It's such a weird situation. 39 y/o coming off Tommy John and a near 2-year layoff. There's no precedent for that.
I don't think it has anything to do with wearing down. His blueprint in the season involves pumping a lot of fastballs in there. Rarely throws any breaking balls for the first few innings. Batters willing to be patient maybe try to get to the bullpen. I just don't think any of that remains the same in the playoffs. Every pitch is the most important pitch of the rest of your season.
I don’t think he’s worn down, but if he is there’s nothing you could do better than what the Astros did to keep him fresh. He barely threw enough innings to qualify. He had 3 weeks off toward the end of the season and he pitched on 5 days rest almost the entire season while not often going over 100 pitches. They handled him with kid gloves. If that wasn’t good enough nothing will be.
And yet he still has two of the most dominant starts in Astros post-season history (2017 ALCS game 2, 2022 ALCS game 1). He wasn’t bad in the 2017 WS… zero run support led to no wins (even though the team did win game 2), but he didn’t lay any eggs. He was gassed in 2019 and probably shouldn’t have made every start of the season that year, especially when they had things wrapped up (but I guess he was competing with Cole for the Cy Young?). Good game 2 ALCS start. Bad game 5 (originally slated game 6, moved up due to rain days). And we’ve already dissected his bizzare post-season this year… whether it was too much rest, pitch tipping, or a double play ball that should have ended the inning. The first game against the Mariners was an egg. And after Castellanos hit one off his shoes, he most certainly struggled. Typically you have a large enough sample size, and hitters do approach their career numbers in the post season (Bregman, Altuve, Yuli, Correa, Springer…), but pitchers don’t seem to have the same trend.
Way to many excuses for a consistently poor track record. Other pitchers in the postseason have to deal with these same issues.
He doesn’t want that yet. Wants 300. I don’t blame him. If he gets there he’s probably the last dude to ever do it.
Sure… and before this year, Framber was also considered a playoff/WS head-case. Now he’s not… unless he has another bad performance that blows up his ERA then he “can’t be trusted” and people start questioning why guys like Urquiddy (with good “WS numbers!”) can’t get time. When the sample size is limited and you’re only facing high quality teams, you do need to examine context and look for particular reasons as to when a player doesn’t seem to be performing at his expectations.
ya even with yesterday's game, Framber has a career world series ERA of 9.0, just not enough innings to qualify for the 30 inning rule (a pitcher could start 14 games, only go 2 innings every game, give up 10 runs each game, and not appear on that list you always see)
We're not possibly about to guarantee 40 year old Framber over 100 million. If Verlander were just taking his option then no issues, even with his inconsistent track record. But for the King's ransom he's likely to earn, all of the excuses as to why he's been so much worse in October don't sit well with me. October is why we're paying him this money, we have plenty of pitching for the regular season. Hopefully he goes out and dominates in game 5 when we clinch our WS victory.
I just think Crane values JV for everything… and considers his salary almost an exception to the actual budget. LIkewise, if they don’t re-sign him, I don’t see them automatically just applying that money to other players. And I’m not so disgruntled or believing that he is unable to pitch in in October, like some in here have concluded…
I think JV is an Astro in 2023, 2024, and likely 2025. And I think the Astros will be better because of it.
All I can say is, he and Crane are very close, and that goes a long way in terms of who the team extends and lets walk. Regarding 2019, I think Hinch messing with his routine and using him on short rest in the ALDS had ripple effects on the rest of the playoffs.
Is it? They will need to improve CF, 1B and possibly C… but other than working on additional extensions to Bregman/Altuve/Framber/Tucker, I wouldn’t expect them to automatically spend big on FA bats. Verlander has always had his own budget from Crane. The previous extension that he only pitched one game for, then this years deal coming off TJ surgery…. It’s always been egregious, but it hasn’t necessarily hamstrung them in any way.
