And why should we care about that? Have those projections ever been close to right? I remember people saying this the last 3 years concerning the Angels. What was the gap between the Dodgers and the Braves or Phillies? Who else is available that's going to increase the gap that would make you comfortable? My point is Baseball has so many variables, it's not like you can just out talent other teams.
Maybe so, memory fails me sometimes. I recall many situations where 3-4 innings of relief pitching was called for and almost no situations where a long reliever pitched 3-4 innings. I do remember the whole pen being wasted in many of those situations. Perhaps we define long relief differently.
Yes, it could mean several different possibilities. Told the Astros want some flexibility to try different things without weakening the ball club. As for Diaz, they just really like his upside and long term control.
The Astros division is likely better than it was last year. However, the Mariners didn’t really improve much. The Rangers spent a ton of money again, but not wisely. Jacob DeGrom is probably the best pitcher in baseball when healthy, but he has pitched only 200 innings the last 3 seasons combined and no longer goes deep into games. Andrew Heaney gets hurt all the time and isn’t all that good. Martin Perez had a really good season last year but he is a career 4.50 era pitcher. Jon Gray and Ordorizzi are just guys.
Urquidy for Diaz and a 2nd tier IF prospect like Tyler Callahan or Matt McClain seems pretty fair. Urquidy doesn’t really seem to make much sense as a target for the Reds except the back of their rotation is total trash and they don’t have any established starters.
There was a fall maybe caused by arrogance but it was not a decline in the way I think of the word. They were the best roster in baseball and probably the best Astros team ever in 2019, his last year with the club.
Well, he went from the World Series GM in MLB to running a Mexican League soccer team, so I think decline is a perfectly cromulent word. He's not hurting for money and I'm sure he's happy and having fun. So, good on him.
I'm just glad he set the Stros up to be the best team in MLB for a dacade, maybe longer. I'm also glad Crane has been in contact with Luhnow. If that's decline, then give me another decade or two of decline. BTW, Luhnow's tweet was spot on and a big reason why he was the best GM in MLB.
Amazing that I just learned Luhnow was born in Mexico City and went to school there up until 10th grade.
Random question: Why are so many WARs across the league completely warped for 2019? Is this just the result of the high offensive numbers across the league? Guys with nearly .900 OPS seasons coming up with 0.0's that year. If so, it illustrates one of the ways that WAR is an incredibly flawed stat, not to mention position dependency and many other factors.
It depends on which "roster" you refer to. Lee is on the "active roster" and Y Diaz is on the "40 man roster" which has been pointed out as inconsequential before Opening Day. I'm not sure why or if it makes any difference that France and Bannon are listed as "active" while Meyers and Y Diaz are not. The only thing that comes to mind is Salary differences between MLB and MiLB players when on IR, whether on the "40 man roster" or not.
Actually it shows that is a great stat because it compares you to players that are using the same drugs and hitting/throwing the same baseballs.
Just the Astros at hand using bWAR and fWAR. My suspicion is fWAR is closer to Baseball references oWAR, but it's still not a perfect predictor. POS PLAYER bWAR fWAR dWAR WAR//600 PA 2B ALTUVE, Jose 5.1 6.6 (1.2) 5.1 SS PEÑA, Jeremy 4.8 3.4 2.4 5.2 LF ALVAREZ, Yordan 6.8 6.6 (0.4) 7.3 3B BREGMAN, Alex 4.5 5.5 0.0 4.1 RF TUCKER, Kyle 5.2 4.7 0.8 5.1 1B ABREU, Jose 4.2 3.9 (0.9) 3.7 DH BRANTLEY, Michael 1.3 1.2 0.0 2.8 CF McCORMICK, Chas 1.3 2.0 (0.3) 1.9 C MALDONADO, Martin 0.2 0.5 0.8 0.3 C2 LEE, Korey (0.5) (0.3) _ (11.5) IF HENSLEY, David 0.3 0.2 (0.2) 5.3 IF BANNON, Rylan (0.2) (0.1) _ _ Uti DUBÔN, Mauricio 0.0 0.1 (0.1) 0.0 I do wish there were a spreadsheet format like the ordered list format for preset columns. It would make keeping up with the numbers easier. But that might be asking for too much.
They might make the TWELVE team playoff this year. That would be an improvement. But how do the Astros improve when they are the defending WORLD SERIES CHAMPIONS? B to B WORLD CHAMPIONS?
