With the value you get out of Abreu per million, I believe this could be the best free agent signing in MLB this offseason.
Just heard his promo on 790, so I'm hearing his voice for the 1st time. He sounds like Hakeem or should I say Juakeem.
Crane and the new GM fell for it. He put up numbers on a bad team. The Whitesox have garbage players like reliever Keynan Middleton.
I feel like "put up numbers on a bad team" doesn't really apply to baseball like it does basketball or football. In basketball or football a player might get more touches/shots by sheer volume because there is no one else to go to. In baseball a guy gets the same number of ABs if he is a starter regardless of how good he is, for the most part (some variability based on batting order, granted). Hitting .300 or having a .370 OBP is as tough on a bad team as it is on the good team. Now, whether or not Abreu is truly "done" due to aging and declined skills I think is still up for debate. If he is and the Astros missed that, then shame on them, it was a mistake. But I don't think the "he was on a bad team we should have known he wasn't that good" reasoning is not very solid. I still personaly think Abreu bounces back and has a decent season, just not as good as the Astros were expecting when they gave him that contract.
I have read that the CWS like an old school, all fields line drive approach to hitting. Watching Abreu this season, it does seem like he is geared to that approach as he’s just not hitting the ball hard in the air anymore. Thus, I think this could be a combination of the CWS ruining his swing along with age related decline.
I still have faith he will turn it around some. What other players have dropped off a cliff so hardcore in such a short amount of time?
Surprisingly there are many over the years that have. We still need to see the whole season unfold though. April is just a 6th of the season.
He was Akeem at UH. He didn't have a problem signing under that name either. https://www.steinersports.com/baske...=BPA-ak19kv30-steinersports-bing&sku=38145181
I want a productive OBP out of my 2 slot hitter. So I could NOT care less about his slugging. I'm hoping for 370. His career OBP is 352 while his 20-22 average is 365.
He has to be better than this at some point. If this is age related decline, to go from a really good major league hitter to not even replacement level is too much of a fall off for one year. Even in a he's toast scenario he should be able to muster a mid 600's OPS instead of complete non competition.
You make enough offseason moves you are going to get fleeced on one every now and then. Except for divine intervention or some sort of "a ha" moment for Abreu I am afraid that the move made to acquire him was a really bad one. My observation of Abreu so far is that he has got to be the weakest .250 hitter (update through last night .227) in the league. Unbelievably soft contact for whatever reason. We are paying him to hit upper 200's and to drive in 100 runs and hit 25 to 30 home runs a year. At the pace he is on he is going to end up in the low 200's batting average wise, single digit home runs, and maybe if he gets hot at some point 50 or 60 RBI's for the season. The more I look at his acquisition the more it appears we got screwed.
Yuli still ended up with competent MLB numbers, he was just run of the mill bad. What Abreu is doing now makes what Yuli did last season look like an all star.
Oh no doubt, but there's still hope and time for Abreu to reach and 80ish OPS+ like Yuli had last year.
I got pretty excited last night when they said that Brantley is getting reps at 1B. It would be really nice to not have a black hole batting cleanup.
Has anyone compared his avg. EV last few yrs through this many games vs this yr? That alone could tell us a lot. We all know he’s a slow starter but if his EV is dramatically off we could have a real problem on our hands.
