Pena: .700 OPS, 97 OPS+ Correa: .831 OPS, 138 OPS+ Peña’s had a solid rookie season (particularly defensively) and the Astros made the right call in letting Correa go (particularly if they use that money to lock up Tucker after locking up Alvarez). Let’s not pretend that Peña is as good as Correa offensively or that you wouldn’t rather have Correa’s offense going into the playoffs.
I will take this any day. But just for a complete picture. Correa: 8 Peña: 17 need to bring clean that up. Still. I will take our $700k dude.
Nook is correct, Gallen is a BEAST!! Kid is incredible and they're definitely going to have their hands full tonight.
Cost savings on Pena is great... but again, none of that saved money really went back into the team this year. Granted, Crane can overspend in the upcoming years to make up for it and given how many wins this team has, they'd be unlikely to get a better return with a higher payroll (but may have further optimized their ability to win the crapshoot playoffs).
I'm kind of surprised that they both have a similar number of ABs. I had thought Correa had missed more time than that this season.
Talking about Pena, the promising thing we've seen this month is a huge decrease in strikeouts. During his 2 month freefall he was approaching a 30% K rate and never walking. He's still not walking much, but he's only struck out in 11 of his last 70 PA while making better contact. He seems to have made the adjustment so that he isn't quite so vulnerable to literally every low breaking ball thrown at him.
He could not layoff sliders down and away for a long time, the book was out on him that he would chase those out of the zone and he did, a lot, usually for strike 3. But lately he has adjusted and is taking those same pitches for balls, forcing pitchers to throw into the zone to get him out. That is how youngsters make the leap - the league figures them out and the ones that are able to counter-adjust last in the bigs, the ones that aren't able to don't. Very positive sign to see Pena have this type of progression, this quickly.
Never underestimate the influence of Strom. Fix or stop throwing hittable pitches. Tunnel the pitches to keep the batters guessing. Easy on paper, not so easy in practice. And even better since the All Star Break.
I think the Yankees can not afford the fan backlash of not resigning him. That is going to cause his contract to he north of $300M for less than 10 years and seriously hurt the teams overall ability to compete. In 2 years they will be the Angels. If the Yankmees don't resign him my money is on the Mets. But imagine him in Boston? 60 homers and 60 doubles!! He would turn the Astros into a crazy video game like team for 3-4 years. Imagine a lineup of Altuve Judge Alvarez Bregman Tucker _________ _________ Pena Korey Lee However after his comments about 2017 and Altuve this lockerroom would come unglued on Click. Never happen. Not while Altuve, McCullers, Bregman, and JV are on this team.
That's one POV. My POV is that the cost savings went back into Astros players. It was known well before 2017 that the Astros were likely going be to be a great team and that it would take more money than Crane was willing to spend to keep them together. Using club controlled players was always part of the plan to keep as many great Astros players after they were no longer under club control or getting big arbitration raises. I'm really happy with where the Astros budget despite being really skeptical of Crane prior to 2017 regarding having a budget that is up there with most teams besides the Yankees, Dodgers, and Red Sox.
