Rizzo is one of thuse guys that tends to see lots of pitches, he'd fit batting 6th if they wanna spend that capital. I still think one year deal for Yuli and uncle Mike (can learn 1st too) plus the young bats. If that fails by trade deadline pull the trigger. You might strike gold with a platoon or a rookie. I'd spend that capital on the center fielder. Center field is too lean in the league right now and Meyers/ Chas could come off the bench.
I have not heard anything either about Rizzo. The defense is really the reason I said I wasn't surprised. With the shift going away it could be even more important than before since you can't have 3 infielders on the right side anymore which means more ground to cover for a 1st baseman. The qualifying offer does make it seem hard to believe. So the Astros just get their picks back last year and now they are going to burn a 2nd rounder and 500k in international money when there are other 1st baseman available without this penalty? Doesn't make a ton of sense from that perspective. Most likely this came from Rizzo's agent. It's a nice move to get more money out of the Yankees. However, if the Astros wanted him I wouldn't be that upset about it.
I have no idea why anyone wouldn’t believe in OPS+. That or wRC+ os the best/most telling stat out there.
I think we should parlay some of our upper-minor prospect depth into usable MLB pieces. If we sit on guys too long their value will plummet. Toro for Graveman and Montero worked out, but we could have got more value had we traded him after 2019, as he was clearly blocked. Tony Kemp was blocked by Altuve (and in the OF), and once we traded him his value was mostly gone, too. Derek Fisher, Freudis Nova, AJ Reed, Forrest Whitley, and Josh James are other examples of this.
Don't really care which of the 1B we sign, can't say for sure which of the 3 will be better but will be happy with any of them. Coming into the offseason my ideal scenario was Verlander/Brantley/1B, with Yuli and Montero walking. Now that they've chosen to pay Montero I'm not even sure that's financially possible unless we really spend like never before.
Framber Valdez and Bryan Abreu are also examples of this in the other direction. In a perfect world you can clearly identify when a top prospect is gonna fail and trade him at peak value, but even brilliant teams can't do that consistently. Once a guy loses top prospect status, their trade value has already plummeted (like driving a car off the lot). Holding on to see if they figure it out is more likely to create value than trading for a rental reliever or backup infielder. I was actually surprised Click turned Toro into so much value.
Hope not either. He's already got so much money. Don't get me wrong, it IS definitely about the money for all players, but at some point it's like CMON. Lol.
Some guys choose a **** ton of money and security- see Breg, Jose, Yordan,etc. Some guys only care about the absolute most money- see Carlos. We will soon see which category JV is in.
Those are good hitting stats. OAA is a good Defensive stat. WAR is a fair combination stat. But each is focused on a particular preference and data. The striking thing is how different stats attempting to quantify performance can be so different at times. Also, new metrics keep being introduced and calculated differently by different sites. And even those are massaged and manipulated based on some preference by the stat gurus. I like math and the stats, but at some point you are breaking it down to such a small sample size that it is overwhelmed by sample size randomness. ie Gurriel & Altuve's post season production vs their season production.
Verlander needs 4 years to get 300 wins. 14 wins a year. He is money first and then team that can get him to this goal. Yankees, Astros, Blue Jays, Dodgers I’m sure are in the mix. I would imagine a 2 year deal with an option. Can’t see anyone you’ve him a 3 year or 4 year deal at his age.
Off the subject of Astros for a second, with the awards season playing out over the next few days, do you think they should have three awards with one restricted to Offensive, one restricted to pitching (Cy Young) and a third an overall award (MVP)? This season seems to be a perfect storm where the three would have three distinct and obvious winners. Offense would of course be Judge, Pitching would be Verlander and MVP would be Ohtani. You might even have a 4th for best defender. Having a separate pitching award confuses voting for MVP because some consider it an offensive version of Cy Young and others do not.
I can see a two year deal with two option years as attractive with the right team. Assume the $45M AAV for two years ($90M total) to be his Actual Market value. He has stated he wants to pitch to age 45. So a deal for 2 years @ $35M AAV with three option years for $35M with $10M buyouts with achievable IP minimums based on a 6 man rotation, say 110 IP might be preferable to both him and the team. Or incentives could replace option values. There are many ways to structure a contract under the Master Agreement.
By combined pitching and batting WAR, Ohtani (combined 9.4 fWAR) is second to Judge (11.4fWAR) anyway. They both had legendary seasons for completely different reasons, but at least by WAR-based production there's not an argument that Ohtani was more valuable. Awards season is always plagued by individual voter interpretations of award criteria. IMHO, adding/changing the awards themselves won't fix that problem. MVP - perpetually suffers from the "best player" vs "most valuable player" argument. If MLB simply said 'pick the best player', Mike Trout would have more than 3 trophies. Similarly, Ohtani gets dinged for playing on a non-playoff team. Manager of the year - also a really weird vote. This award criteria is interpreted as "the manager whose team most outperformed pre-season media expectations" rather than which manager's team did the best. Think we all agree it's shocking that Dusty's narrative (of winning his first WS after 24 years of managing and over 2000 wins) not even getting him a finalist spot is ridiculous. Best defender - basically the platinum glove award. Given by Rawlings and not MLB, but this already exists. If I had to create a separate award, it'd be rookie pitcher of the year. Mostly because I'm tired of Astros pitchers being runner up to position players (Oswalt to Pujols, Luis Garcia to Arozarena, Javier to Kyle Lewis). But there would be many years where there's not a good rookie pitcher selection so who knows.
There was a rookie pitcher of the year though the 2003 season and Oswalt won the award. The finalists are decided before the playoffs so Baker winning the world series had no bearing.
