Miguel Palma and Ryan Wrobleski were both placed on the IL yesterday (retroactive to Friday), so that leaves C.J. Stubbs and J.C. Correa as the available catchers in Corpus.
I could make a case for calling up Leon to play bench outfielder however Melton is not close to ready for a call up to Sugar Land let alone a call to Houston.
Is Pedro Leon a better option than Jake Meyers? Maybe. Not likely but we don't know for sure. AAA is easier than MLB. Players almost always regress and are lesser in MLB. Meyers has proven to be a positive, above average overall player at the MLB level even when he's not hitting. Leon has had significant periods below average in AAA. Keep in mind Singleton was a superstar in AAA and can't even get to average in MLB. Meyers is not the problem. He should be playing more not less and replacing him with someone who has a very very small chance of being as good is ridiculous. Jake's 2024 Astros ranks: wRC+ = 8th fWAR (pisition platers)= 6th OPS+= 8th bWAR (position players)= 8th HR% = 1st (0.1% better than Alvarez after Yordan's 2 yesterday) K%= 8th (3% better than league average) Plate appearances: 10th. Look somewhere else
According to astros.com they have 39 players on the 40 man (and 6 pitchers on 60 day IL) but Fangraphs also shows Jacob Amaya on the 40 man. I believe fangraphs is correct since they have needed to add players to the 60 day to get others on the 40 so far this year. It's unlikely that they have only 39. So somebody will need to be DFA'd to add him since they are out of injured pitchers not expected back soon. They definitely need to remove 2 position players off of the active roster before Tuesday's game to add him. 14 position players: 2 catchers, Altuve, Bregman, Pena, Dubon, Alvarez, and Tucker either have no options and/or make no positional sense. That leaves 6 options for 2 demotions. Cabbage was just brought up for the Mexico series and plays the same positions. Singleton can be completely be replaced by Loperfido and is wasted with him here. Kessinger has not played hardly at all and is no higher than 3rd option at any pisition. Meyers has played well but for some reason the team doesn't play him and Joey can replace him so he is not safe from demotion. McCormick has not played well but is pretty established as an important regular and has probably earned some slack. Abreu has been awful and giving up on him is best for the team but would be an admission of a huge mistake and waste of $$$MM. It makes no sense for Abreu and/or Singleton to not be among them. They could DFA Singleton and place Abreu on 10 day IL or just DFA both of them. That would allow them to keep Cabbage and Joey and signal a commitment to both the present and future and would make me very happy. I would be fine with Kessinger being sent down since he basically is wasting away with no role. The worst thing they could do would be to send Cabbage and Meyers down which would mean they are not making any progress toward fixing 1B, but bringing Joey in the play the OF. They don't have to do anything until Tuesday afternoon so we have lots of time to make 100 posts with guesses and opinions.
If they want the 13 best guys then Singleton and Abreu would be gone. I am surprised they’re calling Loperfido up. I don’t expect him to hit well and I half expect him to not even play that much. But he’s played well enough in AAA to warrant an extended audition so hopefully they play him. I know Abreu got 2 hits yesterday but he still didn’t hit those balls hard. He looks totally washed up. I am really hoping he is the roster casualty.
Miguel Ullola was excellent today for Corpus... he went five innings and the one hit he gave up was a solo homer. He walked one and struck out seven. Jake Bloss also had a nice outing for Asheville as the one run he allowed in five innings came on a homer. Bloss allowed three other hits, walked one, and struck out 8.
Of the 10 current highest wRC+ among Astros prospects, 5 of them were acquired by Dana Brown. He’s only been GM for one year.
