Peterson is a Hall of Famer against right handed pitching. He isn’t great in the outfield but can play there well enough to get his bat in the line up. What I have heard is that he wants multiple years. Astros are looking at FA, but also talking to teams about trade.
They weren’t sending him to Houston for a reliever. If we didn’t really need so many bats - Lowe and Goldschmidt would be good guys to get cheap and see what happens. However with so many holes we needed more of a sure thing. Houston fans will love Walker - very good player and best defender at 1st in league.
Nah - he crushes right handed pitching. He has a couple of years 4-5 years ago where he played with back issues that slowed him down… but he is overall a true stud against righties and should hit 3-5 in the line up when he starts.
Fair point on the luxury tax. But agreed that you'd prefer saving money in the first 6 years - and by year 7, the CBA will have almost certainly have been redone, and no one has any idea what will be the state of the luxury tax or the team. And with continued salary inflation, $25MM in 2032 or whenever may be a fairly small contract.
He had an OPS of .930 against right handed pitchers last year. He had an OPS of just under .900 in 2022…a few years before that it was .920…. Year before that .893… couple years before .918 against righties. Over the last 9 years he has had an OPS of .890 or higher against righties 5 times… two of the 4 years he didn’t was when he battled injuries. His OPS+ is even higher. He has overall been an elite hitter against righties.
if you had to guess, do you think the Astros try to trade for OF or sign one of these guys were talking about? If we’re signing, who is your number one guy you think we Could possibly land?
Actually he had .923 OPS (154 wRC+) in 2024. Yordan .924 = 157 Salazar .836 = 134 (24 PAs) Walker .822 = 123 Dezenzo .813 = 131 (43 PAs) Singleton. 773 = 124 Diaz .751 = 113 Altuve .731 = 110 Whitcomb .723 = 110 (32 PAs) Caratini .723 = 107 Paredes .696 = 106 Dubon .665 = 89 Pena .663 = 90 Meyers .603 = 72 McCormick .590 = 69 Leon .182 = -52 (11 PAs) Trammell ( only 7 PAs in 2024) .714 = 104 career.
Real talk (and I'm not totally advocating trading 200IP who wins games, no matter how frustrating he can be at times): What could you get for Framber and from who? A starting OF bat plus prospect+ is really intriguing to me.
"10th Inning" PBS Ken Burns final chapter of his "Baseball" series is outstanding I watched the Roberto Clemente doc again this evening, she liked it too
Verdugo makes a lot of sense for another reliable OF. His BABIP was almost 50 points below his career last year.
This position player roster would probably be on par with any that the Astros have had outside of maybe 2019: C Diaz 1B Walker 2B Altuve SS Pena 3B Paredes OF McCormick OF Verdugo/Winker/Pederson/Polanco/Turner OF B Lowe/Robert Jr./W Abreu/Mullins/Yastrzemski DH Alvarez Bench: Dubon, Meyers, Caratini, Singleton
Was looking at Houston’s starting pitching depth and it’s pretty impressive if you forget the atrocious injury luck from last season. They have: 5 guys still in prime age with at least 1 3 fwar season: Valdez, Brown, Garcia, McCullers, Javier 5 other guys still in prime age with at least 20 big league starts: Blanco, Arrighetti, Wesneski, France, and Glenn Otto 5 prospects in AAA who are in their MLB Pipeline Org Top 30: Ullola, Blubaugh, Gordon, Gusto, and Rhett Kouba Yes, 4 of those guys ended the season on the IL, but they’re all currently expected to be healthy by late July, and all but Javier and France are currently expected to be ready for Spring Training.
