Take a closer look at his skills. Plus, the pen is the one major area of weakness that needs to be addressed.
Let's hope he does better than the last big FA reliever we signed. A bullpen of Pressly, Stanek, Neris, Maton, Baez (?) seems solid
His skills have amounted to a 3.83 ERA and a 1.21 WHIP over the last 4 years, and he's 32 not some up and coming youngster. At that price he needs to be a wipeout late inning reliever, not a decent arm to add to the pen. Hopefully I'm wrong and they are just extremely confident they have a fix that can make him Pressly 2.0, but the fact that we're paying Baez and Neris over 14 million dollars looks like f**king terrible value. It's Texans level decision making.
There is certainly some upside there with his splitter/four seam but he’s projected to put up around a 3.9 FIP and 0.5 WAR next season in 70+ innings which is pretty…mediocre.
A lot of it depends on the statistics you hold valuable. The Astros value xwOBA a lot, and Neris is very similar to Graveman against RHH; better than Graveman against LHH.
The FO follows our analytics department. I fully trust them in this area and the underlying statistics support their decision.
Maybe can't compare but is Neris better than Yimi Garcia or Collin McHugh? Who would you guys prefer between the 3? Would Garcia or McHugh have accepted the same offer?
Collin definitely accepts. He and his wife love Houston and I think they'd be ecstatic to return. Neris has good peripherals, perhaps they think he's a reclamation project, but y first reaction to the signing was "uh-oh." I have a buddy who's a Phils fans and all he talks about is how bad their pen has sucked for the past 4 or so years. He looks like someone who's underperformed what's expected, and has a lot of K stuff, but he also gives up a ton of walks, Still, too much for a middle reliever IMO. I'd have rolled with who we have, signed one guy for $5M AAV or so, and then used ammo at the deadline if need be.
The Phillies have been terrible overall. We have loads of examples of pitching other teams ruined that we’ve found to be a gold mine.
That’s a steep price for Neris. $8.5M/yr is more in line with a proven/sure fire elite setup man and/or borderline closer. Fwiw, fangraphs depth chart projections project Neris as the most valuable RP on the free agent market at 0.7 fwar. I would have loved Neris on something like $12M/2yr, and $14M/2yr would have been about what I would have expected him to get, so I would say this is a significant overpay by %, but not by total dollars. $4M just isn’t that much money. But after this and Verlanders $25M AAV, there’s almost no way Houston can sign Correa (or any of the 4 remaining elite SS) without going over the expected luxury tax threshold, even if they were to shed Odorizzi’s salary. I would guess that if Houston is going to significantly improve their roster from here, it’ll be via trade (a CF like Buxton or Mullins or a SP like Castillo). Houstons bullpen is set unless they trade somebody away: Odorizzi (or Urquidy), Javier, Montero, Stanek, Baez, Maton, Neris, Pressly. That is a very deep group with upside to be dominant top to bottom. Coupled with their depth in the minors, Houston should be set there.
As Snake Diggit mentioned, this is a potenial career ending injury. This is worse than Tommy John in my opinion. Until he shows that he can produce post surgery I expect nothing from him. I don't have a problem with signing Neris. The money is the issue for me. I agree with Snake Diggit's analysis in his most recent post. If this signing prevents bringing back Correa or another big free agent it is gross. I'm hoping a big trade is coming.
Wow Yordan missed super 2 status by 3 days. That's probably a 5-7 million dollar savings for the Astros. https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/11/super-two-status-set-at-2-116-years-of-service.html
If we sign a highly paid shortstop, I think it’s very likely to happen after CBA negotiations. The threshold would have to increase. IMO, we are likely planning to find a complement to pair with Diaz that can play this year until Peña is our full-time guy in 2023.
Even if Meyers never comes back at all, he’s definitely not a prototypical bust. It would just be disappointing. I agree that Neris is about 3 million more per year than expected, but the Astros front office definitely made it a priority to get him. They like what they see.