With an arm injury agreed. If he sprains an ankle or pulls a hammy or bruises a knee or whatever nonsense Whitley has going on that shouldn’t matter.
His numbers are not bad at all for a 1st baseman on a contending team. 2018 he had a nagging injury and his numbers came down a little that year. Look back through history, it’s not like prime will clark was the 1st baseman on every championship team. Yuli had a great run and was a heck of a defensive player too, who could also play other positions. Very valuable player until he got too old. He completely stabilized 1b for us, which was a black hole before he arrived. Also, our SS was not putting up 1b type numbers every year for us and he was injured and missed a lot of games. We absolutely needed Yuli’s bat. Our star CF left after 2020 and Yuli won the batting title without much offensive production in CF. He was not “carried” and he certainly wasn’t brought here to be a power hitter
He was the starting 1b for 6 consecutive ALCS or better teams. I switched to wRC+ eventhough its a bit kinder to Yuli than OPS+ because it's easier to get annual positional splits. Of qualified hitters who were primarily 1b. 2017: 118 wRC+ = 16th of 28 2018: 107 wRC+ = 15th of 24 2019: 131 wRC+ = 9th of 20 2020: 76 wRC+ = 24th of 25 2021: 133 wRC+ = 7th of 26 2023: 85 wRC+ = 23rd of 24 Even in his best seasons, he wasn't among the top 25% ofc1b in MLB. he was fine.
Dudes say whatever you want but his overarching point that Yuli was like the 5, 6 or 7th best hitter on most of those teams is absolutely correct. We didn’t win “in spite of him” like with Maldonado but we didn’t win “because of him” either. He averaged 2.43 war per 600 plate appearances as an Astro. Jake meyers has 2.78 war per 600 plate appearances as a for example as a point of comparison. Those War numbers indicate an above average but short of good major league regular. That is a fair assessment to my memory and my eyes of Yuli as an Astro.
Jake plays CF, yuli played 1B Isn’t that why jake has a higher WAR? Because offensively they don’t compare.
Altuve, springer, Yordan, correa, bregman, and brantley were better hitters. But only Altuve and Yordan were better every year (and springer while he was here). Gurriel also played great defense. Better than most 1st basemen until his final season or 2. I definitely think he was better than a net zero for us before he aged out.
Sure, but thats sort of his point- need to see a better bat from 1B than what he did if you want to be super valuable.
Well boys hope LMJ proves me wrong and pitches well tonight. He’s now faced three of the weakest lineups in baseball so far in these three starts…don’t think he’s necessarily pitching for his future tonight but don’t see how it gets better from here if he doesn’t show something tonight.
well we already know those two don’t compare offensively. Yuli was definitely a unique 1st baseman. He wasn’t a power hitter. In his Astro prime, I’m taking him over a lot of other 1st basemen. He was definitely a weapon for the Astros both offensively and defensively and he didn’t rely on SS and CF carrying him like what was said. We didn’t always have great offense from those spots while Yuli kicked ass.
The main reason I worry is that it’s not like he was rushed back. It’s not like there’s some chance he will get stronger. Yes there might be some timing and whatnot he is ironing out but that’s not what it looked like was wrong with him last time out. If he can’t be competitive over his next few starts, that’s probably all she wrote for him.
I absolutely HATE the fact that I have to pay $100/f’n mo. for Fubo and that STILL doesn’t get me all the games. But I do love how Apple lets you add the local radio broadcast instead of the TV guys. Great feature. I also love the real time stats like on-base probability.
Listening to the radio guys instead of the apple guys means you don’t have to be tortured by the on field mic garbage.
