Not mind boggling at all- did you watch Yuli play and see the stats his final year in Houston? I love Yuli, and thus resurgence is wonderful, but no way anyone could realistically expect it. To say not going after him is "mind boggling" is simply sensationalism.
Didn't figure Hinch would purposely throw out a pseudo lineup and lose the lose the last two games versus the White Sox on purpose just to face us. He knew we were the weaker choice.
He always had the pattern of being Derek Bell/Dallas Keuchel an off year every other year. His defense not declining to Abreu levels showed he still had something. Plus, his post season showed he fixed what needed to be fixed. No, I won't let this go.
Yuli is a playoffs money type player. He's proven this many times. I'm sure we will hear differently from the analytics posters soon.
There's a difference between the regular season Yuli and the postseason Yuli. I wanted to keep Yuli as a bench bat and fall back plan. Take it easy on Yuli during the regular season and have him ready for the playoffs. Instead Dana decided Kessinger was a better option. Think about that for a moment.
Love how the Yuli talk heats up after a good game, and not during the red hot 3-34 stretch he was in prior. I'm sure his 1-7 performance in the wild card games would have made all the difference. Yuli has very similar career postseason production to Bagwell, just a lot more AB's. Having better teammates makes all the difference in legacy.
Remember he was big in both 2017 and 2022. The Stros wouldn't have those rings without him. I dont remember Bagwell hitting a 3 run homerun to tie the score in game 5 of a WS. But my memory might be failing me. Bottom line is the Stros would've had a better chance of winning a WS than without him. Some posters called this before the season started and other posters are still stuck reading their spreadsheets. I'm hoping they bring Yuli back as a bench bat this offseason. I doubt this happens.
Yuli was never in danger of having more errors or causing more errors for his teammates than hits like Abreu was.
Yuli is a proven playoff performer. The past few years, he really performed better with rest. If he was expected to start less than half the games he probably would still be good. I could see a platoon with Singleton except the pressure to play Yuli more often.
They would almost certainly have approached their career OPS. Tiny sample sizes in baseball are worthless. Look at Witt, he's 0-10 with 4 k's or whatever in this series and is probably the 2nd best player in baseball. Trout has an 0.083 career postseason average because he only has 12 postseason ABs.
The thing that people don't talk about is that Bagwell actually got better over time. He actually had an OPS of over 1.000 in the 2001 and the 2004 NLDS. His 3 early seasons in the 90s cloud the later years. If his shoulder didn't fall off he would have been fine.
Final audit of former Astros in top 100 of fwar for position players and pitchers: position players: 26. Carlos Correa 53. Teoscar Hernandez 69. Wilyer Abreu pitchers: 88. Gerrit Cole The following former Astros prospects are in the current mlb.com Top 100: 74. Drew Gilbert 87. Ryan Clifford
