Agreed. Minus trying to match JV (which Crane said they were planning on till it got to the level that it did), I didn’t expect them to be throwing 8-10 year deals around trying to spend all of the money earmarked for JV. They’ll probably eventually sign Yuli… then potentially buy out one of these guys’ arb years with some FA years (Framber?), maybe even work something out now with Bregman/Altuve… but probably won’t come that much closer to the tax.
I agree that many will WANT to go to a 6 man...problem is, it really only works if you develop a majority of those guys yourself, and honestly no other team has done as good of a job as we have at that. Its hard enough to get to 5 quality starters for most teams, let alone 6
Sounds like time for the Astros to make one final bid if they really want to address the hole at catcher this season.
And the catcher they acquired did contribute in the World Series. Not saying Contreras wouldn't have. But even if he did, maybe the outcome of the playoffs ends up being different.
Is there really deification of Maldy's defense? As you said it's merely fine these days. The deification is of his soft-skills like game prep and pitcher management.
I certainly don't know anything, but I'd imagine someone in the halls of Astro[world] probably has a little bit of an issue with the dollars associated with a part time catcher if Maldy is catching a bunch. I'd have thought Verlander leaving would have been an opportunity to drop Maldy's playing time (his hitting asside). If, however, MM is still being pushed as the stros primary catcher, I could see the $$ for Contreras being hard to swallow. I get the increasing feeling that Dusty and Pitching Coaches have a little different view on things than Baggy and Crane.
I’m positive Contreras was always just using the Astros as leverage to ultimately sign with the Cardinals and get the biggest/longest contract he could. He was liking a bunch of Cardinal fan tweets and followed several Cardinal players. Didn’t do the same with the Astros.
Jim Crane and his nerd cave evaluates player values and contract length and they rarely (only once) deviate from the amount and value. If the Cardinals offer money beyond that range or length beyond that range, Crane is highly unlikely to beat it. As for the Astros, they needed to add two good bats to the line-up. They added Abreu (who likely could have made more money waiting) and they still have guys like Nimmo and Conforto and Murphy to add another bat to the line-up and fill holes.
Also, the idiot writes like Contreras would not have become a free agent. The Astros would have had to compete with other teams for his services anyway.
Because it's not really a guess or a hope that Vazquez would hit significantly better than Lee, it's over a 90% likelihood. Vazquez has a pretty long history of being a very good, quality mlb hitter. Lee had significant strikeout issues at AAA. Baseball is a crazy game and crazy things can happen, but it would be close to miracle status for Lee to play a full year and hit better than Vazquez. And also, saying he would be our worst hitter may or may not be true depending on what happens in the OF. And the reason for that is because our lineup is so strong, there were only 9 catchers last year with 350 at bats or more and a higher OPS than Vazquez. 3 of those are poor defenders. Vazquez isn't a good enough hitter to use regularly at DH when he isn't catching (Contreras is), but as an everyday good defensive catcher, he is a top 10 hitter (although there are a number of very good hitting catching prospects on the way around baseball, none of them in our system) And that's just the hitting. Vazquez is a strong mlb defender at catcher also. I don't think there is much chance Vazquez signs here because he wants to be the man wherever he goes, but he would be a huge upgrade over the course of a season
In our fan base? Yes. It’s exhausting to listen to and it usually comes from dumb people who think they are smart that try to condescendingly explain to you how catcher is a defensive position and blah blah blah and whatever offensive production you get is gravy and blah blah blah. Yeah- no **** dude. That’s not a unique or even particularly smart point.
It's not so much his defensive skills that are great at this point. Most of the analytics place him as a below average defender What makes him great is his handling of the pitching staff. And maybe even more than the actual pitch calling and so forth, the pitchers believe in him. They are comfortable with him. They rarely question the pitches he is asking for, or the location. It's a heck of a lot easier to be elite as a pitcher when you are on the same page as your catcher and you can get in a good rhythm.
Any truth to this? I doubt we get either due to the cost, but is it true that the Astros are inquiring? Really like both players in terms of their tools and style of play.
They better add another bat or this off-season is all hat and no cattle and they will have gotten worse overall while talking a big game about how they were going to get better. Not pushing the model for Contreras is stupid. He’s an easy button solution to two big problems and the money isn’t that much and any overpay will be slight. put another way- it’s not easy to improve a team as good as the Astros. He’s easy. Just freaking do it. They can’t make big improvements shopping value bin aisle in February because they start from too high a baseline to do that. This is a big improvement. One of few that’s possible to them. Just do it already.
My point is that you have a black hole at the 9 spot with either of them. We could do nothing at all more and Vazquez would be by far the worst hitter in the lineup when he plays.....so I don't see paying a premium for a catcher who will be 33 next season that would be the worst hitter in the lineup any time he's allowed to play. I'd rather they stick with Maldonado to be that over the hill weak hitting catcher and allow a 25 year old weak hitting catcher to have a chance to develop. If we're going to have a black hole at the 9 no matter what, I don't think it makes a difference.
You know who pitchers trust to call games for them? Like 90% of the catchers around and 100% that aren’t flaming dickheads. IT. IS. OVERSTATED!
