I didn’t know we had a shot since his stuff was pretty sick last season. Unlike Yamamoto who has always been good, Imai kind of figured it out recently. From a profile standpoint , he’s an ideal Astros pitcher because his stuff looks different. The Astros love pitchers that throw stuff that behaves differently that you think it should. Javier being the prime example with hai fastball.
I see them resigning him to a pretty big deal if it works out if someone doesn’t give him Cole money. He’s young enough for it to make sense.
One year rental fine , if we clear a little more money off the books and land a capable lefty arm then this will be a great off-season. How much would framber get for one year ? We don't need money on backup catcher cesar salazar is great imo . He could start over yainer . Where we are bloated now is still with walker in the IF and with our contracts for Lance and Javier. We can't get rid of them imo , let's hope they do something . Also a little scared of the bullpen , really held up by harder and abreu .. and Josh will be coming off injury. Brown has done a good job of keeping his true cards close to his chest . One year rental is safety , but this move coupled with burrows is awesome and could bode a huge shakeup . If we could get 300 innings from those 2 guys that will transform our rotation. And allow us to really build a dangerous pitching staff.
Man, you can never say Crane isn't in it to win. A decent amount of risk, but as usual it's all about a chip here and now.
