I should have added that Julks is looking a lot better lately with his BB% at 10% for the month and his quality of contact being about average for a month. Meyers and Chas should stll be everyday OFs, but Julks would be okay as a DH while Yordan is hurt if Diaz was playing elsewhere.
That last part makes me want to cry. His defensive stats are almost as bad, right? But he calls a good game. Even though there is not evidence of it in his catchers ERA over the last couple years, since his skills have diminished. WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.
Agreed. But after Yordan (or Brantley) come back Julks should see his playing time approaching zero and if Dusty isn't on board with that then Julks should be shipped out (unless you want to ship Dusty out).
Maldy's -0.7 wins framing is already the 2nd worst season mark for the Astros since they could measure framing (Castro's rookie season was -1 win). Maldy is on pace to generate -1.4 wins framing (at one point, I thought Maldy would set the mark for worst Astros framer before the all star break). I have begun to hate the K zone because it makes it so easy to see bad framing. Basically, Maldy is losing enough strike calls to cost the Astros a run once every 8 to 9 games. Diaz sucks at framing too. Not as bad as Maldy has been this season. Over 100 games at catcher, the prorated difference between Diaz and Maldy is 4.5 fWAR even with the framing not being too big a difference in DIaz's favor. There's a lot of extrapolation in there because Diaz hasn't caught many games. It is nice to see Diaz play DH, but the true advantage he brings is at catcher.
That's what I mean by true backup to a guy like Yordan. If you can't play CF you should get 3 starts a month unless someone is hurt. That's it. No more. 2 for Yordan and 1 for Diaz in a month. That's it.
3 out of the 5 shutouts we have had this season were caught by Diaz even though he never caught for our 2 best pitchers.
Yordan, Chas, Meyers (assuming Chas slides to CF), Tucker, Diaz, and/or an added OF. I'm really liking Julks's plate discipline improvements. He's cut his chase rate without affecting his in-zone swing rate. This is causing a dramatic improvement in BB% and quality of contact (i.e., he's not weakly hitting bad pitches as much). I still like Meyers's and Chas's overall value more going forward, but he's not made playing him hurt this last month (i.e., Julk's June play is about equivalent in value to Meyers's career average monthly value).
Chas still gets the oppo tacos, but what he was hitting to CF is now going to left field. Almost all of his line drives are pulled. This should lead to more homers/doubles off the Crawford boxes.
The difference in ops between maldy and Diaz is equivalent to that between Mike trout for his career and Kevin Bass.
Dubon's slash line since June 10th: .203 / .229 / .311 April 16th: .246 / .273 /.359 Prior to April 16th: .356 / .383 / .422
Some of that started as bad luck. A lot of it was he went full Ensberg while pitchers decided to throw him strikes again. Never go full Ensberg. I still think there might be an MLB player in there for Julks. He's just got to figure out a way to not swing at balls too often (or not enough) while getting solid wood on good pitches.
