The difference between pro baseball and pure baseball is finances matter in pro ball. Bregman was good enough at a tender age to warrant playing two seasons earlier. Still if I had to choose between a 2004 Subaru with 200,000 miles on it or a 2024 with 200,000 miles on it, I would go with the 2004 every time. Experience and proven dependability matters more than youth,exuberance and a bad hair cut.
Anybody know where this puts us in payroll so we have an idea how much we have to spend on an OF and/or starting pitcher? Here's the info I found: Fangraphs has us at 225 million. The threshold is $241 million before taxes kick in, $261 million is the next level with the hefty surcharge and $281 million before your highest draft pick get moved down 10 spots. So i think we push all the way to $260 million if needed. So we have the room to make a couple more big splashes.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/60...-max-kepler-signing-analysis-astros-phillies/ The Astros continue to remake their roster, taking some of the money they saved by trading Kyle Tucker to the Cubs to address their first-base void by signing the best free agent at the position in Walker. He is an outstanding defender with an above-average offensive profile. It’s a completely different story than the last time they tried to sign a first baseman in his mid-30s to a three-year contract; when they did it with José Abreu, they ignored all of the signs that he was aging, while Walker looks like he’s at least got a good two years left in him before Father Time has his say. Walker has been extremely consistent since he became a full-time player in 2019, with wRC+ figures from 119 to 122 in the past three years, and between 110 and 122 in five of the past six years, only falling short in 2021 when he hit the injured list twice with oblique injuries. He’s been worth 3.0 fWAR, 3.9 fWAR, and 3.9 fWAR over the past three years, from 2024 backward, and if he delivers the Astros another 3-WAR season this year and maybe 4-5 more over the last two years of the deal, they’ll likely consider it a good deal for them. He’s an obvious upgrade for them at first base, where they got a .226/.291/.360 line last year, mostly from Abreu and Jon Singleton, and ended up with less than replacement-level value from the position. If Walker still has one more 2022-ish season in him, they’d be more than four wins better off than last year. The downside with Walker is his age — he’ll be 34 in 2025, and that’s in the range when many hitters see their bat speed decline. The Astros saw it with Abreu, and they may be fearing it with Alex Bregman, who is only 31 but saw his performance against four-seamers crater in 2024. Walker’s peak year in 2022 saw him whiff just 7.4 percent of the time he faced a pitch 95 mph or harder, but with the exception of that season he’s been in the 12-15 percent, landing there again in 2024 at 13.7 percent. Walker doesn’t look like he’s lost bat speed, and nothing in the data says he has, so I’m much more bullish on this signing than I was on the Abreu deal, even though both players were in their mid-30s at the time they inked their contracts. The end can come quickly for hitters, of course, so there’s a non-zero chance Walker shows up one February in the next three years and his bat speed is just gone, making him maybe a 1-WAR player thanks to his defense and patience, which obviously would not be such great value for a $20MM AAV. I’m willing to bet that that doesn’t happen until the last year of the contract, if at all, and to agree with the Astros that they can probably get 7-8 wins out of him over the length of the contract. The Yankees and Mariners are both still in the market for a first baseman, and both had at least reportedly had interest in Walker. The Yankees probably should have matched this price, although they may have been unwilling to pay it and give up the draft picks required to sign Walker. (Houston will give up their second and fifth picks, wherever they land, hurting a farm system that’s already down, but they are absolutely in win-now mode and I agree with their decision to surrender those selections.) https://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/st...b-offseason-grades-free-agency-trade-analysis Astros beef up at 1B with Walker signing The deal: Three years, $60 million Grade: C- You have to be happy for Christian Walker who, through his age-27 season, had a .170 career batting average based on just 99 plate appearances. After coming up through the Orioles' system, he found himself on the DFA merry-go-round during spring training in 2017, when he bounced from Baltimore to Atlanta to Cincinnati and then finally to Arizona. After becoming a regular with the Diamondbacks in 2019, Walker established himself as a steady power bat/plus defender at first base, producing at a level well above his remuneration. Now Walker gets his payday and he gets it from an Astros franchise trying to stay afloat as a prime contender just a little longer. Walker probably helps that cause -- though the 'probably qualifier in shouldn't be overlooked -- and Houston probably deserves plaudits for convincing Walker to accept one of what was reportedly several other three-year offers. This is likely the Astros' last big splash of the hot stove season, barring another foray over the lowest tax threshold, so a lot depends on this working out. Walker will turn 34 next spring and those thinking of Houston's most recent first-base splash (Jose Abreu) are reasonable to do so. Walker is a bit younger than Abreu was when he signed with Houston and is less of a candidate to bottom out in the way Abreu did. However, this is still a case of appearing to be paying an older free agent based on what he has already done as opposed to what he is likely to do. Sure, other teams were apparently willing to do the same thing in what's a scarce market of remaining impact bats, but that doesn't change the reality. The rest-of-career history for players of Walker's type and age is telling. The comparables listed for him at ClayDavenport.com and in the ZIPS system at Fangraphs include Eric Karros, Roy Sievers, Jeff King, Mitch Moreland, Eddie Robinson and Don Mincher. Let's consider what that sextet did in their age-34 to 36 seasons, matching what Walker just agreed to: •Average seasons: 2.5 (in other words, they didn't all make it through their age-36 campaign) •Game played%: 53.9% (Walker is coming off a 130-game season undermined by an oblique injury) •Combined slash: .248/.331/.426, with a composite 107 OPS+ •Per-162 game averages: 19 homers, 74 RBI, 54 runs Walker is on a run of three straight Gold Gloves, and that raises his floor, to be sure. But the Astros are trying to keep a championship window open in the wake of losing Kyle Tucker, Alex Bregman (a reality that is now all but official with this move) and Justin Verlander. They have very little money left to spend without going back into the tax, and because Walker was given a qualifying offer by Arizona, the Astros now will surrender their second- and fifth-highest draft picks in the next draft, plus $1 million in international bonus pool money. They needed impact; this is more akin to treading water. It would be an overkill to suggest this move doesn't move the needle at all from where Houston was yesterday, as Walker is a clear upgrade over whatever the Astros' in-house options were for first base (or third, if Isaac Paredes was the Plan B at first base). But the Astros have lost ground overall since the end of 2024 and it's not clear there is a great plan in place to prevent that little bit of skidding from turning into a landslide. Walker is too good to cause that landslide, but he's not the kind of player whose future is so bright that he can prevent it from happening. -- Bradford Doolittle
It’s hard to pin down but my guess is Houston has between $5M and $15M to go before going over the first threshold. They should have enough money to add another player, either a 3rd tier free agent or trading for a player with a modest salary.
Walker missed roughly 30 games last year, so if you project his numbers out to a full season like be had in 2022 and 2023, he would have been at 31 HRs and 100 RBIs. The last 3 years have been extremely consistent batting with power. Could be an Alonso-esque light type hitter with better defense at first base. At worst I think you're replacing Bregman's bat and at best you're replacing Tucker's bat. It should be somewhere within that range.
ESPN are some haters. Yesterday Olney ranks us outside the top 15, and then this Doolittle clown gives us a C- for the Walker signing. Straight buggin'.
Doo Doo Little isn't familiar with the ways the Stros can and will create more room to add at least one impact OF bat. Maybe 2.
ESPN is a joke. They have been hating on the Astros for years. They are all about the East and West coasts and always will be since they are a for profit organization and those coasts are their bread and butter. We have a very corrupt and bought and sold media in this country and it extends to sports as well.
