I have grown tired of Jose Abreu

Brantley ded.

 

Its been a long time since we had a minor league hitter ravage his way through the minors in no time flat and we watched and waited for him to get the call.

Thats what losing the draft picks did.

There is more at stake now. Gilbert can get the Astros an additional draft pick with a good rookie season.

They also have Alvarez, Tucker, Meyers, and McCormick all playing well so can afford to wait till 2024.

They also have not given up on Brantley yet. Another reason to wait on Gilbert.

Even if he plays in 2023 it won't be enough to exceed his rookie eligibility. 45 days/ 130 PA.

We may see him in late August or September

 

this board is putting a massive hype train on a guy that hasn’t played a full minor league season yet. He has 40 career at bats above A ball.

I like his swing and he’s a really good prospect, but this board is setting itself up for disappointment with the expectations being placed on him right now.

 

I think there's a some good reasons for the hype. Gilbert was a 1st round pick. The current GM promoted a CF straight from AA in his last job; that CF had immense success and the GM has referenced that situation multiple times when discussing Gilbert. Gilbert has 50 pa in AA; yes, that is still a small sample but it is the size at which k rates usually become meaningful, and his is 16%. We know Gilbert's defense is very good. So, even in a worst case scenario where Gilbert is rushed to the majors too soon, he can be reasonably sure he will be a solid defensive CF with baserunning value who doesn't strike out too much.

I am not advocating Gilbert to come up just yet because I do think his sample in AA is too small to draw good conclusions from, but mostly because I like what they've gotten from Meyers and McCormick and I don't think Gilbert provides enough certainty that he'd be a material upgrade at this point. But if Gilbert gets to 200 AA pa and is still dominating, and if there's an injury/slump with McCormick/Meyers/Brantley, then I do think Gilbert could be the type of dynamic player who can come up and quickly succeed in the majors.

 

The Cubs DFA'd Eric Hosmer, and Jose Abreu's production this season is even worse than Hosmer's. Man this is freaking bad.

 

Jose has taken the biggest nose dive by a large margin. I am surprised Bregman avoided the naughty list.

 

3 former Astros on that bad list (Springer, Correa, Kemp).

 

Bregman is currently -41

The list stopped at -42 lol

 

Abreu tops the list. Congrats Jose

 

You can't compare the Astros situation to the Braves. The Braves have ownership that was willing to sign Austin Riley to a 10 year deal. They were willing to sign Harris to an 8 year deal after less than a full season in MLB. Crane doesn't do those kinds of deals. Service time manipulation is more important for the Astros.

 

The Astros haven't manipulated service time in almost a decade. Springer way back in late 2013/early 2014 is the last guy, and only guy, that we kept down to get the extra year.

Everybody else came up when they were ready to help.

 

Yordan Alvarez missing super 2 status by a few days probably disagrees with you. Luckily the extension made that a moot point.

 

Somebody please sum up what the a̶p̶o̶l̶o̶g̶i̶s̶t̶ ... adviser in the booth is selling tonight about his production...?

 

Another former MVP falling off rapidly after securing the bag.

 

https://theathletic.com/4524850/2023/05/18/jose-abreu-fantasy-baseball-add-sleeper/

Good article show how Abreu has been here before.

 

Playing for the draft pick

A Houston sports staple

 

Bregman still has pop and walks. His OPS+ is still over 90, so even without his defense... he is not crippling the team.

 

https://theathletic.com/4524850/2023/05/18/jose-abreu-fantasy-baseba

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A deep dive on José Abreu: Is it time to buy the slumping 36-year old in fantasy baseball leagues?

By John Laghezza
May 17, 2023
6

Just like that, we’re a quarter way through this marathon of an MLB season — which can only mean one thing: unbridled panic over struggling players.

Months of pre-season analysis smash head-first into poor outcomes and something’s gotta give. Yeah, it was easy enough to preach patience in April; you can always say it hasn’t been a month!. But now it’s mid-May and that’s no longer the case. Should those extra two weeks even be a determinant factor in finally cutting the cord? Just listen and you’ll hear the most prominent fantasy gurus in the game declaring former star players dead on arrival, some who carried a top 100 price tag only 45 days ago. It should go without saying that each individual case requires a nuanced touch. With that out of the way, my scars are reminding me the most profitable trades I’ve ever made are on assets once definitively declared dead and gone.

Once I heard my 20th consecutive podcast recommend dropping José Abreu, I couldn’t help but take my chance to refute the market’s certainty (I know of at least one legendary titan of industry who agrees).

.

José Abreu 1B, HOU: The Wood, The Bad, And The Ugly
I will openly admit the current statistical case against José Abreu, though skewed for recency, is quite compelling. At 36 years old, we’re looking at career worsts across all of our statistical baskets in just about everything that matters:

• Surface (AVG, OBP, OPS, wOBA, xwOBA)
• Discipline (K%, Chase%)
• Elevation (LD%)
• Contact Quality (HardHit%, Barrel%)

Ouch. It’s definitely a tough pill to swallow, especially considering the zero home runs (despite 5 Barrels) and current 51 wRC+. The entire 2023 profile reads so poorly, I can see why people would want off this ride. It’s almost hard to believe it belongs to a player considered among the best pure hitters in the game merely a few months ago.



Forever the contrarian, this is when an established track record is a feature and not a bug. Harkening back to articles past, now seemed like a great time to re-introduce rolling charts (the primer can be found here) to see if we can identify any sort of undiscovered trend indication. The idea here is that rolling charts can help avoid overreacting to recency bias by incorporating downtrends into a greater production pattern. Let’s pop the hood and see how bad things actually are with some of Abreu’s “career-worsts,” keeping in mind they may just represent technical bottoms on a chart.

STRIKEOUT RATE 2018-2023

From a glimpse, it’s business as usual for Abreu as far as striking out. He’s been on a slow rise off of a bottom since the second half of 2022, but the chart below’s pretty clearly heading toward consolidation around the average. In this case, his “career-worst K%” is probably more bark than bite.



CHASE RATE 2018-2023

Charting Abreu’s O-Swing% pretty much exemplifies my love for the rolling chart and its application in the MLB space. Again, perhaps “career-worst” Chase Rate slightly misframes the reality. Granted, the number’s obviously suboptimal. My goal, however, is not to disguise these stats but to change the light under which we view them, When we step all the way back for a broader perspective, we’ll see that José Abreu has been here before several times. Each time he responded with a major course correction. Could this be a classic case of pressing in a new environment? Either way, I’m not immediately sold it’s time to abandon ship… yet we press on.



HARD HIT RATE

To sum up Abreu’s Hard Hit chart in an onomatopoeia, it’s “Oof.” Precipitous dropoffs to new recent lows are always of concern — that I won’t hide. My best counter to that very strong point is that it’s baked into the price already; I’ve started seeing Abreu hit the waiver wire in 12-team home leagues with my own eyes. For the record, I think dropping any hitter of his caliber at this point in the season seems overly reactionary. How can there not be room on your bench for a player you valued as a top 100 asset less than six weeks ago? Back to the chart, the boat may be taking on water but she isn’t sunk yet. Again, we’ve seen this exact type of valley reoccur a few times throughout his career, and each time the response was a quick rebound to his career average (somewhere my regression-minded data scientist friends are smiling).



HARD HIT RATE (BY PITCH GROUP)

This next part’s inspired by my esteemed colleagues here at The Athletic, Eno Sarris and Derek VanRiper, on their inimitable podcast, Rates and Barrels. On the topic of Abreu, the duo brought attention to declining HR totals. To that specific point, I have to highlight that although Abreu’s home run total did halve from 30 to 15 between 2021 and 2022, he actually had three more total Barrels that season. Another indicator of a hitter running cold.



The dynamic duo also highlighted Abreu’s inability to deal with Fastballs and expressed concern that perhaps age has slowed him beyond the point of viability. While they aren’t wrong about Abreu’s current inefficacy against Fourseamers, the chart below is screaming that the problem’s more than waning bat speed. Forecasting major sea changes takes subjective leaps at times — but again, to me, this feels like the “first year of a contract” pressing. José Abreu averaged an impressive .592 xSLG and double-digit extra-base hits on breaking pitches over the last five years. His current xSLG for 2023 sits at a putrid .223.



SWINGING STRIKE RATE 2018-2023

Without any other context whatsoever besides Abreu’s Swinging Strike chart below, I might think we were already on an upswing. I still have to make sure there isn’t an exclusive problem catching up with Fourseamers as alluded to, but I’m highly doubting swing and miss is at the root of our problem.



SWINGING STRIKE RATE (BY PITCH GROUP) 2018-2023

Far from impressive, but certainly not a sign Abreu’s being attacked with the Fastball for being too slow…



ZONE-CONTACT RATE 2018-2023

Shame on me for committing one of the exact rookie mistakes I oft warn against, and why I stick to my templated process. Covering quality of contact stats like Barrel rate (based on batted ball events) without citing general frequency is the fastest way to miss out on pertinent context. Of course, what I found somewhat shocked me. José Abreu’s Zone-Contact is near its all-time high… and the plot thickens. The more of this I see, the more it all seems to fit into a downside pattern of a hitter in a prolonged cold streak.



WEIGHTED ON-BASE AVERAGE 2018-2023

From a technical standpoint, this rolling wOBA chart has buy-low written all over it. However, herein lies the duality of chart interpretation and subsequent difficulty in execution. It’s counterintuitive to buy at recent lows, especially when it feels like José Abreu may never get a hit again. That said, let me remind you that we’ve been here before in early 2018; right before he went nuclear for the next three months. I don’t know about you but I’m getting pretty close to firing off some trade offers.



EXPECTED WEIGHTED ON-BASE AVERAGE ON CONTACT BY PITCH TYPE (xwOBAcon) 2018-2023

I know for a fact there are fantasy players out there saying that while trends are nice, they’ll say I haven’t presented anything from this year and they still think Abreu is dust. Well to you, my most ardent dumpster diver, I give you this. The last piece of what I think is a pretty compelling defense of my fellow old man. Before even zooming into the pitch-specific chart below, I want to address the awful .245 wOBA, which is actually a palatable .315 xwOBA when Park and Sprint Speed Adjusted (per Chamberlain’s Pitch Leaderboard). Could be another hint perhaps brighter days are on the horizon. At its most granular level, the very best descriptor we have for contact by pitch type is xwOBAcon and what do you know? Abreu underperformed on every pitch but the opposition’s Slider (below).



Conclusion: I’m not throwing out this very old baby with the bathwater.

 

So is Altuve.

 

That article actually makes me less optimistic. I am hopeful Abreu can rebound to be a slightly above average bat (wRC+ ~115) over the course of his contract. But at this point I will not be very surprised if he is released halfway through next season.