he has one year left, worth $7M (+ potential escalators) and the padres hold a team option in '09. he's rep'ed by the same agent as bagwell and biggio and, as MM mentioned, is offseason hunting buddies with oswalt. the astros looked into him this winter and then immediately lost interest when they heard jason jennings was available (kidding about the jennings part - they did, reportedly, ask about peavy). i can't imagine why san diego would deal him and even if they did, i can't imagine what the astros have to offer that would put them at the front of the line.
yes. Pence has always been projected as a corner OF. moreso for LF than RF, but his arm isnt nearly as bad as scouts said it was. plus the RF crop is thinner than the CF crop. Dye has been terrible this year, abreu is falling apart, geoff jenkins is a k machine who is past his prime... one player that we have no shot at, but would be very intriguing, is the japanese guy kosuke fukudome. strong arm, has good speed, and has 20-30 homer power. he's a straight free agent with no posting fee. people say he's gonna seek $10 million a year. he can play RF and pence can stay in CF.
If JdJO is to be believed that Drayton wants to retool, then he needs to go after Big Z to make a dynamite 1-2 punch with Oswalt (dominant pitching is what made this team great), grab one of the FA CF's and get a capable 3B. IMHO I just don't see it happening, the Astros need to rebuild starting with the farm system.
I kid you not when i say i surf the channels whenever our #7-9 slots come up to bat. Or when the inning leads off with the # 6 hitter do i immediately know it's useless to bother watching since if he does possibly get on base he'll just get LOB. So my TV is still fully functional to date.
ok purpura: trade some of the expendable players to get young players to contribute now or very soon. sign peavy sign dunn/byrnes a little piece here and there. then we're ready to compete next season.
for the last time, pence's arm is not that bad. it profiles as major league average in RF. he has enough carry and zip on his throws and he's fairly accurate. not to mention he always charges balls hard to cut down on the throwing distance. watching hunter play is very deceiving. his actions are very...nerdlike. like watching a computer geek swing a bat, throw a ball, and run. it gets the job done though. he's pretty unorthodox in everything he does.
Never heard of it. I've been going to Enron Field ever since the Astros moved there. Very nice stadium compared to the Astrodome. It even has a train that sits still for us but is always moving back and forth when the other team bats. I have no idea why, but maybe it's to distract them.
i would go after aaron rowland and move pence to rf. The team will boost in defense and production in both CF and RF
Ok, what's our salary cap situation? Are we still going to have Lidge? Lamb and Loretta? Are we going to try to resign Jennings? There are a lot of questions marks about which particular direction this team is going. And the perplexion of Purpura isn't helping divine what the Astros' brass is thinking.
i read an article in SI where, if memory serves me right, Peavy was pretty clear that he wanted to get out of SD and get closer to home in his next contract. i would think the padres would ultimately want to get value for him if they felt that he wasn't going to stick around.
