It's not unreasonable. They had all strong peaks in the past. Darvish, I think is gonna get paid no matter what though and whatever starting spot he would have taken now belongs to Cole. As for the other two, I think the skepticism over those distressed assets is real. CarGo had a lengthy Fangraphs write-up the other day about how his days of even being an above-average regular may be over. Lucroy sandwiched his 4.6 WAR in 2016 with 1.1 and 1.2 WAR in 2015 and 2017, respectively. Rolling the dice on either of those guys just seems moot when the Astros just produced a historic offensive season. Even if CarGo bounces back and has an all-star season... so what? They'd probably still be the number one offensive team anyway. I'd much much rather they toss 6-7 mil a year at Tony Watson than CarGo or Lucroy OR just save that money for inevitable extension for one of the Core 4.
I think Lucroys upside is 10 war over the next 4 seasons, with his realistic downside being 4 war over the next 3 seasons as he declines and is forced out of the game. That’s a value of $32-80M. There’s upside there for him to be a good everyday catcher for Houston replacing McCann through the rest of Houston’s competitive window. And the downside is a fair value backup at $30M. I just don’t see anyway Lucroy is a bad bet for <$12M/yr. CarGo presents less upside and long term value, so I agree it doesn’t make a ton of sense to spend money on him unless they don’t believe in any internal options. But he could be a 120wRC+ guy for the next 2 seasons, which is great and he could replace Gattis as the DH next season. The downside of a $6M/yr contract is pretty minimal. Darvish is a higher risk/reward play, he could be the ace once Verlander and Keuchel leave that bridges the rest of the competitive window. But as always there’s tremendous risk in a mid market team giving $100M+ to a pitcher.
Can we stop talking about Darvish like it’s even a remote possibility. Astros interest in him has been nonexistant since getting Cole.
Yeah let’s just stop talking about everything. This website is only for discussing **** that is likely to ****ing happen.
i mean, i don't care what people want to chat about. But I do agree with him that Darvish isn't happening and the discussions around him are just silly. If the Astros sign Darvish or JD Martinez, I'll gladly double my recent donation to the site
Not saying you're right. Not saying you're wrong. Just pointing out at that where the Astros are on the win curve, the marginal benefit of Lucroy and CarGo isn't significant. If they have any plans for extensions for anyone they're better left saving money for that, signing Watson or preparing to take on money at the deadline after they've identified a hole IMHO.
Yeah, what’s 400k at this point? I know a lot of people are down on Giles for his performance in the playoffs, but I’m hopeful. He’s got the stuff, just hope he can put it together mentally. I’d like to know how the Astros truly feel about Giles being the long term solution as the closer.
Except you're valuing him at previous WAR payment rates. If the whole market is correcting and people are no longer willing to pay $8MM for 1 WAR, then you're overpaying in that scenario. This only works well is if this is a one-year repricing and next year we go back to $8MM/yr for 1 WAR. On the plus side, if there really is a significant repricing going on over the next few years, that makes it far more likely we can retain a chunk of the current core.
I don't think $/WAR (edit expected WAR) is going down. The hold up seems to be years as teams don't want to be paying a guy who is producing nothing a year or two down the road.
We don't have a lot of data, but so far the only big contract we have is Lorenzo Cain. He has been a 5ish WAR player for the last 4 years. Do we really think the Brewers only expect 10 WAR out of him over the next 5 years? Do we think they would have been willing to sign him to a $30MM/1 year deal if we assume he's a 4 WAR player this year?
Steamer and Zips Projections have him at about 3 WAR this season. Standard aging curve would yield about 9.5 WAR based on his age over the 5 years. When Greinke was a free agent, he was the only top free agent to sign outside of 5% of the $/WAR using a standard aging curve that I found. Years seems to be where most of the negotiations take place. Cain is the only one signed and I think team caved on the years. For 1 year, a team would likely sign him for 24 million. Maybe even $25.5 based on WAR projections. Astros would likely have done that if available earlier in the offseason.
Looks like Keuchel reverse cuts his sinker. I call it a reverse cutter since a LHP pitcher's normal cutter breaks left to right into the RH batter. This pitch broke right to left into the LH batter.
