Sure. And my argument is that I'm not really sure we knew what the best options were until... June? It's not like everything was in place in April and he's been defying results. His line-ups have - mostly - followed results. Coaches/managers never move with the same urgency as fans - you know this. I think there's ample room Baker should have shown more urgency. But I really believe, for a long stretch, he was picking poison. Right. Fans want an easy answer that they can find & solve. But it doesn't really work that way. There are literally hundreds of "if only" decisions in the margins. But *the* answer to the Astros season is Abreu, the starting rotation, Pena, Tucker, injuries.... Everything below that is fan fodder, IMO. Julks and Meyers don't play the same position, though, It's not a 1:1 thing. He's not directly taking starts away from Meyers. Left field has been an unexpected black hole this year, between Chas missing a month, Yordan missing six weeks, and Brantley not getting back sooner. They've had to band-aid it. I guess it comes down to this: if Chas doesn't get hurt; if Yordan doesn't get hurt; if we accelerated Brantley's timeline to more closely resemble the Astros expectations... I don't think Julks would be on the field much, if even with the team. I wish he played less. I wish there was more urgency. In the end, though, however the season ends - I don't think the Julks/Meyers situation will rank high on whatever shortcomings there may be.
[ Then Dusty would bench him after multi hit games for "running the bases too much" or "it was already a planned day off" excuse
This is a B.S. argument. Dusty used Meyers and Julks interchangeably in a rotation for weeks. There is no scenario where Meyers can't replace Julks in the lineup, but Julks can't always replace Meyers. Meyers is a slightly below average hitter, I'm not putting him on some pedestal, but Julks bat doesn't even belong in the MLB especially for a guy who plays the least important defensive position (and easiest to replace) on the field. Because he plays LF, Julks must be at least average offensively to be of value. According to OPS+ he is 22% below average. According to wRC+ he is 20% below average. As a CF (and 1 that actually makes extra outs and saves runs) Meyers can be valuable at 20% below average. But he's not - he's 12% below by OPS+ and 10% below by wRC+. That's why he is good for 1.7 fWAR and Julks is 0.3 There is simply nothing that Julks does better than Meyers. And that's why Dusty playing him while a healthy Meyers sits the bench potentially cost the Astros wins and the division title.
Agreed. At the very least coming into the season they knew Julks skill set and potential. They knew that he was exposed to the rule 5 draft and nobody took him. They knew he is limited to LF. They knew that he had a wRC+ of 108 in AAA last year so is very unlikely to have the ability to be 100+ in MLB. Yet Dusty decided to start him the 2nd game of the season while Chas rode the pine. Dusty continued to start him into August, while Chas and/or Meyers (2 players superior to him in every area) sat the bench to make that happen.
Everything you're saying about Julks was true about Dubon last year too. And here he is today as a key contributor on this year's team because they played him last year. An MLB season isn't just about the immediate future. It's also about developing players, both in the present and in the future. 2 weeks into April, people were railing on Dusty for not playing Diaz enough and complaining that there was NO WAY he'd get the 300+ at-bats Brown wanted for him. And here he is, an everyday elite key contributor going into the stretch run. Would Dubon have developed to where he is today if he didn't get playing time last year? Would Diaz have done so if he just started every game in April and May when he was sucking? Would Chas have developed into the player he is if he just played against lefties all the time last year as people wanted? Who really knows to any of that - we simply don't have an alternative universe to compare to. But managing and leading is about a lot more than "play the guy who's best today" - it's about getting the best out of players in the long-run. And two things Dusty's Astros have been beyond phenomenal at the last 3 years is (1) playing their best late in the season (2) turning average players into good players and good players into unexpected star players. No one has been "left behind" or not gotten developed as well as the Astros had hoped. Maybe, just maybe, the Astros actually know what they are doing.
Right. Corey Julks isn't a very good player. I'm not arguing otherwise. But that's an August '23 argument. From April 12-April 29 - a 13-game span - Julks posted a .837 OPS. I know every counter to that - I'm just saying that on April 30, 2023, Corey Julks was our best option. You can't, on August 29, go back and refute that because you have a larger sample size. Who should have been playing on April 30, 2023? Jake Meyers because of all these elements that are explicitly *not* in-the-moment results? One of the core pillars among the anti-Dusty crowd is that he doesn't ride the hot hand, right? Well... playing Julks into May is a *prime* example of him doing just that. He was *hot.* He inevitably cooled down - and was flat-out awful in May (.597 OPS) - but his May was *still* better than McCormick's (.552).
At that same moment, were you penciling Jeremy Pena in for multiple trips to the All-Star game? The postseason doesn't have any bearing on the following season, and making decisions based off of it is a recipe for disaster.
But Dubon was a key contributor because: 1) his defense. He is very good st an important defensive position. 2) He replaced an injured star. He wasn't playing with a better option sitting on the bench. And his offense hasn't been great either. He was very hot early then hot frigid vold and now is warm again. But it equals 9% below average in both OPS+ and wRC+. Again, that's fine for a 2B or CF, especially one who is great defensively but not for a LF who simply must produce with the bat. And FYI: I hate to see Dubon in the OF for all the same reasons. Not a good enough bat for a corner and not a good enough (OF) glove to cover for the weak bat in CF.
Too many fans are waaaaaay to in the weeds on what are really small, incidental moves, forgetting it's a marathon and not a sprint. Baseball is not really conducive to day-to-day scrutiny. Here, check this out: for all the rancor about how much Corey Julks is likely the difference between first and third place, etc.: The Astros are 48-29 in games he's started. That's a 101-win pace. They're 47-39 in games Chas has started. An 86-win pace. Yes! It's a silly stat - that's my point. The Corey Julks of this world are not driving results. This team revolves around Altuve/Alvarez/Tucker/Bregman/Valdez/bullpen. There are other tiers below that - but, more or less, if something is wrong with that core, not much else is going to work. In the past - and, again, this has always been my point here - they had a significantly larger/better core the team revolved around. Everyone is right about their margin for error shrinking - but it's not at the bottom, where the Julks/Meyers/Dubon's of the world are - it's Abreu, Pena, Javier... The biggest culprit has been health. The second biggest culprit has been production v expectation. Flipping around the bottom of the roster doesn't really solve those much more glaring issues..... it's just easier to "fix" and complain about.
Hector Neris hasn’t been pitching that well. I’m starting to wonder if he might end up picking up his $8.5M option next season.
I'm pretty sure it's a club option, which I imagine we'll pick up, but not positive anymore, Honestly, on paper the roster for next season looks pretty complete with no visible holes. Aside from the pen, basically the entire roster is under contract aside from Maldonado. The bullpen is likely the best place to spend money.
Agree on the marathon and not a sprint. Though marathons aren't won by sprinting 2/3s of the race and screwing around for the other third. I will say, Julks has been lucky to be in so many games that the other team scored very few runs.
I will continue to support playing better players over worse players as the Angels, even when healthy, have proven that the non-stars matter.
Hasn't he been our most reliable reliever..? He gets a little shaky sometimes but he's very good at getting out of it.
If "hasn't been pitching well" means he hasn't been his 2023 sub-1.5 ERA in August, sure. But Neris has been awesome this season. He's surrendered runs 4 of 10 games this month but still has fewer hits than innings and a 4/1 K ratio in August. His last 3 appearances have been scoreless with no baserunners. He's had a great season.
