His buyout and option have incentives as well. The option goes up 2 million and the buyout goes up 1 million for 20, 25, and 30 starts or any appearances where he records 12 outs or more. It maxes out with a player option at 12.5 million and a buyout of 6.25 million Totally depends on McCullers for me and what you can get for Odorizzi. I don't want to lose him if we aren't helping the MLB team win this year. So the return needs to fill one of the holes on the roster. I'm not trading either Whitley or Brown this trade deadline unless it is for a star player with multiple years of team control.
Jake Meyers is just now starting to hit live pitching and has yet to begin his rehab assignment. Hopefully we can evaluate him prior to the trade deadline... as I think we will need to make a trade for a bat.
Goldstein has talked about his view on catching and the Astros view. Essentially they both believe the commercial metrics and measures for the impact a catcher makes defensively, throwing out runners and working with the pitchers greatly understate their value. He said that Maldonado is one of the very best at handling pitchers, that he is very good defensively and that he keeps teams from running on the Astros which cumulatively makes a huge impact. He also has said that just about every pitcher around Maldonado isn’t just okay with Maldonado but actually asks to have him catch them. He has also discussed how Maldonado is a bridge between the Latin players and the American players and is very good at understanding analytics and incorporating them into what the Astros do. Last, Maldonado doesn’t cost the Astros very much. I look at someone like Wilson Contreras, who the Astros have had talks with the Cubs about at least several times. His bat is a massive upgrade and extends the line up which IMO is the key to a good offense. However I live in Chicago and I can tell you that Contreras doesn’t have the best reputation. He has admitted in the past to being bored in the second half of the season, to not always focusing or giving max effort defensively or at calling a game. I don’t know that a winning team as competitive as the Astros are would tolerate that for very long. Verlander, McCullers and others are very demanding. So it appears that the Astros will tolerate having the offense of a good hitting pitcher in the line up if they do all the other stuff.
They like his glove actually, at least as of late last year they still viewed him as one of the best defensive catchers in the game. I guess that could have changed but I doubt it.
Max Stassi falls in faint. Maldonado’s offense has found a new level of ineptitude, but I’d still be able to tolerate it more if Castro hadn’t forgotten how to hit as well. Will be worth watching.
Interesting team stats and rankings after the 7 game win streak (all stats courtesy of Fangraphs) The Houston hitters collectively are now 4th in Fangraphs WAR despite hitting .217/.297/.383, which equals a slightly above average wRC+ of 106. By purely offensive rating, they rank 15th overall. However, their defensive ranking is far and away the highest in the league. I don't know what goes into the defensive rating stat, but Fangraphs says only 6 teams have a defensive rating stat above 1.0 and the difference between the Astros (11.5) and second place (Arizona at 7.0) is greater than Arizona and 3rd place (San Diego 4.8). On the pitching side, the Astros rank 10th overall. This is probably due to their ERA (2.93) outpacing their FIP/xXFIP (3.57/3.79). Some areas where they're doing very well are BB/9 (6th lowest), HR/9 (8th lowest), and left on base % (5th lowest). They've been surprisingly terrible at ground ball % (26th ranked) and mediocre at K% (22nd ranked). This is pure speculation but the staff seems posed for some regression. Can't play the M's and Tigers every series.
Fortunately, we don't have to play the Angels and Blue Jays every series either. It just seems like it. 4-3 Angels (19-11) 7 games 4-2 Mariners (13-16) 7 games 2-4 Blue Jays (17-13) 6 games 3-1 Rangers (11-15) 4 games 4-0 Tigers (8-19) 4 games 1-1 Diamondbacks (15-14) 2 games
I wouldn't pay any attention to all to Def on Fangraphs. Even with a full season of data it's pretty sketchy since they still rely on UZR. Wish they would move to a weighted average of DRS and OAA for their defensive metrics. The GB% for the pitchers is something I've been thinking about...maybe the dead ball is helping our staff more than most other teams? I think part of the issue with the FIP-based stats are some of the struggles Garcia, Framber, and Urquidy had earlier in the year. I have hope for Garcia and Framber based on their most recent performances but my patience is wearing a little thin for Urquidy.
I don't understand how 9 other teams have had better pitching stats than the Astros so far this season. Has the dead ball really affected things so much that the Astros pitching is just 10th? Or is their basis for ranking pitching questionable?
This no longer appears to be the case. FanGraphs appears to weight runs off of OAA very highly along with the double play (for IFs) and arm (for OFs) components of UZR that aren't captured by OAA currently.
Did they publish an article noting the update in methodology? All the articles pertaining to Def are like from 2014.
A little of both. fWAR utilizes FIP which assumes average influence on balls batted in play by pitchers. This is a great assumption for >95% of pitchers. Of the <5% that this isn't a good assumption, a disproportionate amount of them usually are on the Astros and Dodgers. For the Astros, Javier, Garcia, Urquidy, Verlander, Taylor, and LMJ are typically underrated by FIP.
It would be shocking if there wasn't some level of regression because it is unlikely they finish with an era south of 3. The Astros have a lot of quality starters but they would need several hammers at the top of the rotation and as it is, there is Verlander and a group of good but not great pitchers.
I've not seen an article, but think it was mentioned in a chat. I saw reference to OAA being used in a comment to an article. Looking at the value calculations to see if this was true, there is no way OAA isn't the primary driver for fielding runs. Pena for instance has 4.3 defensive runs listed. UZR + position = 0.1 runs OAA converted to runs + position = 4.2 runs OAA converted to runs + double play UZR = 4.3 runs FanGraphs and Baseball Savant only report whole numbers for OAA and OAA converted to runs so there can be some decimal value differences in defensive runs.
I think that's good but wish they were more transparent about this stuff. That is one thing I have enjoyed regarding analytics with baseball versus football where many things are proprietary.
My bad. They did have an article a couple of weeks ago that I missed. Searching on google and not their site search helped me find it. I was worried that I was missing something as the rounding makes some things not add perfectly, but it appears that their new way matches what I thought it was. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/a-fangraphs-war-fielding-update/ "Today, we’re changing one of those components. Retroactive to the 2016 season, we have swapped out the Range component of UZR for the Statcast metric Fielding Runs Prevented, which is Outs Above Average (OAA) converted to runs above average. The UZR Outfield Arm and Double Play Conversion components of WAR remain unchanged."
