Since OP listed both Javier and Abreu in his opening sentence then mentions Abreu twice in his extension talks, I'm assuming the one you referred to is actually meant for Javier.
that’s a pretty impressive ranking for the Astros 4th outfielder Ranked 10/30 center fielders ? And some guys want to trade the farm for Reynolds ? I’m good with Chas
Well yeah. Half the people on this board listed CF as an area of need. Ninmo this, Ninmo that. Then the Meyers is better camp. Then the minor leagues will present us with a replacement option camp. It just went on and on. Let's not act like there wasn't a ton of doubt around here regarding moving forward with Chaz in center field.
McCormick is the starting CF’er not the 4th outfielder. Chas is top 10 among all CF’ers in HR’s, OBP, SLG % and wRC since 2021. And he may not have hit his peak yet.
I see that potential and also the potential we have more regression and an injury bug. So I'll just stick to a repeat. I'll take last season all over again.
To be fair, most just drooled at playing McCormick against lefties and finding a platoon against righties. In a way, we got that with Brantley returning though the platoon wouldn't be strictly at CF. Meyers also hits Lefties much better, so he's not a platoon candidate. I can't find splits for the minors, so who knows if Leon or Dirdon would make a good righty portion of a platoon. My hope for Dusty is that he does a better job of incorporating splits into his line ups. WHEN you give McCormick a day off, do it against RIGHTIES. The problem with that is Dubon is also a huge platoon guy favoring lefties, so most of Dubon's starts are against lefties. It's all yours Baker. Use the help available to optimize the line-ups.
As much as I've enjoyed Chas's play, there should be some doubt on Chas moving forward on whether he's as good as he's been or if he'll regress to an average player. He's still only got slightly more than a season's worth of PAs with a streaky approach at the plate. His arm is lanky so he really needs to be as great at running down balls as he has been to make CF work well. Though, if he doesn't regress, Astros have a hell of a player.
I screwed up. I meant Javier on the 8/150. Abreu was the 5/40 offer. You might be surprised on Hunter Brown agreeing to 10/100M. He’s made nothing right now. He’s a pitcher and their arms can fall off at any time. He’s also only 22 in an industry where the survivors of the meat grinder that is being a starting pitcher can still pull down 6/150M deals at 32. if he was my son and he got offered 10/100 I’d tell him to shut up and sign, he’s a pitcher, he’s 1 bad pitch away from being done. And if that doesn’t happen he can still make at least that much more in the back part of his career. If he wouldn’t do 10/100 I’d counter with 9/90. That buys out 3 years. I wouldn’t offer him an 8 year deal though. Too much risk for me as the Astros for only 2 FA years.
Framber would be #4 for me. He doesn’t profile to the kind of guy who will age well (extreme GB) and he’s actually fairly old when he gets done with his 3 additional years of arbitration. He might be like a Keuchel where you don’t want that part of the contract. I’d offer 5/90 or 5/100 and be ambivalent as to whether or not he takes it.
He’s the 10th best CF in a world where only the top 6 guys move the needle and 7-20 are all pretty interchangeable. Also, other than catcher he’s the only spot that’s really upgradable as we are so good everywhere else. So it makes sense as the target area to improve for both those reasons, because it’s one of only two areas that can be improved. But it doesn’t need to be improved.
It's all a question of what you think Chas can ultimately be. If you think he can never improve, then yes the obvious thing is to restrict him to the lefty side of a platoon as much as possible. He'll be a roughly 2-2.4ish WAR player if he just keeps doing what he's doing. Dusty clearly thinks he can continue to improve against righties and is giving him the reps to do so. If Chas brings that 88 wRC+ against righties up to league average wRC+ he's suddenly a 3-4 fWAR player over a full season. There's not really a right or wrong answer here. Him being the 8th batter in the lineup affords Dusty a lot of slack in experimenting.
