Would Yordan really even consider waiving his no trade clause? Getting fair value for healthy Yordan, Pena, Paredes, and Brown would give Houston the best farm system in the league and potentially the best farm system they’ve ever had. They’d easily have 10 or more of the 100 best prospects in the league. You’d have to go back to the Royals like 20 years ago to find a farm system with that much elite talent piled up. I don’t see any way they trade Altuve, Correa, Yordan, or Hader. Altuve, Yordan, and Correa are 3 of the 10 best players in franchise history. None of those guys seem like the type who would want to be traded just because the team is having a bad 2 years. I could be wrong.
The Twins are the surprise of the season while The Astros in free fall. Who knew Victor Caratini was the key.
It was a miracle they won as much as they did last year with the injuries. Espada should be safe. The training staff and medical staff look really bad right now. Miller may also need to go. His brilliance may be what's causing so many injuries.
You sir have the wrong opinion If at the beginning on the 2025 season you were told about all of the injuries that would happen, I think the consensus here would be a losing season ... that is if we were being honest. Credit must be given to the team and to Joe Has-Got-To-Go Espada. Right now with the complete **** show for the start of the season and the worst record in the MLB, I think the consensus here right now is that the Astros will have a tragically bad season ... shades of the Luhnow rebuild years. Given all of this, my current bet is that the Astros manage to have a winning season this year like last year. That would make Espada a good-to-great manager, two years running. Espada still might get fired, as well as Brown ftm.
What has Espada actually done that you would give him credit for? You think the way he managed the pitching staff game to game has mitigated (not exacerbated) the impact of the injuries? I sure don’t. Up until he started playing Allen these last few games, I was pleased with his lineups, although I think the offensive production has far more to do with Yordan being healthy and having new hitting coaches than anything Espada has done. But I think the way Espada has managed the pitching staff has been awful and has compounded the problem with the pitching injuries. He appears to have made every wrong choice when deciding when to pull a pitcher and which pitchers to use in any given situation. I think he failed similarly with the lineups last year. A managers job really has 2 components: in-game strategy, and culture management. His in-game strategy is debatable and been a mixed bag, but for me the culture has suffered since he took over; at least part of that is that he misused pitchers which very likely contributed to them getting hurt (especially in Hader’s case), but more generally the team has been more prone to lapses in judgement and sustained failure than they were under Hinch or Baker.
People complaining about the team as if this is who they are, are not true baseball fans. This is almost certainly the worst stretch of the season. Most teams have a bad stretch in a season. Reality is some of these pitchers may have been pitching poorly because they weren't healthy. I'd be looking for a new training staff, medical staff, and possibly replace Miller. Espada is the solution, not the problem. Dana has been fine. People complaining forget the return he got for Tucker looks really solid. His additions of Burrows and Imai received no criticism. Guys just need to do their jobs. There's a lot of season left.
Espada is in a no-win situation. The pitching coaches get all of the credit when good pitching happens. And the hitting coached get all of the credit when good hitting happens. Case in point. When Espada makes a pitching change, half of the fans thinks he waiting too long and the other half thinks the opposite. Whoever the new pitcher is, half the fans know deep in their hearts that he is the wrong choice (not identifying who the obvious choice is). Again, this is a no-win situation. (FWIW I think that managing a MLB pitching staff is a team effort between the head coach, pitching staff, FO nerd cave and the pitchers themselves. At the start of every game, the head coach has a list of bullpen pitchers available, that is built via a team effort.) As a further aside, people hated Dusty Baker to the bone in 2022, even though the team won 106 games and the World Series. Hating on the head coach is the nature of the beast. I am not the President of the Joe Has-Got-To-Go Espada Fan Club. It is just that I do not see a clear upside of firing Espada.
Aside from the pitching issues, why is Nick Allen even on this team? Rather play Matthews or Whitcomb at SS. Can’t believe we gave up Doubon for this guy! And Loperfido needs to be on the bench also. He’s at best a 4th OF, not an every day player! With those 2 & Diaz, 1/3 of your lineup is garbage!
Honestly I think most people would agree that Espada is NOT a World Series winning manager. Obviously you can’t blame him for our pitching woes, but it’s clear he’s not the guy. Even if our pitching magically gets healthy, he still doesn’t instill any confidence.
The Astros had to dump Dubon's salary ... or ... commit some serious $$$ for a backup IF who one should not expect to start that many games.
What other player did we get with Allen? We spent the 5 million somewhere. Dubon would be the 2nd bat off the bench and see fewer PAs this year in theory.
I concede that evaluating a manager is very subjective. They seemingly control everything and nothing at the same time. But the bottom line is that there has to be some measure of accountability. A replacement team would win ~30% of their games. Not gonna do the math but my guess is that even a replacement level team would be <50/50 to endure an 8 game losing streak in a season. (ETA: only 3 teams had losing streaks of 9 or more games last season. 11 teams had 8 games or more, so if Houston doesn’t win tonight they’ll be in some pretty poor company.) I was willing to cut Espada some slack last season, but there’s a point at which things go beyond the roster and injuries.
I see a lot of stagnation with this team. We saw it last year as well --- the Astros just don't do the little things well enough IMO. Is that ALL Espada and his staff? I don't know, but we need to figure out if it is Espada before we figure out what role (if any) Brown plays in this. I have learned in my nearly 50 years on this planet, that observation and listening is important. One thing that has become abundantly clear to me is that leaders come with different traits -- but they typically are either very smart/wise or they have incredible instincts .... or they aren't so bright, but they have really strong leadership qualities. With Espada, I certainly do not see a strong intellect, I don't see good instincts, and I don't see the charisma or confidence to make up for a lack of intelligence. Espada is very much a good guy, does what he is supposed to do -- likely a very good father and husband and nice person. All of those are commendable traits, and make for a very good man....... but that alone doesn't make him a leader. I would replace Espada personally, and I would bring in someone from outside the organization to manage the team or at a minimum the smartest guy I have in the minors. The Astros need some outside voices--- someone from the Brewers or Indians or another organization that has had some success winning by being good at the things that don't cost a lot of money. The Astros have in the past remained an elite team by having almost no weaknesses defensively, by having competent and deep starting pitching, and by doing things like positioning well, setting up hitters well.... etc. I have read some question whether Brown is even qualified to be a farm director - that is ridiculous, he is literally one of the best at it for a long period of time. What I don't know is if he can run an entire organization, and they need to find out - let him have control of the direction of the club.
Espada sucks, and I'm fine firing him, however the pitching is completely non competitive. He can be scapegoated as much as people want, no manager in the history of the game has had the level of sway to overcome what we're getting. People acting like he is the biggest problem this season and not the pitching staff the organization chose to go with is kind of a joke.
I understand salary dump. But you mean to tell me out of our entire minor league system & cheaper vets available, we couldn’t find a single player better than him? Come on!
No. They were trying to dump 5 million dollars. That’s what they did. Nick Allen is a very good defensive player with a good amount of mlb experience and he’s cheap. This isn’t an “all in” year.
