I am not the least bit worried about Dana and the Astros ability to develop MOR starters. The fact that we have had pitcher injury Armageddon the last 2 years and our ration still keeps its head above wonder is absolutely a testament to fantastic aquisiton and development from this org. The danger, always, is do you have a top 2 or 3 that can be trusted to get it done over the course of the season and in the playoffs. Brown and Arrighetti at this moment have done nothing to prove they will be those guys, but the stuff and glimpses are really really promising and both of their developments right now feel like they are right on schedule for that kind of thing. Maybe neither of them will be cy young types but if both could merely be fringe all star types that still settles a lot of questions, especially if Blanco is also solid MOR. Framber should be an ace. If brown and Arrighetti are two types and Blanco is a solid MOR guy then 25 should be more than adequately taken care of, and you could spend big money on an ace in the offseason if your starting rotation payroll was something like: Brown- 5M arb1 Arrighetti- minimum Blanco- Minimum Garcia- 12M- Arb 3 LMJ- 18M (walk year). getting rid of salary for Abreu and Montero, Framber and Tucker also leaves a bunch of room. 26 possible salary: 5 starters- 25M Catcher- Sam kid and Yainer (arb 1) 5M Dezenzo- minimum Altuve- 25 Peña- 8M (arb 2) Matthews- Minimum Yordan (dh) 18M Ehitcomb- minimum Meyers- 7M (arb 2) Melton or Baez- Minimum Bench- 10M bullpen- 35M or so total- 150M or so. You could go sign a super star at 1B, 3B or OF (whichever position you can’t develop) plus a legit best FA starter in the market. Javier would be making 20M in his walk year and should be healthy. So- him and LmJ would be coming off the books to the tune of 40M after the 26 season meaning even if the ace/superstar took you over the threshold and was a superfluous arm you’d have 50M coming off the books. doing these exercises the astros will be really good for another 5 years if they develop at all, aren’t incredibly unlucky, and stop doing dumb **** stuff of Brown and Arrighetti are good. we should extend Tucker and Yainer this offseason to good sized deals. It will pinch a little in 25 but be fine by 26. Don’t sign any other free agents offensively, and just hope that between Dezenzo, Whitcomb, Matthews, Melton, Leon, Chas, Meyers and Dubon you have the pieces for 3 average to above average regulars, which doesn’t seem like it’s asking too much, right? But that would set a pretty decent floor through 2029 or so if you gave stuck 10/300 and Yainer 8/100 or something like that.
I don’t want Houston giving $300M to a guy coming off a significant leg injury. Tucker is an extremely good player but if Crane is gonna pony up like that he may as well go after Soto this offseason.
The difference between a hall of fame player and a hall of very good player. Thats not to disparage Tucker; he might win an MVP sometime in the next 2-3 years. But Soto is clearly the better player.
Soto, Randy, Soler, Adolis. The series we lose, there's always one guy who kills us. I got sick of Costas telling us how Soto was too young to drink. Yeah, Bob, we got it. Baseball prodigy.
@Wulaw Horn @Snake Diggit @Nook Can you guys double check something....I heard Zack Greinke's contract is being deferred since 2022 til 2026 at 12.5 mil/yr?
I don’t think that’s true but if it is I think the Diamondbacks are paying it. Houston is not on the hook for any money to Greinke afaik
This is true but it doesn't count against the CBT so is basically meaningless for roster building purposes.
For sure. I think if the Astros extended him they could get for $300M because the money comes a year early and that takes away a decent amount of risk. At Sotos age I think 14/500 is sort of likely. Might even be 10/500. I’d probably do 14/500 if you put a gun to my head. And still do 8/100 for yainer. I’d work really hard to trade Javier and LMJ if I did those two deals. Essentially that would leave you without a single bad contract on your books past 2025. If you did that deal with Soto then you are down to basically needing only 2 spots to work out in 2026 amongst the Sam catcher plus the other guys mentioned. That seems like a reasonable risk. You also would be able to trade some guys at OF if you needed to fill 3B. Just seems like there’s enough guys on the farm to be credible everywhere if you got one dude to go with Yordan and Yainer and however you feel about late stage Altuve. Throw Soto into that mix with average production for Peña and you can be above average in one more spot and average in the other 2 and be just fine in the lineup. That’d be a big balls risk.
It all starts with pitching. If Framber continues to pitch well the rest of this season they need to try and extend him.
Perhaps so but I would want to put a 3 year limit to that along with a reasonable AAV. Framber is a #1 but is at the point in his career where any improvement he is able to make will be necessary to keeping him ahead of ageing. He has proven to be very dependable and that alone is a valuable thing to have.
I hope no one does. Having this thread continually updated and active is cool to me. It’s interesting to go back and look at how far off we were forecasting 5 years out years ago.
