Astros sign Jose Abreu

I usually like Petriello's insight. On this issue though, his expected stats suggests he hits fastballs like a Top 10 hitter hits any pitches. So while Abreu had a tough year on fastballs in the results-based stats, if teams try to increase fastball percentage to him, odds are good Abreu will make them pay.

 

He is a very, very solid player.

He is able to play just about every day and he is consistent with the glove.

He hits into a lot of double plays, but he can hit well against both lefties and righties, he has a high contact rate and he is pretty good at not swinging outside the zone. He is a really professional hitter and a tough out.

He is also one of the only guys that are his similar profile that can be highly productive without a lot of home runs.

 

Yup... he's 1/3 of my trifecta.

Go get Contreras plus Conforto and call it a wrap for the offseason.

 

Abreu's with runners in scoring position (clutch stats)

.311 BA/RISP
.943 OPS/RISP

He's going to absolutely clean up at the 6th spot.

 

Hey @Nook your boy Keith Law hates the deal and says it's proof that the Astros are going to hell for getting rid of Click and Crane sucks.

He is such a cunt. You should give us his number so we can all mock him for life.

 

LOL Of course Keith doesn't like it, and he didn't like Abreu when he came over from Cuba as well.

Keith is very smart and very cordial in person, but he has gotten REALLY old, really quickly with his baseball decisions.

He has gone from one of the most progressive baseball people, to now being the old man screaming at the sun.

 

Seriously man, the next time he gets one right on the Astros will be the first. He's like Costanza. Just go the opposite of whatever he says. He's turned himself into a complete clown.

 

Luis Garcia was a great call by him.

 

ThIs iS wHat HapPeNs wHeN yOu FiRe YoUr GM and JeRrY JoNeS yOuR wAy ThRoUgH ThE oFfSeAsOn!

Spoiler

https://theathletic.com/3946274/2022/11/28/law-astros-jose-abreu/

So is this what happens when you get rid of your successful, respected GM, and try to Jerry Jones your way through the offseason?

Signing a 35-year-old first baseman/DH to a three-year deal, even off a year when some signs of age crept into his performance and his batted-ball stats, is some 1980s George Steinbrenner malarkey. It’s also rather contrary to the way James Click, and other execs from the Tampa Bay Rays front-office tree, try to build their rosters. First base and DH are spots you can easily fill in the lower end of the free-agent market, or use to accommodate players you already have who might be blocked elsewhere. If you’re not signing an elite player — put a pin in that for a moment — you go for a less expensive one and spend that money elsewhere.

It is quite likely, however, that the Astros, whether Jim Crane or his factotums or Reggie Jackson or whoever is making these decisions, believe they got an elite player in José Abreu. The Cuban infielder won the AL MVP in 2020 (despite being nowhere near the league’s best player) and appeared to bounce back in 2022 after a down year in between, boosting his batting average 43 points to .304, cutting his strikeout rate to a career-low 16.2 percent and generating about 4 WAR, his best full-season showing in either of the major WAR metrics since 2017. You can wave your hands a little bit and argue that the Astros got a top-tier first baseman — he was fifth in the majors among first basemen in fWAR and rWAR last year.

I’m not arguing that Abreu was less than elite last year, because that’s beside the point. The Astros aren’t buying Abreu’s 2022 performance. They’re buying his 2023-2025 performances, and those are extremely likely to be worse, starting in year one and declining sharply from there. For one thing, he’ll play at 36 this year, and his production outside of 2022 hasn’t been elite for some time; from 2018-21, he had just a .340 OBP, .336 if you take out the intentional walks. He did show consistently strong power output, averaging 33.7 homers per 162 games in that stretch, making him above-average but putting him in the 2-3 WAR range.

In 2022, his production changed, and it’s something we’ve seen before. He lost some bat speed and started to struggle on four-seamers for the first time in his MLB career. His contact quality went down on four-seamers, and the harder the pitch, the more likely he was to whiff. He actually hit the fewest homers of any season since he first signed with the White Sox a decade ago, just 15, fewer than he hit in the 60-game 2020 season. He put the ball on the ground more and went the other way a lot more, which, in an older player, is often a sign that he can no longer get around on pitches he used to pull or hit back up the middle.

Fortunately for Abreu, he made up for some of the lost power with a big boost to his plate discipline, notably on pitches well outside the zone. He chased those pitches at the lowest rate of his career and was close to league average (45th percentile, per Baseball Savant) for the first time as a big leaguer. That led to more walks, with a career-high 60 unintentionals, and a career-high OBP of .378. It turns out that you can lose half your homers — he went from 30 in 2021 to 15 last year — and still be more valuable by getting on base at a much higher clip.

When a young hitter does this, it’s almost always a positive, as we assume that the newfound plate discipline will lead to better swing choices and any power lost will return. When an older hitter does this, it may be that he’s compensating for a loss of bat speed: I can’t hit the ball as hard as I used to, and I can’t turn on pitches I used to eat for lunch, so I have to lay off more pitches and hope I either draw a walk or the pitcher makes a mistake.

Abreu can still hit mistakes, at least for now, and I don’t think he’s going to stop drawing walks tomorrow. But he’s very, very unlikely to post a .350 BABIP again with the slippage in his batted-ball data, not with a career BABIP of .327 either, and all the projections I’ve seen have him dropping to under 3 WAR in year one of the deal. I’d give him an over/under of around 5 WAR for the three years, but with a significant chance that he follows Yuli Gurriel’s path, where he’s fine one year and completely toast the next — Gurriel went from a 132 wRC+ in his age-37 season to an 85 wRC+ in his age-38 season, making him a 3 WAR player one year and then below replacement level in the second. He did that for the Astros, by the way. You’d think they’d remember.

 

Oh he was the AL MVP just 2 short years ago.

 

I'm sure Law must have been good at something at some point, but his opinion carries about as much weight as John McClains right now. He is wrong so damn much.

We've been good for a long while, and he has seemingly hated every move and every prospect we've promoted aside from Correa. Every pitcher is a future bullpen arm.

 

I find it interesting that the Astros seem to go for the heart and soul of other teams in their acquisitions. I hear it over and over again, Vasquez, Mancini and now Abreu. Even Brantley and Verlander to an extent. Fans rooting for these long tenured players to get titles while still hating the Astros. I think its gone a long way to establishing the winning culture here now despite the "dysfunctional" front office.

 

Maybe, just maybe, the "dysfunctional" front office never was, but was petty bullshit whisper campaign from a small minded moron that didn't fit in to an actual quality organization that the media lapped up like a dog to vomit.

 

Is Jerrah Jones running the Indians Guardians too?

 

I thought the Padres were reportedly the strongest suitor? Jerry sure gets around.

 

I figured the Astros would sign Abreu. Welcome to the 2022 WS champs!

Think Yuli is gone.

 

If it helps, he was the AL MVP 2 years ago...so...yeah.

 

Mariners: "OH DAYUM"

 

In other words, imagine if Yuli didn't fall off a cliff last year