Casey Mcgahee may be available for trade after the Marlins got Prado, would be a good fit at 3B. Could maybe add some Hr's with the short porch in LF
LOL! I care about wins. I've never been a Yankees fan, so I don't know what it is like not thinking about whether my team is about to get Carlos Leed.
Me too... however, the Astros got bad not because of Carlos Lee... it was because the owner stopped providing resources to the farm (for which if you want to blame Carlos Lee's contract for, I guess that could make some sense). With a good farm teams should be able to recover from potential diminishing return signings. Neither the Astros or Phillies need to make this move now... they could both see how the season goes and make a deal later. These discussions now do set the stage for in-seasond deals.
Padres need to get rid of an outfielder... most would think of Quentin but I actually think Seth Smith would be the better fit.
"At some point in this rebuilding cycle, maybe even next offseason, the Astros could look more like the Padres – both in terms of the prospects dealt and dollars spent. Because Houston fans deserve a trip to Bloomingdale’s." The Astros in Luhnow Era will not look like the Padres in terms of prospects dealt at any point in the rebuilding cycle. As Astros get more competitive, they will spend more money. Sometime before the 2017 season, I suspect the Astros will be in $120-$140 million range in payroll. Luhnow knows he has 60-90 million (depending on arb guys, and guys that sign deals before end of arbitration) to spend on guys that are outside the first 6 club control years. He is going to wait until the Astros club control talent is near its peak, before opening up the payroll to spend on depreciating talents on long term contracts. The Astros will not spend money and prospects only to get competitive, but no longer have money to spend and prospects coming up to be more than competitive for a short period of time before entering the Suck again. The Astros recent history supports my deductions outside the $120-$140 million range in payroll.
I saw that and thought that was a poor comparison. The Astros didn't do all of this epic sucking for 5 years only to shoot their wad for 2 or 3 years of decent ball. The Padres even with all of these moves don't appear to be a great team, there isn't a lot to build around right now If the core (McHugh,Keuchel,Springer, Altuve) all prove that what we saw last season wasn't a fluke and this team finishes close to .500, I could see the Astros being extremely active in FA next offseason. Unlike this offseason, I think FA's will be much more open to the idea of coming here if that core is established. Although make no mistake, there will come a time when we will have to "swing for the fences" on some big time talent, it would just be smarter to wait until things are better aligned. There's always talent available.
Man, these payroll's are out of control. I really wish baseball would institute a salary cap (and minimum).
Definitely agree on minimum. Would prefer a soft cap like the NBA for maximum, but I would also change it so that guys under club control get paid more money if that is the case.
Depends on what the minimum would be. It would be a shame for an organization to be financially punished for putting a playoff caliber team on the field because the payroll isn't high enough.
I would think you would want the minimum to be such that all teams should win 60 games (i.e. paying Wandy to play for another team wouldn't count). Basically if that was implemented now, I would think a minimum team payroll of about 50-60 million would be sufficient.
Instead of the arbitration system, I think baseball would benefit from some sort of restricted free agency where the team can match other offers. It would give the good players an opportunity to earn money earlier, but also an opportunity for the smaller market teams to retain those players longer (at something closer to fair market value). Maybe after 4 years, a player could opt into some type of restricted free agency but only for 4 year contracts, or something like that. (Or he could alternatively play out the remaining 2 years of club control and then enter unrestricted free agency).
I agree with you with one caveat. Right now, club control years are the only things keeping parity in the MLB right now. Would need a very restrictive salary cap to keep parity if free agency, even restrictive FA, was sooner in a player's career. Basically, club control years give a similar result to a salary cap of sorts for players with 6 years or less of experience.
Jeff Bagwell garners a tremendous amount of respect from other players based on his personality. It has always been the case. He also has a high aptitude for baseball and has picked the minds of guys like Ted Williams and Tony Gwynn. The issue with Jeff is having his personal issues in check.
Wow... I had the basic idea that the Astros salary level was low and even amongst the lowest in MLB. But seeing how much lower it is... wow.
Yeah, the Astros basically decided that in 2012 and 2013 they weren't gonna spend any money on a non contending product. Sell off anything of value, and turn the MLB team into a glorified tryout camp while collecting high draft picks and stocking the farm. It was an extreme way to rebuild, some will say far to extreme. I was personally never bothered by it, but I could see how others were.
The Astros will again be bottom 3-5 payroll in 2015 even though we have moved into win now mode. That bothers me...
The Astros aren't really in win now mode, more like improve now mode. If you gave the front office truth serum, getting to .500 is the goal, not getting to the playoffs, although that would be nice. We are still running a lot of unknowns out there, still trying to figure out exactly what our most pressing needs are long term. Fact is the Astros don't have a single young player who has established himself as a consistently good yet. A few guys had great years last season, but it was just one great season. We could threaten in 2016, but 2017 was always the goal, that year should be playoffs or failure (and we better be good for a while given how much sucking we've done). No reason our payroll shouldn't be around middle of the pack by then. It just doesn't make good sense to inflate the payroll all at once, but it should be growing consistently, which it has so far.
