I could certainly see Verlander being a Crane level decision. Not sure there's many player-owner relationships closer than those two.
I'd be pretty surprised if it came down to money for him. He's made almost $300m in his career. I dunno if a 3 or 4 year deal would even be more attractive to him than a 2 year deal with a similar AAV. Pitching the way he is, he could go year to year and do just fine on AAV. Or would a slightly higher AAV be worth moving and starting over with a new franchise? Say Philly/ChiSox offer 2/$80m to an Astros 2/$70m offer. Is the extra $10m worth it for him to move his family and pitch for a team without definite WS prospects? It's all speculation but my gut says if Crane ponies up a decent offer, Verlander resigns.
After the bummers of the last two Braves games, went digging for positives in the Astros season (other than the obvious best team in the AL): -Bregman rounding back into All-Star form. This is the Bregman I expect. ~20-25 HR's, 5.0 WAR. Higher B% than K%. None of that 30+, 40+ HR stuff that wasn't sustainable. - 4 batters in the top 30 fWAR (Yordan, Breggy, Tuve, Tucker). -Framber becoming a top 7 AL pitcher. -Chazzy Fizz rounding into a solid, ML starter. -Abreu becoming a foundational piece of the bullpen (under control through '26) -Stanek holding a roughly 1.1 ERA for most of the season -Seth Martinez doing things as minor league Rule 5 pickup -totally getting in the Yankees heads This is beyond the major storylines of: -JV. Nuff Said -Yordan becoming an MVP candidate -Pena's early breakout -top AL rotation and bullpen. It's been a great season and I'm looking forward to the playoffs
$36.1M AAV to top Cole would probably be more tempting than an offer below $43.5M elsewhere. I think he likes stability, but only if it's close. I just don't know if he gets a full value offer ($43M AAV) starting at age 40. But we have a few owners who like to burn money just because they can.
The deal I’d like to see happen is 3/105 with a 4th year vesting or opt out for 25 million. 35 per keeps the payroll flexibility better than 40- and we are going to be in a crunch. I’d do 3/120 but wouldn’t throw in the option on top of that. If I had to guarantee the option and make it 4/130 I’d be ok with that I guess- at least it reduces the AAV to 32.5 and adds in more payroll flexibility. If we have to give him 3/120 my next call would be to Altuve and ask him how he feels about tearing up his current 2/52 deal remaining after this season and turning into something like an 8/120 to take him to 40 years old and make him an Astro for life, while adding in payroll flexibility. Don’t know if you can tear up contract and re-set AAV like that, but if so it would get your JV/Altuve to come in at 55 million a year for the next 3 years which leaves some wiggle room. can Jose do better than 6/70 after his age 34 season? Maybe- but that seems more than fair most likely to me.
Not just stability, but a good offense because he clearly wants 300 career wins. I think that has to play some role for him.
I hope JJ, Hensley, and some of the farm kiddos (Taylor Jones?) can get some reps this season, let Diaz rest on the IL, same with Dubon
I hate that Diaz gets injured every time he’s hot and seems like he’s getting back into that all-star mode he had with St. Louis. Now he has the Sisyphean task of recovering from his injury and trying all over again…
I do think going to a team nearly guaranteed to make the playoffs will be extremely important to Verlander. But the money matters. If a 2nd tier team like the Phillies or Mariners offer him that much more I think he will consider it. But I don’t think it will come to that. He will get bids from the Astros and Yankees and Mets and Dodgers and take the best of those offers and they will be high enough for him to feel good about not leaving too much money on the table.
Year 1: $40M Year 2: $36M Year 3: $33M (player option) AAV of $36.3M. Not Scherzer money, but more than Cole. I feel he wants more than Cole at the bare minimum, because, in a way, you could think of it as "the Astros picked JV over Cole," and Verlander wants to prove everyone that was right choice (though JV actually wanted to stay and Cole was never re-signing regardless). If we start to suck and/or he is still doing JV things (and thus wants more), he can opt out.
I'm glad all the trade Urquidy stuff didn't come through. In his last 6 starts 4-0 with a 2.52 ERA 39.1 IP 0.864WHIP. Those numbers are slightly better than JV and Framber's. Every year there are guys that get in a grove the second half maybe Jose is going to have one of those runs. JV as an ace with Framber as the #2 that's settled but I think Jose is stepping up to claim that third spot. Jose already has the post season experience. I love LMJ but he struggles to go deep since he nibbles too much. Javier has been good too but I worry about the total innings pitched since his next start should push him past his career season total of 2019 113.2 IP. Plus he has never started in the post season. Luis Garcia has been roughed up and looks like a needs to skip a start.
I posted this awhile back in trade discussion but it still holds true, sign JV because truly elite pitching is RARE. Verlander to me is a must. He can have his career extended here given the quality and depth already on the staff. Keep a 6 man rotation most of the season so he stay fresh all year and gets that extra day of rest. He can stay around 160 IP. Give him a 3 year deal of whatever it takes. I'd do a 4th year team option! Some guys just have the work ethic to go out and defy the odds. Nolan Ryan was one of the first players to dedicate himself to a year round work out routine. The Angels had a weight room when he went there and nobody was using it. He said it was put in for another sport. He had decided he wasn't going to be an out of shape fat pitcher early in his career. Justin reminds me of Nolan. Justin is 58-18 with a 2.30 ERA and a .83WHIP as an Astro. Do NOT over think this. Nolan from age 40-43 started 129 games for a total of 874.1 innings (that's 6.7 innings per game over 4 years, that is over 218 inning per season) lead the league in strikeouts for all 4 seasons. Had good ERA all 4 years and at 40 lead the league 2.76era. His WHIP was great, right above 1 every season and lead the league at 43 and 44 years old (1.034 & 1.006). I'm not saying it's a lock to JV will be great the next 3 years but I sure as hell would bet on JV. This staff needs his moxie and wisdom. Crane needs to get this done. JV has a family now, roots are established so unless Katie has a real good reason to leave the great state of Texas and raise a child elsewhere this to me is a MUST and shouldn't be that hard. JV said sometime ago he'd like to get that 300 win on his resume and felt with his routine he might pitch into his 40's like Ryan.
We'll see what other options are out there, but one thing that concerns me with JV is that his stuff is still not the same pre-injury. He's lost ground in the publicly available stuff models (e.g., pitchingbot has dropped him from a 55 stuff grade in 2019 to a 45 grade in 2022) and his overall SwStr% is down from 16% in 2019 to 12% in 2022. He's still been a very effective pitcher but he's also been clearly different from his preinjury self. I think signing him is fine as long as the deal reflects that diminution along with the substantial risk of injury/ineffectiveness attendant his old age.
It’ll be interesting to see if he gets the “2nd year after TJ” bump. Most pitchers don’t get back to full throttle until their 2nd full post-TJ season. What he’s doing is unprecedented for a lot of reasons.
Baseball is weird. JV's stuff is down, but his command has been excellent. He's throwing his slider and curve for strikes down in the zone which has allowed him (with some help from ball/mud/humidor changes) to go from a HR-prone pitcher to one of the better pitchers at suppressing homers. He is pitching differently, but he's been one of the best pitchers by most measures. I'm not sure what this says about his next contract, though.
I haven't checked in the last couple of weeks, but Verlanders 4 seam spin rate was down, meaning a little more drop, leading to significantly less swinging strikes. However, his pop up rate up, and his foul ball rate is also up, and the exit velocity in general was mostly the same, meaning the extra drop is still not being squared and is is becoming poor contact instead of a swinging strike. That combined with the dead ball means his results are still supported even without the elite swing and miss stuff. However the decreased spin rate, is it an age trend or a coming off Tommy John thing. If the spin rate keeps dropping, it will be an issue. If he can maintain his current numbers (and Manfred doesn't go f**king with the ball again) he should be good.
Most older pitchers do re-invent themselves in a way, especially when their stuff starts to diminish a tad. Clemens was one of the best modern-day examples.... went totally to a control/pin-point location approach, with stuff that was still good enough to overpower at times. I also think Clemens would suffer in today's game due to him getting a lot of boderline calls that probably weren't really strikes if using the tracker. I'm just amazed at the status of Verlander's arm. He literally hasn't had to be baby'd in any way, as opposed to every other TJ pitcher (or any elbow/shoulder issue). Contrast that with LMJ who will continue to be limited throughout the rest of this season. Granted, this may backfire come playoff time... but sometimes guys are just special. Clemens, Nolan, Smoltz, JV...
