I would love to add Perez, but trading Diaz would be a no go for me. I know the end results have not been there as a hitter yet, but his quality of contact numbers and work behind the plate have both been great. Basically on any other team he would be paying a lot more. You wouldn't be trading him because he hasn't looked the part as your catcher of the future, you would be trading him because Dusty refused to let him play. I would trade basically any prospect before him except Gilbert.
Lol what. By default, I've been as much a Maldy supporter as anyone on the board but even i think it's ludicrous to say cutting Maldy's time (for a clearly better player) would not improve the team. Corner infield doesn't really have a solution beyond Bregman and Abreu need to play better. They're not going to benched, traded or anything else despite any thought/hope/desire to the contrary.
So you are simply willing to concede this season? Why spend capitol to reduce playing time for Maldy? Sort of like fiddling while Rome burns. Maldy is not the issue. Lets try and find a way to deal with the problem at hand.
I would give up Melton, Lee, Leon for Perez, Barlowe. Problem is that they probably will want pitching. I would add Murray, Santos, Blanco into the deal. Is this enough, I dont know, but now is the time to go for rings.
Other than Melton this is a lot of quantity over quality, generally it going to hurt more as a fan to acquire these established players so I’m thinking this is mostly wishful thinking.
Those pitchers (Murray, Santos, Blanco) have very very little trade value. The pitchers teams will ask for as meaningful pieces would be Whitley, Taylor, and Arrighetti. A few others could be asked for as throw ins but if Houston makes a trade built around pitching prospects it’ll include those 3 guys.
Nook mentioned trading Meyers and Diaz, I would throw in Taylor and a guy like Murray into the trade. That should be more than enough to get a deal done. You know far more about the Stros farm system than I do. I really want to hold onto Arrighetti and to an extent Whitley too.
We got into trouble at first base by taking on an aged and declining player with a 3 year contract to replace our own ageing and declining player whose contract was ending. Your solution is to make the same exact mistake at catcher. Have you ever heard that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing again and expecting different results?
I was responding to the last two pages of the thread, but if you don’t think Perez is an upgrade from Maldy you keep on cheerfully doing you and we will disagree. He’s a negative War player, an offensive embarrassment and a sub par defender. To answer your question though, yes, perez could play 1B
The Astros are not trading or cutting Alex Bregman and Jose Abreu. Both had OPS’ north of .810 last year. Maldonado has an OPS of like .550 and Perez has one of like .850. Yes, Perez is a massive improvement over Maldonado and Lee with the bat - and probably Diaz for the next couple years.
Huh? Jose Abreu wasn’t on the decline at all. Perez is younger than Maldonado by many years. Perez is 33 years old and playing very well.
He’s Maldy’s agent or something. Keeps saying Maldy is not the problem even though he’s been the worst offensive player in baseball over the course of the last 3 years, his defense sucks and he doesn’t even do a decent job of catching the ball anymore. Nope. Not a problem.
It should be an auto steal attempt when Jake or Chas is on ahead of maldy with less than 2 outs. Same with Dubon.
Maldy is definitely one of the problems of which there are several. It might just take him being cut and letting Diaz and Salazar take over since Baker will not do it on his own.
The Astros have 3 playable catchers. No playable first baseman, and no playable third baseman. Why do you think adding another aging catcher will help anything? Abreu was obviously in decline last season He finished the season well below his normal performance and has continued to decline rapidly here. If he is not the worst player in the league he is not far from it. Maldonado is obviously in steep decline too but we have two young catchers waiting to step in for him and have no use for another catcher particularly one whose contract will outlast him by millions of dollars. This is not rocket science. The Astros are two corner infielders away from going back to the championship. If you are willing to play Diaz at first base for the rest of the year and put Abreu on the bench till he can be unloaded then bringing in a catcher might make sense. I have no interest in adding another future payroll hit and would be looking for a third baseman first.
Bregman is fine. His numbers are the same as they always have been as far as his expected stuff. He will be fine.
