The pitching gave out on them. Plus Diaz had a down year and Altuve was playing hurt. Cam did what most rookies do. Fell off of a cliff in the 2nd half. I expect great improvement from him.
SOOOOOoooo much went wrong. Losing Yordan for 2/3 of the season. Altuve showing age. Paredes missing 1/3 of the season. Walker having a 1/2 season slump. Diaz taking a huge step back. Meyers missing 1/3 of the season. Smith having a 1/2 season slump. McCormick completing his downward spiral. That’s just on offense. Then you have the pitching woes: Garcia, Urquidy, McCullers, Walter, Blanco, Arrighetti, and Wesneski all suffering near-season deleting injuries. Javier, Garcia, and McCullers coming back from injury relatively ineffective. Basically Pena, Brown, Framber, and the bullpen had good years but every single other aspect of the team was a major disappointment.
LH FA bats remaining: Winker Rengifo Lowe Tauchmann Conforto Heim Kepler Verdugo D Smith Tellez Melendez Frazier Santana Some of those OF make sense as NRI. But I don’t see anybody worth guaranteeing money to go over the tax or block Cole/Smith/Dezenzo/Matthews from potentially getting established. Other than maybe Nootbaar I don’t really see any trade targets either now that the Boston deal appears dead. Stephen Kwan, Brett Baty, Pavin Smith, Jake Cronenworth, and Yandy Diaz would be my dark horse trade candidates, but I don’t consider any of them as ideal or likely.
Yordan as the everyday DH means more likely than not that your starting 2B is Paredes and your LF is Altuve ... with the dark horse choice of Paredes at 3B and Correa at 2B and Altuve at LF.
Yeah - unless something has changed in the last few days, they are trying to trade for a bat. As for the Red Sox, they are very difficult to figure out.
I don't see it at all - but that would be pretty amazing. It would also likely allow the Astros to be more willing to moving some pitching for a bat. Most likely this is just "never say never".
