I get it. Many of us on here are nerds that like to deep dive into the stats and the projections. Since this offseason has been insanely boring I'll go down a rabbit hole with you. For me the problem with using Fangraphs projections for picking division winners is quite simple. They were wrong 75% of the time last year. The only division winners they correctly picked were the Braves and Astros. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-official-hopefully-not-too-erroneous-2023-zips-projections/ I like looking at and using fWAR and to some degree the fWAR projections when comparing individual players. However, when you are lumping together a 26 man roster of fWAR projections I have little faith in the accuracy in that data and fangraph's latest attempt at picking the division winners being so wrong backs up my point. I don't believe their formulas can accurately account for some of the largest variables for picking division winners. 1. Injuries. If you read their info they have some formula for including injuries in their projections. However, how could they possibly account for the Yankees injuries last year? Rizzo had a concussion and was ineffective and eventually shut down. Judge busted his foot running into a wall. Rodon developed a chronic back injury and missed most of the season. Severino couldn't stay healthy and when he did get on the mound he was awful. Nestor Cortes got hurt. etc, etc. You can't accurately account for that many injuries. 2. Bad performances from good/star players. Best example... Jose Abreu. I doubt anybody had him putting up a negative fWAR last season after putting up 3.8 fWAR in 2022. 3. Breakout performances from rookies/young players. Look at the impacts Josh Jung and Evan Carter had for the Rangers. A team Fangraphs had finishing 4th in the division ends up winning the World Series. They also had the Champion DBacks predicted to finish 4th in there division. McCormick is another example. He went from a 2 WAR player to a 3.8 WAR player. Hell, we all thought Korey Lee was going to be the backup catcher coming out of spring training. Yainer Diaz gets the call and puts up 2.0 WAR in a part time role. Also, who had JP Francis being the best starter on the Astros for a chunk of the season? Fangraphs has a hard enough time predicting the performances of established stars. Trying to predict what rookies and guys in AAA might contribute at any level of accuracy is insanity. 4. Deadline acquisitions. These are impossible to predict and as I said before the Rangers won the World Series at the deadline adding Scherzer, Montgomery, etc, etc. Verlander was also instrumental in the Astros winning the division. So when I try to factor in the 4 things I mentioned above.... I see an advantage pointing the Mariners direction. I'm openly biased against the current state of the Astros farm system and especially the upper levels. I've been blasting it in the minor league thread for a couple years. I'm not optimistic about guys being called up and having an impact or having significant trade value that can be used to bring in an impact player at the deadline. I like the Mariners more in that regard. Again, I could totally be wrong as unexpected performances from guys like France and Diaz are totally possible. The Astros also have 4 really key players that are going to be 34 and older during the season that they heavily rely on. Those would be Altuve, Verlander, Pressly, and Abreu. Mariners just aren't that old and since injuries are a total crap shoot... I'll go with the team that relies less on older players. Certainly the Mariners have guys with injury histories like Haniger and Garver that are in there 30s. However, I don't believe they are as important to the Mariners success as the older players are to the Astros. Finally... The Astros having not shown a willingness to go over the CBT annoys me. This roster is flawed, the minor league system is barren, and yet we are going to gamble on some AAA/AAAA arms in the pen, a few question marks in the rotation, and Jake Meyers in CF. I can't tell you how ironic I find it to be that Brown is talking about Meyers being the starting CF considering this was a serious point of contention between Click and Crane. Crane didn't like Meyers being the CFer and wanted Click to make a move. Nothing Meyers has done on the field has increased his value since then. The only thing that has changed is the Astros are up against the luxury tax so umm.... yea we are rolling with Meyers. I'd rather see Chas in CF and the Astros add a corner outfield bat. Nope, can't spend any money..... Meyers is good to go!! Hope I'm wrong.... go Astros
I totally understand what you are saying, and none of it is unreasonable. All I'm trying to say, and defend, is that the Astros have a very good team. In fact, it may he better than 2023 team. I am trying to give the doom and gloomers reason for hope. I am very pessimistic about 2025 and even more so about 2026, but 2024 looks very good. I actually think the Astros absolutely MUST stay under the CBT unless they resign Bregman (which I think is the single biggest factor in them being able to remain competitive after 2024). The difference in comp. draft pick is about 100 pucks which comes which a huge reduction in chances that player becomes an impact player - think Lance McCullers Jr vs Trent Thornton. For years, I have been understanding but sad as great players have moved on, as they became FA. The Astros always had an answer and it has almost always worked out. In the future still more great players are going to move on and based on cost, viable replacements, and other factors it's going to remain the best choice to let them go. The exceptions to this are Jose Altuve, who at this stage is not likely to get much of a raise, if one at all so won't impact spend much in either direction and Alex Bregman who still has several years of above average performance left and potential replacements both internal and external are few and underwhelming. I expect Altuve to get done and it may even come with a reduction in CBT salary to help the team (hometown discount, longer than expected deal, and/or deferrals). I HOPE but don't expect Bregman to get done and I fear that will go down as the biggest roster decision mistake in this era of Astros baseball.
I'm not full on doom and gloom. I even said in one of my previous posts I expect the Astros to make the playoffs but not win the division. As far as being better than last year... to me that really depends on McCullers and Garcia. If they are healthy and pitching well towards the end of the season that would be a significant boost that could really help fill the potential holes in the pitching staff. We are still dangerous if we make the playoffs. However, this team doesn't have me excited like previous years and I probably won't be all that invested in the regular season kind of like last season with the Dusty lineups and Maldonado drama causing me to watch less games. It's entertainment... this team is less entertaining to me.
Very quick (which is tough for me) 1) Diaz (projected 2.5 fWAR / 117 wRC+) replaces Maldonado's -1.2 and 66 respectively as starting catcher. 2) McCormick (27th out of 302 players w/280+ PA last year w/ 133 wRC+) will get 150-200 more PA than last year. Chas was benched in 3 of the 11 playoffs games last year and Diaz only started 1. 3) Altuve and Alvarez missed significant time w/injuries and are hopefully healthy. 4) This team will have Verlander for a full season and SHOULD have McCullers and Garcia for the post season and post season run keeping the pitching staff fresh. This should especially help Javier and Brown. These were all major reasons the Astros did not make another World Series last year. 2
https://blogs.fangraphs.com/is-2024-the-end-of-the-astros-as-we-know-them/ National sites getting in on predicting the Astros downfall. The article does isolate the crux of the problem: without all 5 of Altuve, Bregman, Tucker, Framber, and Verlander, it’s hard to see Houston contending. They’ll have enough money to re-sign or backfill 2 of those guys, but they are destined to rely on the farm to replace the other 3; I would say they could get away with replacing 2 since their current team is good enough to withstand the loss of 1 star player and still be among the AL favorites. Extend Altuve Melton and Dezenzo pan out Sign a free agent SP to a big contract next offseason
I don’t need FG to tell me the Astros have a better projected roster than the M’s, I have two eyes and a few functional brain cells. But thanks for doing the legwork on that.
Quick trade idea after seeing how the Mets have approached their offseason: Mets get: 1B Jose Abreu SP Framber Valdez RP Rafael Montero RHP Brandon Bielak 1B Jon Singleton Astros get: 1B Pete Alonso 3B Brett Baty RP Brooks Raley $8M Astros get a big upgrade in 2024 at 1B (with a pending QO), ~$40M in salary relief in 2024-2025, and an effective lefty RP they are familiar with. They also get a potential long term replacement for Bregman in Baty (bonus he hits lefty). This would free up some money to shop for a FA SP (someone like Yariel Rodriguez or James Paxton) as well as money to further upgrade the bullpen (they may then be able to afford someone like Hader or Hicks, but worst case would afford someone like Matt Moore). Mets flip Alonso’s expiring contract for multi-year solutions at 1B and the top of the rotation. Resulting Astros roster: 2B Altuve 3B Bregman DH Alvarez 1B Alonso RF Tucker C Diaz CF McCormick LF Baty SS Pena Bench: Dubon, Meyers, Caratini, Kessinger Rotation: Verlander, Paxton, Javier, Brown, Urquidy Bullpen: France/Garcia, Whitley/McCullers, Coleman, Raley, Hicks, Abreu, Pressly
I don't hate the deal but don't understand Astros getting the best young controllable player in the deal (fangraphs had Baty 23rd overall MLB prospect last year) and ditching Abreu and Montero's bad contracts and also getting $8M?
Fangraphs WAR projections, $8M per WAR value and spotrac arbitration estimates. When I had to make a guess, then I tried to make it best reasonable amount in favor of Mets and least reasonable for Astros. Astros get Pete Alonso= 3.3 WAR @$21.1M = +$5.3M Brooks Raley= 0.4 WAR @$5M = -$1.8M Brett Baty*= 7.5 WAR = @$30m= +$30M $8M Total = $41.5M * estimating value over 5 yrs of a player who has not hit his Prime yet is very difficult. I think 1.5 WAR per season for the 2023 #23 overall prospect feels like the least his trade value could be at. Similarly him making $30M over these 5 seasons feels very fair, especially at those WAR levels he will make much less. Therefore this likely is his absolute lowest reasonable value for this trade. Mets get Jose Abreu* = 2.4 WAR @$39M = -$19.8M Framber Valdez*= 8.2 WAR@$33M= +$32.6M Rafael Montero*= 0.8 WAR@$23M= -$16.6M Brandon Bielak (4 yrs) guess max is +$5M Jon Singleton (5 yrs) guess max is +$10M Total = $11.2M *all 3 have 2 yrs of control but I only have 2024 WAR projections so I simply doubled them. Furthermore, just like Baty I had to estimate Valdez's salary. This deal is incredibly one sided in the Astros favor. I have tried to minimize the players the Astros get and maximize the players the Mets get and its still very unfair. if the Astros paid the Mets $10M instead of the Mets paying the Astros $8M then itvwould only slughtly favor the Astros
Using fwar to estimate RP values is silly. Your math also argues that Brett Baty has roughly similar surplus value to Framber Valdez. One flaw in your logic is not properly factoring arb raises for pre-arb players. Another is that Baty’s 2023 season dropped his stock; he posted a 68 wRC+ over a large sample. He is no longer valued like the #23 overall prospect; he’s valued as the FORMER #23 overall prospect who struggled mightily in his rookie season. This will be proven out when a player like Cease (or Framber) is traded, they’ll very likely bring back a much more valuable young player than Baty. It’s possible my hypothetical is tilted in Houston’s favor but nowhere near the level you outlined.
With new management, I feel VERY good about this team. It will be a pleasure to follow without all that BS roster **** we had to put up with the last few years.
Meyers playing wasn't the problem. It was that he was willing to gamble a WS season on a guy coming back from injury when Martel Sterling was available.
I bet if you did a good analysis of picks in that portion of the draft the difference isn’t nearly as big as you think Worrying more about 26 than about 24 shouldn’t be where we are when we are absolutely legitimate title contenders. Penny pinching could cost us a title more than picking earlier could help us in 2029
So who is now our Ace and has the ability to give us 200 innings? This site GREATLY undervalues Framber
