assumption that he would be playing every day and getting his reps down...they need to get him on a normal program moving forward.

 

He looks comfortable sitting in the pic from the first post in this thread, you are probably right.

Bregman is probably a stand man, Gurriel needs to get to the majors quick and coach him up.

 

Bottom line is this organization doesn't take $50M lightly. So rest assured they firmly believe at least one of the following is true:

They had to get Yuli to get Lourdes and Lourdes is worth $50M+.

Yuli is worth $50M.

If either of that is true, Houston will have signed a very good player who should be a core contributor over the next 5(+) years.

 

I dont know much about Lourdes, but the way he's talked about here has me excited and hopeful that he is the reason we signed Yuli.

 

I don't know. A lot of people posting in the other thread seem to be older and still standing up..maybe there should have been an age bracket to go with the "stand up" vote.

 

Totally ok to be critical of the team. I just don't see how getting down to the micro level of "he's taking a day off, wtf" is reasonable. If you had quotes from him saying "I could play / they just sat me out, it's crazy" then fine. But otherwise, there are a litany of reasons he could be sitting. Not worth getting into the nitty gritty and making a lot of assumptions on it.

They said he'll be up in a few weeks from when he started..I think he will. I think the coaches who know exactly how much time they have him for, what they've been asked to do with him, and where he's going next will do the right things for him to be ready on the timetable already set in place.

 

I just walked into this barfight.

Somebody wanna tell me what the hell is going on before I start swinging?