Loperfido should be starting. He and Cam are the only two OFs who should be out there every day. xwOBA since 6/1 - Joey Bats .390, Matthews .273.
Blanco for whatever reason has this hope level still among fans that have soured on Javier and LMJ. But Blanco is turning 33 in a couple months, he had one great season (2024) with the Astros where the underlying stats didn't back up the surface level ones, and then fell back to performing to the underlying level the next season before getting hurt. He's old, he's coming off a serious injury, and is unlikely to come anywhere close to his peak from 2 years ago. I'm not writing him into being a productive piece. He might be fine, but I don't think he's likely to be better than a #4 starter going forward. And he might be like these other returning pitchers who actively hurt the team from a performance standpoint. I feel like (other than Brown), the rest of the rotation are lottery tickets. Spaghetti with a higher floor and ceiling than the others.
Loperfido has an avg MLB bat that is best used in a platoon. He's got plus defense and base running skills. That's more than I can say for Matthews and Cam with the bat. Loperfido would be a great 4th OF. Unfortunately that's all that Dana chose to have as his starting OF this year. Tell me is Loperfido better than Cam, Meyers, Matthews? I would say he's better than all of those guys, which is kinda sad. Thanks Dana. I hope you do better at your next GM job if you get another chance.
You keep saying Dana “chose” to do this like he had tons of money and/or prospects to get one but chose not to do so. Ryan O’Hearn got paid $15M a year. What OF do you suggest he should have signed for a couple million? That was his budget. Edit: And let’s be real, if Correa was still healthy we would be seeing Yordan in LF a lot more often.
He’s better offensively but Smith and Matthews are both elite defensively. Smith is easily worth more than Loperfido because of his defense and the margin in offense is small (especially considering Smith plays everyday whereas Loperfido is limited to platoon work). Matthews would very likely be worth far more than Loperfido if Matthews played CF everyday and Loperfido played LF everyday. None of that negates your point that Houston outfield sucks and Dana Brown **** the bed on getting somebody to play LF; I suspect part of that was because at the time he had an extra infielder he had to find ABs for and so was ok keeping LF open for Yordan (so Paredes could DH). So from one point of view this whole shitty outfield situation could be blamed on Correa’s injury. I’m anxious to see how quickly Lamonte Wade gets back and how he looks. A platoon of Wade and Dezenzo or Matthews in LF and a platoon of Meyers and either Trammell or Loperfido in CF might be good enough if the rest of the lineup produces.
I wanted Dana to trade for an OF this off-season. Donovan and Nootbar were my choices if available. There were also guys like Pham, Wade and Larnich were rumored to be available.
You can't just force teams to trade with you and they aren't always going to offer you a fair trade. Besides the fact that Donovan is making $6M, the Cardinals received a top 100 prospect at a position of need (SP) that we couldn't offer. They also received a 20 year old SS that was taken in the 1st round along with 2 competitive balance picks (68 and 72 overall), again something that we couldn't offer. Larnach has a career OPS+ of 104 and averages less than 1 WAR per 162 games in his career. It makes sense to give Matthews and Loperfido a shot over trading for him, especially since once again we had a logjam in the IF and Yordan could have played LF more often if those guys flopped. Regarding the logjam, Crane wanted Correa back and he got him, which created it and left Dana with a limited budget to fix the OF and rotation. Finally, he tried to trade Paredes for an OF but obviously wasn't getting the value he believed was reasonable. Again, this goes back to my first point about not being able to force teams to trade with you. Would you have rather him just get ripped off?
I have no idea what players or terms WERE offered in a potential Paredes deal. Also in hindsight there would ge a big hole at 3B with, arguably, worse options as replacements. But in a vacuum if the roster is better with better balance, I don't care if Dana had to overpay to get it that way. However, if Correa wasn't hurt and one of Walker, Altuve, Paredes, or Correa were sitting every game because Dana chose not to trade And I found out he could have gotten a legitimate LF for Paredes or Walker but declined because the other team wanted 1 or 2 of the top 5-10 prospects on top of it I would he pissed. To me if 2 players are equal value but you want to trade them to balance the roster/lineup, then pay extra to do that. Prospects are suspects. When you have a full infield trading a 3 WAR extra infielder AND 2 40 grade prospects for a 3 WAR outfielder is a win. And smart baseball. That 3 WAR extra infielder does you no good on the bench. He has the same value as a 0 WAR infielder so you aren't overpaying.
Except I think it was easy to foresee that an infield of injury-prone players (Correa, Yordan), old players (Altuve, Walker), and a guy coming off a major injury who tried PRP instead of surgery (Paredes) would likely see some injuries. And the one guy not on this list got injured too (Pena). This was inevittable. I think multiple people pointed out that the logjam was never going to be a problem, especially with Yordan's ability to play the outfield occasionally. Your concerns about this ranged from Walker being a clubhouse cancer to everyone getting upset and being angry at their playing time to thinking the Astros absolutely needed to make a trade no matter what to thinking that's just what the Astros believed and on. None of it was really accurate or ever an issue. Even without injuries, playing time was never going to be an issue. Guys like Walker and Altuve could be resting more and might be better players right now. You wanted the Astros to overpay to solve a mythical problem.
As you said, we have no idea what was offered. The same posters would be b****ing saying Dana is an idiot for overpaying if we ended up with say Duran and his current 75 OPS+. My point was he clearly wanted to address the OF but nothing materialized, and as Major pointed out, there was no reason to overpay when you know you have a bunch of injury prone guys in addition to Yordan being capable of playing some LF.
If you are hoping an injury solves your lack of filling a roster hole then the season is destined to be a failure. And you suck at building a roster. If you lose a 3B to injury and then have a 1B, 2B, and 3B Or a 1B, 2B, and LF The number of players you have are the same The only way that is a good result is if there is an injury.
Once again, it's hard to say he "sucks at building a roster" when it was Crane that got on the phone with the Twins owner and convinced him to send us Correa back. Dana didn't create the logjam. He would have been a fool to get ripped off like you are suggesting, especially since once again he likely knew the injury risk, one that he did not create.
We weren't hoping for an injury but we were prepared for it. If Correa was healthy, Paredes would have been shipped off by now.
Really really good. He's not even used all his pitches which means he's not quite comfortable. I imagine playing with a different ball size has a big impact on pitchers.
Nonsense. Hoping for an injury and being protected from it are two different things. Depth is generally considered a good thing in most universes. The infield had excellent depth to withstand an injury. With Correa and Paredes able to play multiple positions, they could withstand an injury to any of their infield spots. They also had Yordan who could shift between infield and outfield. That lets them never play Nick Allen - instead, your ideal roster design had Nick Allen playing at least half a season to cover the 10-15 games of rest from each spot, even assuming zero injuries. That's an awful plan. Outfield was a known weakness, but with a wide array of players to fill it. They needed 2 of these guys to pan out: Meyers Smith Loperfido Trammell Matthews Cole Dezenzo If two become decent, you can rotate Yordan and the rest in the 3rd spot and/or trade for a fill-in if needed. If 3 pan out, you have excellent depth. The fact that none are any good is more a reflection of the failure of the draft/player development side than team building. Any team with lots of expensive veterans who aren't playing above their contracts is going to have to rely on young cheap players and the Astros stocked up on plenty of them. If none of your young players ever pan out, you are destined to suck because you can't fill your whole roster with veterans. And yet despite all that, the Astros are in the playoffs as of today and have an above average offense. So maybe the roster construction wasn't, in fact, horrible.
Just looked at interleague play and only one AL team has a winning record against the NL (Texas 16-14). That is nuts.
