The Angels for-sh*t GM did Maddon a favor. Let's hope the Angles hire another manager to a long term, high value contract and then don't fix the roster.
Just laughed out loud at that response by James Click. My God, man. As a lawyer, I know contract shamelessness when I see it. Blum: Talk to me about how great the young starting pitchers have been this year. Click: [2 minute response, his longest of the night by far, talking about how it's all credit to the defense and not saying a word about a single starting pitcher.] Ya think he might be in some contract discussions with some certain starting pitchers?
I refuse to hear any Maldy slander on this timeline. I present to you the reason he isn't going anywhere. STRIKE EM OUT THROW EM OUT!!! Astros pull off HUGE double play to hold on to lead! - YouTube That was the most hyped I personally got all last postseason. Maldy is a baller.
This is one of the things that I always felt Luhnow was great at. Taking advantage of changing conditions and finding value where others couldn't (or finding value before others did). He was able to work the draft situation to his advantage with the whole overslot/underslot thing. I feel like he was on the leading edge of using spin rates to identify potential in pitching prospects. Any time there was a rule change or MLB decided to jack with stuff, I had faith he would be able to find some players that would thrive in that new environment. Hopefully Click proves to be as good at that.
Kyle Tucker snuck up on Jeremy Pena to have the highest WAR on team. He’s so well rounded, let’s get a deal done.
I don't see how he fits on this roster without an injury or trade of a player not expected, but I would love to see Taylor Jones get 75+ PA appearances for the Astros between now and the trade deadline. He is at the point where the team has to see if he can be a regular contributor ( likely at 1B but 3B, LF, RF also) or give up on him. Maybe they have already given up on him.
At the plate Bregman is reminding me of late career Morgan Ensberg, walks a ton but isn't doing much else of anything.
Potential Astros Catcher Upgrade Options https://lastwordonsports.com/baseball/2022/06/09/potential-astros-catcher/
It hasn't shown in the results yet, but Bregman's peripheral numbers are creeping up. His expected batting average is now .265 and his xSLG is now at .450. His exit velocity is the best of his career, and the infield pop up numbers have come down over the last few weeks. The most plain and simple bad luck number number he still has is the .228 BABIP, despite far better contact recently. I think he's close, none of the peripheral stats support him being such a mediocre hitter. Maybe he doesn't completely play up to these advanced stats, and I never expect him to be 2019 Bregman again without juiced balls, but a .220 hitter with a .377 SLG...he's not this guy. His peripherals all say he is very similar to 18-19 Bregman. The supporting numbers for Yuli on the other hand are....less promising.
If they move to an automated ball-strike system, I wonder if you will see some general de-valuing of the defense-first catchers in the league? Certainly calling a game, catching bad pitches and throwing out runners will still be important, but framing catches should no longer have any impact on balls-strikes, which takes away one of the sources of value good defensive catchers provide. I've never really gotten a good sense of how more framing skills affect the game, though. Probably a hard thing to quantify.
Some of y'all will continue to whine about Dusty Baker...but thank Jebus we don't have to endure Tony LaRussa. Was Tony La Russa's intentional walk of Trea Turner the worst in MLB history?
Exactly this. You'll still want a catcher who is "quiet" behind the plate (i.e. not bouncing around like certain former Astros catchers), but once the pitch is loose, he and the HPU are out of the equation. There's some stats out there that measure how many strikes a catcher gets on balls out of the zone, and vice versa. It's always seemed totally useless to me, because there's no way to differentiate between the catcher doing his job (good or bad) and the umpire doing his (same).
Baker is worse but you won't find me defending La Russa either. Garbage is garbage. Doesn't really matter which smells the most
I don't agree. With Baker, if I close my eyes and pretending back in the 89s I understand his moves ( except resting starters more than Greg Pop) With TLR it's just like. What?
There are very few managers that I think less of than Baker. He's just awful so we're probably going to have to agree to disagree here. I just assume he's asleep in the dugout half of the time lol
