Did you not pay attention to Odorizzi's 4 starts before he was injured? 22.2 innings, 9 hits, 5 walks, 3 runs (2 earned), 16 strike outs
I can’t believe you were actually serious and it’s even more unbelievable that you’re doubling down. Odo has performed like a solid MoR SP over 8 starts this season and the rest of the staff (outside of Urquidy) has been amazing all season.
He is a little like Whitley, Lots of hope for good results but no floor at all. Charlie Brown was confident he could make a good kick too and we all rooted for him. But Lucy was always there, waiting till it was too late to stop before pulling the ball back.
Uh.....what? So... you're discounting his 4 very good starts up to and including the game he was injured? And, 3 of those starts were against teams in the top half of the league in runs scored.
This is the point at which everyone needs to realize they are either being trolled, or that it is absolutely pointless to continue this argument. Trotting out Charlie Brown analogies to make a statistical baseball point? *Exits stage left*
Assuming they plan to bring up Lee to replace Castro next season, the Astros have 3 holes on offense for next season, and their AAA roster seems to have 3 candidates for each spot: 1B (replacing Gurriel): JJ Matijevic, Taylor Jones, Yainer Diaz; I expect Matijevic to get first crack here. LF (replacing Brantley): Jose Siri, Pedro Leon, Corey Julks; I expect them to bring in someone from outside but otherwise this would likely be a competition for the 4th OF role since McCormick is likely a better option than all 3 of these guys (unless Leon breaks out over the next 2 months). UT (replacing Diaz): David Hensley, Enmanuel Valdez, Niko Goodrum; if they make other moves then all the players on the other lists would also be in this mix. My current expectation would be for them to acquire one established bat, with Matijevic winning the other everyday spot and Hensley, Valdez, Julks, Diaz, Leon, and Jones competing for the last roster spot, which is ideal as I would expect at least one of those guys to be a really really good bench player. 2023 lineup: 2B Altuve RF Tucker 3B Bregman DH Alvarez SS Pena LF TBD CF Meyers 1B Matijevic C Maldonado Bench: Dubon, Lee, McCormick, TBD
His literally one bad game since he changed his mechanics was the start after he got off the injured list with a rookie catcher's first start.
I think 1B needs to be a job split. JJ is hot garbage against LHP, correct? Maybe it's a straight up platoon with Jones at 1b. Maybe it's Yuli back on a short term deal for small money (I hope not- as I don't trust Dusty to get playing time responsibility correct). Maybe it's a corner OF/1b type that can hold down starting vs LHP. If we get a dude in LF I would be fine with Chas playing 1b to be the opposite platoon partner with JJ- provided he could do it over the offseason (I suspect he could- I'm very pro Brad Pitt on that argument for any decent athlete). Biggest question is how much money they feel like they have to spend. It feels like we should have 25 or 30 to spend to plug the every day lineup holes. Tucker gets an ~8 million dollar bump I'm guessing. Yordan's new deal kicks in at 20 million. Bregman is what- 22 million against the tax line? I know he makes 30, but I know that doesn't all count. I'm guessing JV is back for somewhere around $40,000,000 which represents an extra 15 million or so, but it seems like they ought to be able to spend at least Brantley plus some of Yuli's money on their replacements- as we are what- 25 or 30 million under the tax line this year? Would like to see Odo shipped out for prospects so that money comes off as well. Other than that the money situation seems pretty good.
Matijevic should play every chance he gets just to see what he could possibly do. Yuli's not providing any value as a fielder anymore and while he's been playing "better" his current hot streak is still well below what he should be producing as a 1B.
Since June 1st, his current hot streak, Gurriel has been producing at a 120 wRC+ putting him about the center of 1st basemen offensively. A trade could hopefully improve the position, but it is not like it is black hole anymore
Money will be fairly tight. If they want to keep Verlander they’ll have to salary-dump Odo. Assuming that (and no other extensions added), I think they’d have $10-15M to play with. That’s enough to go get a bat from the 2nd or 3rd tier in free agency. Here’s the list of viable free agents at 1B/DH/LF: LF: Nimmo, Benintendi, Martinez, Brantley, Peterson, Peralta, Pham, Conforto 1B/DH: Bell, Abreu, Belt, Mancini, Flores, Gurriel, Cruz, Vogelbach Nimmo, Benintendi, Martinez, Bell, and Abreu will likely all be too expensive. The rest are hard to gauge, although I think Gurriel, Cruz, Vogelbach, and Pham should all sign for <$10M/yr. I don’t view Matijevic as limited to a platoon, yet. I also think it’d be a fine plan to stand pat with Matijevic and Siri pencilled in and wait to see if a free agent drops his price.
In your scenario, you want Valdez, Garcia, Urquidy, and Javier to go way beyond their career high in innings pitched and Verlander to blow past 200 innings in a year after TJ in a season they look to run away with the division? I'd prefer to limit innings with an eye on a deep post season run without overworked pitchers. Odorizzi now and LMJ later are going to provide that relief so routines will be different down the stretch.
Odo is fine in a mike Fiers in 2017 rile to eat some innings when you want to justifiably keep innings down on all those other guys before the playoffs, but I will be disappointed if he’s not gone by August 2nd (if Lance looks good) because of the patrol constraints @Snake Diggit mentioned for next year. He can pitch for us in July and then grab his passport and head to Toronto for the stretch run (or St Louis or San Diego or somewhere they have a much higher need of league average pitching down the stretch to make the playoffs than we do).
