If they sign Correia or someone in that vein (I think Vogelsong is light years better/more consistent than Correia), I think Straily will be on even footing with the FA going into ST. If no one stands out, then yes the FA wins. But I think he can easily win the job with a decent ST performance...they just want to have a backup now. Basically, I don't think the reasons for going for Correia are necessarily the same as going for Vogelsong. This could just be competition in case Straily is awful and/or gets hurt (which he's done a lot in his career)
I understood Vogelsong, he is a proven capable MLB starter, so he provided a safety net. Correia is proven garbage, I would rather give unproven garbage a chance.
yep. I can't imagine more than a 1 year, 750k contract or something. He accepts because he knows if he pitches well, he has a spot open to him. We take it because that's not so much that we need to commit a slot to him if one of the kids does better.
Wish we were past signing bad veterans to soak up early season starts only to predictably be removed after costing us several games
5th starters on the vast majority of teams are 5th starters for a reason. But I guess it's a step in the right direction with the vaginahurt du jour is surrounding what random 5th starter the Astros are linked to based on Twitter conjecture.
If the drunken softball teams play it right, their defense will be worse by the end of the game though.
Drunken softball teams don't employ the types of shifts spun out by our super-computers that mitigate bad individual defenders.
Gattis is the only sub defender in question. And LF is the easiest position to cover. I don't understand that at all
Our up the middle range with Altuve and Lowrie is bad, and Gattis is a train wreck, but overall it isn't terrible. Singleton looked bad last year, but doesn't have the rep of being bad. If Carter has to play first, he is bad, but not terrible. When we field a Rasmus/Marisnick/Springer outfield, it might be the best in all of baseball.
agree. Also, there is a lot of flexibility within the lineup for late inning defensive match-ups etc. Houston Chronicle was also reporting they will try Dominguez at 1B during spring training so perhaps that is a defensive substitution that could work in our favor. Gattis could be moved to DH, Marisnick in C and Carter/Dominguez to 1B (although Carter was subpar, maybe he's improved). The key wild card in the line-up to me is Singleton. I think he'll be on a short leash given we still have options to send him to AAA and his bat and D were well below average. I like the flexibility this lineup has--anxious to see it in action.
BaseballProspectus projects a 77-85 record Code: West W L RS RA AVG OBP SLG TAv FRAA Los Angeles Angels 91 71 737 646 .258 .323 .411 .278 -3.6 Seattle Mariners 87 75 669 616 .250 .311 .396 .274 4.7 Oakland Athletics 84 78 682 658 .250 .319 .386 .269 24.7 Texas Rangers 83 79 708 692 .258 .322 .395 .268 -9.5 Houston Astros 77 85 686 728 .245 .311 .406 .268 -20.2
Tough division; looks like all five teams have a shot at finishing at or above .500. Hope the 'stros can avoid finishing at the bottom (and taking the season series from the Rangers)!!
This is largely based on the pythagorean runs scored vs. runs allowed... and since the Astros are predicted to allow the most runs in the division, while being 3rd in runs scored, they're basically predicting that the pitching/defense is well behind the lineup at this point, and will be the main reason why they're predicted to finish last as is. I agree that there are more unknowns in the pitching rotation... nobody can just presume that Kuechel and McHugh will duplicate their stellar seasons, and the rest of the bunch is a grab-bag of being good to mediocre to awful. Very few high ceiling guys in the system besides Appel. And the bullpen, while improved on paper, still has to come together as a functional unit featuring somebody who will basically be a first-time/full-time closer. Best case scenario is that Kuechel/McHugh are who they said they were in their first breakout seasons... Appel gets promoted pretty quickly and pitches up to expectations... and the bullpen stays healthy and the pieces fit/live up to their track records. If all that happens, they will be better in the runs allowed dept than predicted.
Looks like the Rangers got a healthy bump... didn't realize a healthy Prince and Gallardo made that much of a difference.
Also surprised Oakland is pegged that high with how much talent Beane traded since last Fall (starting with Cespedes)
I'm hoping our RA (projected 728 here) goes down from last year (723) with an improved bullpen and hopefully overall similar SP production (with some regression and some progression/normalization from other guys). Hell, the bullpen had an ERA of 4.80 and an xFIP of 3.90, and we improved the quality from there. Just approaching our xFIP of last year's bullpen would cut 47 RA off and get us in range of .500 based on the above
