They have 6 quality starting pitchers without Verlander. Most teams don't have 3. McCullers injury only even becomes an issue if another pitcher goes down. But I am comfortable with Forrest Whitley being a 7th man in the rotation. If he has to fill in a few starts in the unlikely scenario that 2 starting pitchers are out of commission for extended periods of time, I can live with that. Idk what veteran starter they could have signed that would be giddy to be the 6th-7th man on this rotation. I don't see that scenario ever presenting itself unless Jake had wanted to come back and perform the role he had last year, a role he hated. Outside 9f that, plan looks food to me
I don't care that McCullers is out. We can deal with that. I don't care about adding an inning eater. We can deal with that. I care that we let a Cy Young Walk. That was the dumb decision.
Yep. Whitley has tons more upside than anyone you were going to sign on a 1 year 10M or less type deal. Those guys are known quantities and sort of suck. Bielak’s floor is high enough for me if all the other guys suck. He could come up and post a 4.5 or 5 era giving us 5 a night and have a 500 record. If you get beyond those two you are on SP #9 and you are probably in trouble. Your top 8 guys are likely to give you 150 plus. If that’s not good enough there is always the trade market where you can get a has been innings dude for not much.
Yeah, feels almost as if they caught Dusty at a bad time and he was in a pissy mood after finding out that Lance will miss more time than they hoped. It's a bit unfair for him to pretend like Crane should have been making moves for players that we clearly didn't need at that time. Or maybe it is Dusty venting a little bit over Crane letting Verlander walk and he decided to be public about it this time. I don't know, but ultimately I'm sure those two guys hash it out and this is a whole lot of nothing.
Yordan already proved he is willing to go under the knife when he had his knees repaired. If it was as simple as repairing a bone, it would make no sense he would not do that as well. Therefore, I believe it is not something which can be repaired by a simple operation as you insist.
In my opinion it never was a decision. As a free agent, JV was free to go wherever he wanted. He was great here and I thank him but he became a mercenary the day after Tucker's catch and I think the Mets were going to go even higher if they needed to in order to outbid everyone. The Astros are about $19.75M under CBT now, so if JV had signed they would be over without money to sign Abreu or Brantley. First base would be manned by a JAG Like Luke Voit or J.J. Matijevic. And with no major free agents after 2023 there would be no money for extensions for Javier or any others that may happen. I'm at peace with the decision and happy with the current pool of starters, especially if Whitley or Abreu can show something this spring
Yeah- I mean if JV did come back for 35 per year that means we need to free up an additional 15 in payroll so that means no Brantley (I'm fine with) and no Montero (I'm fine with that too) and you could still have all those guys. I'd have brought JV back if he was a post season hammer and a guy I counted on to beat the other guys #1. Lets just say- that's not how I will remember his post season tenure with the Astros. Letting him walk was fine. There is way more downside than upside to that contract, he's not a life long Astro, and he's freaking 40 more or less.
But it was never the Astros decision. The Astros never had the authority whether to bring him back or not. They had the ability to make him an offer which set the market for the Mets. If they had offered 3 yrs and $120M the Mets would have offered 4 yrs and $160M People here keep posting " The Astros didn't bring him back" "The Astros should have resigned him" "I'm glad the Astros didn't resign him" It was never in their hands and they had ZERO control.
Outright bidding wars happen when a player is dead-set on leaving. JV wasn't necessarily at that point as far as we know. If there were offers on both sides that were initially close, I'm not sure he automatically goes to NY... but given what he ultimately got, its fairly obvious that the Astros weren't going to do much more than a 1 year deal with possibly an option based on incentives (very similar to the deal he got last year).
The issue seems to keep switching from one hand to the other. I am not saying that rules it out, but it’s just strange the soreness is affecting both hands. I suppose the Hamate bone could be injured in both hands.
I mean, I get what you are saying but I'm not so sure that's accurate. We won't know b/c they didn't really make an offer that was designed for him to sign, pretty clearly they weren't close. As I said- I agree with the decision. Was just pushing back a bit on the idea that we couldn't have had him and Abreu. We could have, we just also would have had to not sign Montero or Brantley and we'd be down to pennies left to stay below the tax. Another option could have been to trade LMJ for a bucket of shag balls or maybe we'd have had to throw in a couple prospects as well to move on from that contract. If there was a will to make it happen they could have worked harder at it. I don't think there was such a will and I think ultimately that was good, b/c as great as he's been in the regular season for us he's been pretty meh in the playoffs, and we care more about the playoff than regular season, so.... Good luck JV- enjoy NY.
I don't think so. Maybe. But the Hamate bone is usually just a problem with the bottom hand having to do with the barrel- the other might be hurt b/c of some other compensation. BTW- everyone in baseball should swing an axe handle bat. No idea why that isn't the standard. It's weird.
I think the Mets were going to go 1 additional year regardless of what the Astros offered and JV was not going to turn down an extra year as long as the salary for it was reasonable. As for keeping him and also bringing in other players, absolutely. There is no salary cap but the Astros are not the sort of team to stay above the CBT for multiple seasons. Currently the Astros slightly less than $20M under the CBT. They only have about $30M coming off the books in FA next year and Framber, Tucker, Urquidy, L.Garcia, B Abreu, McCormick, and Dubon will all get arbitration raises so there won't be much money available. Brantley, Maldonado, Stanek, Maton, and possibly Neris will need to be replaced with the team less than $25M from the CBT. If JV had resigned this would be worse.
The fake offer story is wearing kinda thin. Perhaps you could get a few more miles out of it if you did not bring it up quite so often. Just a suggestion.
I thought we shoulda signed Wacha 2 months ago, last month and definitely wish we had signed him now.
I don't mean it like that at all - it wasn't about fan service or anything. I think he fired off the offer he was interested and willing to do- he didn't know what the market would be b/c JV is unprecedented to be both that old, that good and so recently injured and when he saw where the market actually was and what it was going to take to make a deal he said- nope- not interested. There wasn't any leaking, intruige or back and forth like with Correa. It was very matter of fact we have our number- whoa, that wasn't it. End of story. IF he'd have offered 82 and the mets would have offered 86 I'm sure we would have gotten the deal done. There was just no overlap or commonality to make a deal workable.
Sure. But you also have contracts you could get out of if you wanted. Say Framber extends, Javier is still awesome, and Brown and Whitley come up and show out- you could move off McCullers for 17M pretty easily. If Montero is good you could move off his 11.5 M if it's not needed (I still don't understand that deal). Bregman is in his last year as @Snake Diggit says if he isn't extended you could look to shop him if it's about setting the team up for 2025-2030 that might make logical sense. Signing JV to a 42 M deal doesn't hamstring or cause problems for the team unless he and a bunch of other guys are bad. You can always get rid of guys that are getting paid market wage or less for their contract- which- with Odo gone- I would say is every single Astro except Maton and Dubon. Those guys are making a combined 4.5 and have demonstrated a skill in the past so even that is A) Chump change and B) quite possible they perform to their salary.
