A lot of talk about offseason... now Carlos is gone and we know the score going into the season... what's the plan? I would shelve McCullers for 2 months and hope he can come back at the break. Then with all the lack of durability in our rotation i would go with a 6 man rotation: Verlander Valdez Urquidy Garcia Odorizzi Javier This gives them a chance to rehab Odorizzi's trade value for the deadline. If Odorizzi can do a 3.75 ish era some team will give us a couple of decent prospects for him. Then hopefully McCullers comes back and you add Javier to the bullpen instead of trading for a bullpen arm. I roll the dice with Pena at short and if he's failing at the break I used the payroll flexibility to pickup a shortstop via trade... maybe a salary dump of someone accomplished but overpaid...
Have you seen enough of Verlander to see if we could insert a $33M salary for 2023 and move the $25M player option to 2024? Or better yet, convert 2023 player option to Contract, add $25M player option for 2024 and give him a signing bonus sufficient to keep him here. It becomes a rolling extention rewarding him for Verlander performance and protection of a 1 year player option to cover an off year. I have a feeling Verlander might go for it rather than chase the money as a 40 year old. Retire an Astro instead of letting him get away like Nolan Ryan. He seems to like stability.
