So, with the last weekend of the season upon us, JD is currently batting .320. He's a few at-bats short of being included in the season leader lists. But extrapolating his numbers to the season leader lists, he would be top five in the league in batting average, top 25 in OBP at .363, top 10 in the league in OPS at .928 (he'd be right behind Mike Trout), second in the league in slugging percentage with a .565 SLG. Some articles out there indicating that the Tigers are planning to make him an offer to lock him up beyond his arbitration years a la Mike Trout. Anyway, some in this thread have chalked this up to bad luck. Maybe we took care of the problem by canning Porter. But this looks like gross negligence to me, to let a guy walk that is potentially an all star. I know, some will claim that he'll regress to his average, I've been waiting for that to happen for four months now. Time will tell, but this is looking like a major crack in our player development/coaching/general manager ranks.
Meh, it happens. Similar to how we got Colin McHugh for nothing (another guy putting up all star stats)
It is what it is. Good teams have a way of maximizing players' potential, bad teams don't. It's not unreasonable to say he was a developmental failure, but he basically went to the perfect team to work on his swing. The Astros couldn't offer him daily interaction, batting tips, or line-up protection from two of the top 10 hitters in the game (Miggy and V. Mart). It's the same scenario as the Patriots, they also pick up other teams' discards and get good/excellent production out of them. Keep in mind they did wonders with Mchugh. I kinda consider the two a wash this year.
I'm surprised you're not crying about Steve Pearce as well. He has 5.8 bWar this year in just 99 games. Never been a J.D. or a Pearce fan so whatever. Astros will be fine without them in the future.
He also has an out-of-this-world BABIP at .397. When that comes down to his career norm, which it will, he'll settle in at his slightly above mediocre level. I'm not going to cry over losing Nick Markakis 2.0.
To put into context how high that BABIP is; if JD had enough PAs to qualify for leaderboards, he would have the highest BABIP in the majors by .24. The only other player in the top 10 with comparable speed to JD is Jose Abreu with a .354 BABIP. JD will come down to earth next year and hit .270 with middling power, below average defense and a 25% K rate.
.270, with middling power, average defense and a 25% K rate? You just described Dexter Fowler, who we paid $7M for this year and will probably be paying more next year. If that's going to be JD's average, it's much better than what we have in LF right now.
Martinez is below average in LF, we really only know Fowler's D is below average for CF. Fowler's K-rate is 21.7%, Martinez is 26.9% Fowler's BB-rate is more than double that of Martinez. I'm not seeing the comparison.
Your not seeing it because you aren't negative enough. Let out your inner "everything sucks" and get to complaining.
You're missing the point. This thread is lamenting that the Astros let go of a great player in JD Martinez. While he's not lousy, he would be nothing more than a stop-gap until one of the team's many OF prospects are ready to contribute at a high level. Is that really worth getting worked up about?
Every player in MLB has the potential to be an all-star if you ignore all of his actual performance. By that standard, you should never give up on anyone. No one here or anywhere else was complaining about letting JD Martinez go, and every team in the league passed on him after the Astros let him go. There are 750 major league players and thousands more minor league players at any given time. Several of those will be surprisingly and unexpectedly terrible every year, and others will be surprisingly and unexpectedly good. Based on your standard, every team commits gross negligence because every team has a bunch of these kinds of players over time.
Victim of our own "success" LOL :grin: <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>It seems so long ago that Jeff Luhnow declared J.D. Martinez a victim of the Astros' success.</p>— Jose de Jesus Ortiz (@OrtizKicks) <a href="https://twitter.com/OrtizKicks/status/506999142871072768">September 3, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Astros release jd martinez. luhnow says he could help someone, says choice shows reflects a "victim of our own success"</p>— Jon Heyman (@JonHeymanCBS) <a href="https://twitter.com/JonHeymanCBS/status/447353774370082817">March 22, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Presented without comment: <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Astros?src=hash">#Astros</a>' GM Jeff Luhnow said J.D. Martinez release is in part because Astros are a "victim of our own success."</p>— Nick Mathews (@Nick_Mathews) <a href="https://twitter.com/Nick_Mathews/status/447373111533395969">March 22, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Why would you quote that smarmy little ********er when he has nothing new to say? Or even when he does? Why? What is new here?
