Yeah... but from what I read in the game thread, Will Smith giving up 3 hits in the 9th didn't solidify Verlander's season.
Good luck on having a rebuild as remotely successful as this one. The Dodgers and Yankees and Mets have resources the Astros don’t. Drafting Correa, McCullers, Bregman, Pena, Tucker, Meyers, McCormick and others will be extremely hard. Signing international guys like Valdez, Javier, Garcia, Urquidy, Abreu and Gurriel is uncommon. Trading for Someone like Cole and Alvarez and Verlander isn’t realistic.
Greatest season for a pitcher I've ever seen. By ERA+, it probably was. Because Pedro did it in the midst of the steroid era, it was so much more impressive, but ERA+ over 200 is rare in baseball. In Astros history his 220 ERA+ ranks just behind Clemens' 226 in 2005 for the franchise best.
Historically speaking, defensively limited impact bats have been fairly easy to acquire at the deadline, particularly if they have a significant salary. Players like Castellanos and JD Martinez come to mind. I guess it's possible that Click underestimated the impact the expanded playoffs had on the trade market. As it was, all of the trades they did make involved teams that hadn't given up on making the playoffs. I find Oz very interesting and am glad he's back in the organization. Back in the day he'd tweet out information about the interesting young international arms percolating through the system. Do you know anything about his career progression? I just find it really strange that he had as much success as he did scouting internationally, but afterwards worked as an interpreter and an advanced scout, before finding himself in a different organization. I'm really curious whether or not those changes were initiated by the organization or Oz himself.
We really had a string of good luck. Literally the only flops were Appel and Whitley, but we recovered with once in a generation type transactions like Alverez and Gurriel. To have that many of our top picks become All-stars is incredible. We also aren't mentioning Altuve. How many guys who were signed as an afterthought for 30K end up being a MVP and most likely greatest player in franchise history. I'm not taking any of this for granted especially as a lifelong Houston sports fan.
David Hensley sure is showing well in his limited action. He’s only had 33 pa but posted 169 wRC+ with a very high walk rate and k rate <20%. His babip is high but identical to what he put up in AAA. For an older player he has quite a bit of upside. In an absolute peak scenario I could see him having value similar to DJ LeMahieu, with a slightly higher k rate but mitigated by slightly higher defensive value. But even just his median outcome looks pretty good as a versatile bench piece.
I like his defensive versatility. Could be another plug/play guy like Aledmys with slightly less upside at the plate (especially once there's a real book on him).
Simply having first/second round picks in the system also provides value for future trades. Cameron helped get JV. Beer helped get Greinke. No having any of those picks the last 2 years did limit the sort of moves they could have made at the deadlines. But yes, there are still way too many fans here taking this era for granted or simply thinking its the product of basic tanking. These are exceedingly rare times. I'm glad they've got at least 3 (if not more) years of it...
Click felt that he would be able to get Josh Bell or Ian Happ or someone else the day of the deadline, and it didn't happen. He was pretty confident it would happen and the Crane was told it would happen - it didn't. We can talk about it being the change in the playoff format, the market composition or just bad luck - but it didn't happen and it rubbed ownership the wrong way. From what I remember he started out working for the Cardinals after begging for a job and got one in part because he could speak Spanish. Working for the Cardinals is where he met Jeff Luhnow. He then took at job working for Major League baseball with scouting and Latin player development. When Luhnow took over with the Astros he hired Oz to be in charge of international player development and scouting. He had almost no time to prepare for the signing period with the Astros and had to really do it on the fly. He became very close to Luhnow and Pete Putila and Kevin Goldstein while working for the Astros and was promoted to Special Assistant to the GM where he did a wide variety of things and was learning some of the state side parts of being in a front office. In late 2019 the Astros were already being investigated for cheating. After talking to Luhnow and others Oz made the decision to leave the Astros before anything broke. It was not a long planned exit and a lot of positions around the league were already filled. The Astros helped get Oz a position with the Pirates quickly. It was a lateral move. Oz stayed with the Pirates for a couple years if I remember correctly and when an opening for cross checking with the Astros opened up, he jumped at it. He wants to break out of just handling the scouting part of the business.
Not bad for a guy not big enough to play pro ball. He's smaller than most highschool freshman baseball players these days and he's probably going to own the record for post season homeruns.
I do think that’s going to be one of the funnest things to watch over the next 3-4 years especially. I haven’t looked at it but Altuve, Bregman, and Alvarez have got to be on track to start owning a ton of postseason career records.
Only Altuve, Correa, and Springer. We will see where Correa ends up. If he keeps just chasing the money, the numbers maybe stagnant for a while.
Shout out to Cristian Javier. What an incredible breakout season for that guy. 2.54 ERA and 11.7 K/9 over 148 innings is truly elite, ace type production.
I want Verlander back next season as much as anybody, but a rotation of Framber, Javier, McCullers, Garcia, and Brown would still very likely project to be in the top 10 in the league.
Great post outside the list I boldfaced. Springer, Correa, McCullers, Bregman, Pena and Tucker would be the list worthy of that post. I would leave off Meyers and McCormick.
Ha… McCormick and Meyers are good for where they were drafted. Ideally McCormick would be a 4th outfielder… but he still had an OPS north of 700 this year with good defense.
