The problem with average to below average players is that we already had players of nearly equal talent to fill those positions. Lee is not the best offensive player on this team. It is Lance Berkman by a mile. And Holliday would still command the biggest offer. He has nearly .100 higher OPS for their careers, including a much better OPS by Holliday last year. And he is a better defender, to go along with being 4 years younger. Its actually pretty much the same with Bay, he has a higher career OPS and higher OPS last year then Lee, and is a better defender, but he is only 2 years younger. You should actually go look at these players before you start talking about them.
Putz signed for $3 million plus incentives which could push the contract to just over $6 million, and thats only if he is the closer, which only happens if Bobby Jenks gets traded.
I dunno...I think Carlos is more consistent over a whole season. When Lance is hot, he is scorching. But when he's cold, he's abysmal. He has too many ups and downs in a given season...at least over the last 3 or 4 years anyway.
Give me Lance over Lee any day. April was the only month Berkman struggled, and he still had an OPS over .700, and he finished with an OPS over .900.
Don't get me wrong...I like Lance over Lee as well. Lance does more for the team overall than Carlos like, I don't know, play defense. I'm just not sure it is Lance 'by a mile' offensively as you suggested.
Winners and losers from relatively uneventful winter meetings http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2009/writers/jon_heyman/12/11/winners.losers/index.html
Holliday career stats are HIGHLY inflated due coors field. We saw in his short time in Oakland how much Coors boosted his stats. His time with the Cardinals was great, but that was in due part to him proving himself to a new team. No way he keeps those up over a full year. I haven't looked in-depth to defensive stats, but I know that Holliday forgetting how to catch a fly ball, and costing his team any hope in the playoffs wasn't great. Bay has nice stats, but he is not near as good as a contact hitter, and strikesout far to much compared to Lee.Although his OBP,and OPS were higher. And Berkman is better than Lee ? I'm not sure how you draw to that conclusion. Look at where he sits in the lineup, and how pitchers pitch to him. He is protected by Carlos Lee, and at times Miguel Tejada. The past two seasons Lee has been a much better hitter than Berkman.
So Lance walks a lot because teams fear the guy hitting behind him more? And the fact that Lance has had a higher OPS every year of their careers, means that Lee is the better offensive player? How could I possibly consider a player that leads the other player in HR, BA, OBP, & SLG in their careers while playing in fewer games. Last year in Oakland Holliday had a .832 OPS. Carlos Lee for 2008 had a .832 OPS playing half his games with the Crawford boxes. Over the last 3 years, Lee's OPS at MMP is .945 while .813 on the road. Lance's OPS at MMP .946 while .923 on the road. Matt Holliday 2008 had a .891 OPS on the road, 2007 he had a .859 OPS on the road, yet you think he is a product of Coors Field? Sounds like Lee is a product of MMP.
Holliday is certainly a product of Coors Lets start with 2005 Home Avg:.357 Home OBP:.409 Away Avg:.256 Away OBP:.313 2006 Home Avg:.373 Home OBP:.440 Away Avg:.280 Away OBP:.333 2007 Home Avg:.376 Home OBP:.435 Away Avg:.301 Away OBP:.374 2008 Home Avg:.332 Home OBP:.413 Away Avg:.308 Away OBP:.405 Those are startling numbers to any team looking at an offensive left fielder. His stats are drastically worse away from coors.
No - absolutely not. Sorry if I came across that way - average players are fine. The best teams (outside of the Yankee types w/ crazy payrolls) are built by averaging players littering the field with a few stars sprinkled in here and there. The problem is when you start paying above average salaries for average players. That forces you to put below-average players elsewhere on the field - and that's the recipe for failure, in my opinion. In a successful team, those average guys need to be built up through the minors or generic free agents that can be signed cheaply, so you can save the money to fill holes where you can't find anyone else. One thing that I need to repeat is that I don't think these are terrible deals. Feliz, in particular, is a one-year deal during a sucky year, so that's totally fine, though I think Blum was a cheaper alternative that would provide near-equivalent production. I just don't think they are good deals either. They aren't steals, they aren't good values, they aren't franchise-crippling or franchise-saving. They just are. I'd prefer not to have Lyon because I think in two years, he'll be an overpaid middle reliever, but it's not a huge deal. It only becomes a huge deal if Ed Wade thinks these are good deals and keeps making more of them in the future.
Sorry. To clarify, I'm talking about all 3 combined. Would you rather than the trio of Lyon, Feliz and Matsui, or would you rather have Berkman. If some other team offered that trio in exchange for Berkman, would you take the deal? I'm arguing that Berkman and Oswalt are paid reasonably fair value. If you're taking on $15MM in salary, you should get a combination of players that you think would be somewhere close to an equal exchange to Berkman (considering that they would fill multiple roster holes). I don't think you'd remotely consider that trio as opposed to Berkman. You could easily get a 3B, 2B, and RP of that quality for less than $15MM. So that means you're paying more for less with that trio. For any team outside of the mega-payroll teams, the goal is always to maximize the value of a limited payroll. If you filled 3 spots with average-to-below-average players for $15MM, that's not getting good value.
For what it's worth, if I was running the Astros, here's what I would do: 1. I would look at what players I have that I expect to be part of the future of this team: Pence, Bourn, maybe Wandy, etc. I would take advantage of this down market and try to lock them into long-term deals even though you don't have to yet. Sort of like what happened with Evan Longoria and Ryan Braun - their teams have those guys locked in for many years for extremely reasonable rates because they gave them deals before they were free agents. If you can lock those kinds of guys in at $4-$5MM type deals for 5-7 years (they trade long-term security for a lower average annual salary), you've positioned your franchise for long-term success. 2. You wait until later in the offseason to pick off decent-but-not-great players who aren't finding good money. Again, you try to lock them into multi-year deals: offer average players 4-5 yrs at $3MM/yr or something. If they bite, great - you've filled more holes. If not, you play younger guys and see what happens. What you've done is fill holes for the foreseeable future, freeing up money down the line to address fewer areas of need. Plus, the reasonable contracts gives you potential trade filler pieces as needed. The main thing is to zig when other teams are zagging and vice-versa. Instead of waiting for the economy to get better and buying high (Carlos Lee, for example), you take advantage of the weak economy and make longer-term commitments in a weak market. When the market improves, you've now got all sorts of value players on your team.
His stats away from coors field are that of an average hitter. Not of one who wants a contract similiar to Mark Teixeira.
2007 & 2008 road numbers, plus 2009 numbers show Holliday is not a product of Coors Field. Shows he's a damn good player. Those are way better then Carlos Lee's stats away from MMP, but you think highly of Lee.
Depressed road stats relative to "true" road production has always occurred in Rockies hitters. And it's basically disappeared for former players once leaving colorado. I think it's just a product of playing in such an extreme hitters environment. I wouldn't read those road numbers as his true expected value away from coors.
yeah...he should have completely revitalilzed an entirely dead farm system before signing a middle reliever. shame on him. i'm sure that middle reliever money completely hampers our ability to kickstart the farm system. bottom line...the astros are going to need to sign some players to play at hte major league level. they have tickets to sell next year. that may not be important to some of you, but it will be important to them. they likely overpaid for lyons (though i'm willing to see him pitch some here before I totally write him off), but they're saving significant cash in the 8th and 9th inning from what they had last year. the farm system will not fix itself over night...meanwhile, there's a major league club that has to field a team.
Lyon and Lindstrom won't help sell tickets. Another starter may have as fans got excited about having a big 3 again. It was probably the only way the team could have substantially improved through FA. Not offering Hawkins arbitration was just plain stupid. Paying $3 million to Moehler and $5 million for Lyon, and watching Harden sign for $6.5 really drives me crazy. Then I see Putz, who is a better pitcher then Lyon go for less money.
