Abreu has nasty stuff tho, his command is a problem but he has swing and miss stuff. Btw, this post doesn’t preclude me from cursing him out if he ****s around at some point. Seth Martinez has definitely been a bit lucky, but damn.
Abreu's usage this season is hilarious. Best reliever on the team and his average leverage is 7th on the team...behind Blake Taylor.
Who has been better than Abreu this season? Abreu clears the field in K-BB% by 4%. He's walking <10% of batters. His SwStr% and CSW% are basically tied with Stanek for best among the regular relievers on the team.
Are people in here still complaining about Click giving up prized assets and depleting our farm system for rentals? I must be missing something about how badly Toro is murdering MLB pitchers. Did you people forget we got Graveman (key rental), plus Montero? Or are you still upset that he dealt Myles Straw for Phil Maton (key pen piece down the stretch last year and balls hanging low still) and Yanier Diaz, who might be called up before Korey Lee? how do you people have such problems processing basic facts? Sure, we can add to our pen. And yes, relief pitching varies greatly year to year. I might be wrong but it seems like we have one of the best pens in the league at the moment…depths and talent. Sure it would be great if we had Josh Hader or prime Trevor Hoffman locking down the 9th. But some of this stuff is just plain stupid.
Seems like first world problems. Press ain't gonna be removed from his role and all the righties ahead of Abreu have all been solid to very good. Montero/Neris both have closing/high-leverage experience. Stanek's rocking a 517 ERA+. I think a decent argument could be made sliding above Maton in the pecking order, but Maton was nails in the post-season last year and Dusty probably trusts him. The bullpen usage seems perfectly fine to me. The pen as a whole is good to very good and making minor adjustments at the back end is meh. It's kinda nice to have a nails option in the 6th inning.
Abreu could be a closer, someday. He has pure filth for stuff. But, agree completely with you that the only really obvious move in leverage is to have him above Maton. As you rightly point out, all those other guys have been somewhere from useful and good to completely outstanding.
With the ginormous lead we have right now this is the perfect time to see how they respond to pressure situation. At the least give Neris, Montero and Maton a little extra rest. They don't have to pitch every leverage situation they are available for, sitting in a close game occasionally doesn't mean they've been demoted. To have a potential weapon like that relegated to mop up duty does seem shortsighted. Abreu has shown wipeout stuff so far this season.
I don't know what I would do with Pressly. He's clearly not his former self and is maybe the fourth or fifth best reliever on the team right now. He could however turn it around in a month or next season, who knows. I would at the least have Abreu third in the pecking order though. It's not just that Abreu has been about as good as Montero/Neris, but he's been clearly better than both of them this season. Maybe he will come back down to Earth but being at the bottom of the pecking order so far this season is laughably inept managing.
I agree. Probably have happened against the NY teams the next few games but give Abreu a shot in some leverage situations to see how handles. Need to give Neris, Montero, and Maton some rest or they may be on fumes going into the playoffs.
Question: How are the Astros going to use Verlander going forward. Going to be an issue down the road with his current usage and such? Maybe 6 man rotation when Odo or Lance comes back? Have him on the 10/15 day IL for rest? We have a good sizable lead in the division to withstand having JV taking a break.
I was skeptical of the idea of Diaz being the "real" target of the Cleveland trade (why wouldn't they protect him then?) but, at any rate, I'm becoming sold on him as a potential above average player at the next level.
Agree it'll be useful to rotate Abreu into higher leverage situations for experience sake but there's a needle to thread there. Can't just demote the other guys out of their current roles just cause. That'll create a lot of bad blood. Neris didn't sign here to not even have a setup role. Montero, having been a closer, also probably wouldn't take a demotion out of the setup role well.
Prior to his meltdown, Pressly had been dominant (2.14 FIP, 0.98 WHIP) in the 15 games after his funky start to the season. He simply wasn't locating...at all Thursday. People tend to make too much out of every bad outing.
There's probably a big gap in how the Astros want to use JV and how he insists on being used. An IL stint in the weak part of schedule wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but JV wants the ball every 5 days (4 days rest) no matter what. JV was the one who pushed to get back to a 4 day-rest schedule. I think the Astros would have gladly continued running out the 6 man rotation as long as everyone was pitching well.
Even during that stretch wasn’t his xFIP still 3.5 or higher? Like he was getting along by not getting homered off of for a while which is naturally volatile.
Re the Pressly blown save, it’s a small sample size. Pressly is a known commodity and the issue is health. Of course Dusty wanted to win the opening game, and he fired his best guys. No way he uses Abreu or anyone else in that spot. We are talking about a win vs NYY in the Bronx. The whole team wants that win. Experience counts in that setting. You can bet Dusty is going to manage with near term focus in this entire series whenever possible. We can experiment with Abreu and other lower leverage arms at other times and we should … especially with our division lead. Get our high leverage arms rested.
If anything, Click has done a great job at giving himself a couple of ways to "win" a trade. Adding Diaz to Maton, and adding Montero to Graveman. I think most of us assumed Montero had 0 or negative value (he made a few million). Turns out, Click saw hope he could revert to late inning reliever, and he's hit. I think most of us liked Toro -- especially for the Where the F is Toro game -- but 2 years of high leverage relievers for him is a big win. The Astros basically replicated his utility role in Mauricio Dubon, who they acquired for a catcher who got DFA'd within a couple months.
I didn’t like Toro (no offense I don’t mean personally) but never got the angst about trading him. He was a jag and he was blocked. You do that 100/100.
