Espada needs to stay in Houston. Give him a big raise and the "Manager in Waiting" designation, but keep him around.
I never knew he was part of the Yankees organization before he joined Houston and googling his name, it seems like he would be a hot commodity as I saw his name mentioned with a few teams the last couple of years. So yeah if Houston wants to hire him as their next manager, do what you said, pay raise and assure him he'll be next man up as the manager.
And I think he has 1 more year before he becomes a free agent. I wonder if there would be mutual interest with each other.
Got caught cheating, still was able to reach the championship 3 times in 5 years. Meanwhile the Texans have a religious charlatan influence them to God knows where reverting to the shttiest team since inception. Night and day between Houston franchise. Win another one for our city!
https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2021/10/how-the-astros-built-their-al-championship-team.html Pretty amazing that the only significant true free agents on their roster are Brantley and Odorizzi. If you were to list the Astros top 20 contributors to their 2021 regular season Brantley would probably be the only one acquired thru free agency.
And from what I understand, had they not signed Brantley, they would have signed a comparable player.
He and a couple of others were relatively equal. His 'problem' was not enough HRs compared to others.
Joey Gallo was 9-48 (+ 11 walks) as a DH this season. More evidence the managers and coaches pay very little attention to this kind of stuff.
