We need to re-sign Yuli. He has sacrificed his pay for the Astros previiously He performs in the playoffs. He has great chemistry with the team and coach. He is one of the last few members of our 2017 WS championship. In 2020 Yuli was arbitration eligible, and was estimated to get 8.7M, but didn't go through arbitration to help the Astros have more wiggle room for others to help keep the Astros under the luxury tax threshold and took a pay cute settling for $8.3 million FOR the team.. Yuli took another pay cut in 2021 and agreed to $7M for the team, winning the AL batting title in 2021. He performs in the playoffs, where others like Judge, Mancini, even our own Altuve in 2022 choked. Yuli had THE best batting AVG for the 2022 Postseason Astros at .347! Yuli came on strong in the second half of the season. He has great chemistry with the team and fans! you can't put that in numbers. Players are not always the same, once they put on an Astros uniform. There is much more pressure to perform, as there is a bullseye on the players since they are a dynasty, and due to getting bashed by the media. Just look at those who came from other teams last year that regressed as an Astro. Mancini hit .268 as an Oriole, but .176 (.048 in postseason) as an Astro. Vasquez hit .282 as a RedSox but .250 as an Astro. There is a good chance Abreu will regress as well. Yuli is insurance. He is a known commodity. Other new people are a risk. Yuli can field at different positions in the infield and is a clutch hitter that we need. Folks like Dubon will not perform as an Astron in the near future, and is like a Myles Straw or worse. GM Dana being regarded highly due to his honesty on Yuli is shameful. The Rockets brought in Barklay and didn't gel with the team or Drexler, and the team lost its championship Mojo, and never returned to greatness. Save Yuli and Save our 2023 team.
The Rockets after winning back to back championships decided to change up a championship team to get an old star Barkley. They traded away fan favorites and great players like Sam Casell and Robert Horry. Horry and Cassel went on to win other championships with other teams, where the Rockets went into a free fall. Barkley didn't like Drexler. There are not many stars that could put up with a character like Barkley. I can understand letting go of the Springers, Cole, JV, as they wanted much more money, and we still prospered. Yuli though is not asking for more money. He just loves the team and fans. When you win a championship the onus is on the other teams to get better, no so much the champion. The Astros are giving up the GM Click, JV, and now Yuli? I can understand JV, as Javier outperformed JV and made less than $800K vs JV $25M. Buy Yuli is pocket change at $3M and he has taken multiple pay cuts for the team throughout the years. Be careful how much you tweak...
Thank you for writing my favorite post ever on this forum. I’m thinking of printing this and framing it. Great job, good effort.
They changed it up the year after getting swept in the 2nd of the playoffs by their Seattle nemesis. Then the next year, they made it to the WC Finals and managed to beat those Sonics that the Rockets could never previously beat. They got worse the following years because an aging Hakeem started falling off a cliff.
Yuli was God awful last year. I love him and hope/wish he was in the organization in a NON PLAYER role. But if they had brought him back to be the starting 1B I would have been terribly disappointed and if they had not resigned Brantley because he was on the on the roster I would have been just as disappointed If they signed him to take Up a bench spot I would only be mildly disappointed.
Yuli needs a non player position in the organization. There is zero reason to think he would be any better than Hensley and there is no room for both on the roster.
I can’t tell you why exactly, but Yuli Gurriel is one of my favorite players in 40 years of watching baseball. Maybe it’s the fact that he was one of the 10 best players in all of baseball when he was young in CUBA and had already lost bat speed when he came to USA and still was overall really solid. Maybe it’s being on the epic Astros teams… maybe it’s because I’m partial to the CUBANS. I think what it is though is that he is one of the rare guys that plays because he LOVES the game, loves to compete, loves his teammates and fans and really just loves the game of baseball and it’s just so pure with him… the money, the fame etc. it’s great for him I’m sure, but you can tell he does it for the game.
Excessive sentiment over logic is not what you want to do when trying to win a title. I love Yuli, and look forward to the many ways he will be honored by our organization in the future. There's a reason he's still unsigned.
Back-to-back unnecessary threads aside, what possessed OP to make the correlation to the Barkley trade? It's a completely different sport under completely different circumstances. Like, literally, the only thing that's similar is both teams were coming off a title and made a personnel move. Aside from that, I see zero similarities. Good teams need to make roster moves, too. ThIs Astros team has historically done it better than anyone else. They'll be fine without Yuli.
Yuli was terrible last year. He 38-39 year old body caught up with him. Father Time tapped him on the shoulder. Fan Graphs: “His barrel rate dropped, his hard-hit rate dropped, and – you guessed it – his average exit velocity dropped too. He wasn’t hitting the ball as hard as he used to, so he wasn’t getting as many hits. ” As far as winning back to back, it hasn’t been done in 20 plus years. McCullers, Yordan need to be healthy and very productive. Hunter Brown needs to be in rookie of the year consideration and not the next Ebby Calvin 'Nuke' LaLoosh. No major injuries to Altuve and Co. Luis Garcia needs to step his game up and be a very solid 3rd starter. (He can) Odds are against Astros repeating, history says so but on paper they have a realistic opportunity.
Honestly it’s not as bad as all that. You laid out 10 things (I’m including about 4 or 5 guys in the “and company” you mentioned) and we probably only need about 4 or 5 of them to happen to get a top 3 seed. From there it’s pretty much who gets hot and who gets lucky. Playoff baseball is more or less flipping coins.
No doubt we all love Yuli but he's not a utility player at his later age and that's the only way this would work.
Thank you for writing my favorite post ever on this forum. I’m thinking of printing this and framing it. Great job, good effort.