Honestly, that's fine. Tucker looked lost his first trip up also. Send to the minors and bring him up later.
My prediction was a downfall culminating in 2026, this indeed is gonna happen in 2025. We are ahead of schedule.
Neither is ideal but him having to play balls off the Crawford boxes or track balls seems significantly more difficult.
Astros started 7-19 last season and still made the playoffs. Way way way too early to write this team off.
Because most people understand that hitting coaches don't actually hit. Once again, in the Crush City podcast this week, Josh Reddick stated how ridiculous it is to want the hitting coaches replaced, how great Cintron and Snitker are at their particular jobs (which does not include hitting), and how well liked and respected they are among people who are not just fans and actually know anything. He went on to say how difficult it is to replace a hitting coach during the season and accomplish all that is needed for that to be a successful move. That includes learning the players, their swings, their strengths/weaknesses, and developing their trust so they actually listen to you instead of their personal hitting coach they have had for years or sometimes decades.
Let's keep fiddling with the pieces until it works - Alvarez to first base. Altuve to DH. Smith to third base. Trade Walker and Paredes for outfielders under the age of 30.
It's not the hitting coaches fault. It's the hitters MLB is hard. MLB pitchers are good. Every MLB hitter has multiple periods every year where they struggle. The Astros lineup is not deep. They only have 5 above average hitters, and when 2, 3, 4, or even all 5 are struggling it is going to be ugly. Smith is not ready for MLB. Just like Tucker, it's time to send him back to Sugar Land or Corpus to get 400 PAs worth of high quality pitches (or better than A level pitching anyway) Maybe it's time to overpay for Robert and give up on the whole Jake Meyers experiment. Hand the RF job to Dezenzo, let him get through the growing pains with Chas as the 4th OF.
Just a single little nugget out of several reasons this is ridiculous Walker can not be traded until later in the season. June? I think.
Meh. When it's all said and done, this will be an average to maybe slightly better than average team. Maybe they get hot at the end, but that's probably the best you can hope for. They aren't as bad as they look right now, but we have been spoiled for a long time.
Agreed. This team was already on the downhill last year with Tucker and Bregman. Keeping them one more year maybe would've given us a winning season but another early exit. This is the reset year. I wouldn't mind a bomb to get a high draft pick and then regroup. We aren't wasting anyone's prime years except for Yordan, and he's partly the reason we haven't won so far this year anyhow. No playoffs this year and maybe next.
I am kind of tired of having coaches that are the equivalent of Golden Retrievers and Cocker Spaniels. Tired of coaches wanting to be friends with everyone and making sure everyone is getting a participation trophy. I want someone that will chew someone's a$$ when needed. They don't have to be jerks all the time (La Russa), but someone with a bit of fire. Also, kind of tired of the locker room being a bunch of friends hanging out. A little conflict isn't a bad thing (don't need a Bonds/Kent all-out war) but this current clubhouse is asleep. I agree that changing hitting coaches is hard to do in the middle of the season. It should have been done during the offseason. That being said, we have two and I would certainly sacrifice one of them (preferably Cintron). The hitting coach last year at AAA is currently the Organizational Hitting Coach (Westlake), I would look to bring him up as he knows a few of these guys already.
