If Houston stands pat on offense their 6-8 would look a lot better if they could all revert to their 2023 ops: Walker .830 Sanchez .777 Diaz .846
I think the offense has a lot of potential to very good with the same personnel that ended last season. Certainly some risk there but a big ceiling with better injury luck and some internal development. Starting pitching was the real area we absolutely had to shore up, so I'm mostly happy with the off-season as is.
Next concerns for astros should be bullpen , but the amount of money available there is TBD by what happens with our infield glut. Could we just have yordan and Tuve play LF and DH only , give 2nd to correa and 3rd to paredes keeping walker and pena and having one of our best defensive infields ? What about cole , smith , and matthews ? Our bullpen is super reliant on harder and abreu. Needs reinforcement. Javier and Lance are albatross contracts going nowhere imo . Our roster is at 41 now . I think brown has had this plan all along , and he executed very well. I do find it hard to move walker. You'd be selling low and his defense was very good . Less of a fan of meyers . But appreciate he will bring steady D . What percentage are we confident that cam/ cole/ or Brice could cover CF ? I think if they can get great relief help for Jake they should make the move . What are we doing with Jesus sanchez ? LF , tradebait ? If you look at available FA's , the unsigned pitchers still look fairly deep and it's hitting that looks top heavy and slim pickings . Maybe walker will have value after all . I think Dana can afford to be patient having added hopefully 300 innings in starting pitching . I do think our bullpen could use a retrofit. Everyone is saying about trading pena /paredes to get value , I could see the same for yordan . I don't necessarily want this to happen , but I think we could do something like .. yordan for 1-2 cost controlled MLB players , one being an above average OF and additional prospects Then trade meyers for bullpen help. Go with young legs in the OF and great IF d for these pitchers you just paid . Maybe get another pitcher off the FA scrap heap as a project. Go in with lance /Javier / blubaugh / Weiss / whoever battling for the last 2 rotation spots
5 of the 7 bullpen positions (which means that there are 6 starting pitching positions, with one being long relief or opener or some such): Josh Hader Bryan Abreu Steven Okert Bryan King Bennett Sousa Fighting for the last two spots: Roddery Muñoz (Rule 5) Jayden Murray Kaleb Ort Nate Pearson Enyel De Los Santos and maybe Lance McCullers Jr. (or whomever loses out in getting into the starting rotation) The Astros do not lack for arms to compete for the bullpen positions. The Astros may add more AAAA arms to the competition, since this is something that they usually do going into Spring Training. BUT They do not need to trade Meyers to get there. I have trotted this out before in the forum. The response was that Correa would not want to play 2B. Correa has an above average 3B glove with an A++ arm. I can see the reluctance to move Correa off 3B. The open question is whether Paredes can play a respectable 2B. He is relatively young and has played 2B in the MLB before. His hamstring injury, if still lingering, may prevent him from making the switch in this ST. He has said that he would not mind playing 2B, though. I just dunno. The Astros coaching staff will have to sort this out. We can not rule out a Walker trade, so that Paredes starts at 1B. We will see.
I would like a bullpen arm that can close, not all the time just occasionally. I didn't like how Abreu handled closing duties when Hader was out. I would like someone that has done it in the past but would be the 2nd option to close but in the playoffs might be the 7th inning guy with Abreu in the 8th. Preferably a right hander.
With money and roster spots as tight as they are, it would really surprise me if Houston added Pearson and Munoz without really really expecting them to be on the roster. The fact that De Los Santos signed a split contract makes me think they expect to be able to pass him thru (like they did with Trammell). Add Pearson and Munoz to the locks for the bullpen (Hader, Abreu, King, Okert) and there’s 6 RP spots spoken for. Sousa can be optioned but if he’s healthy he’s on the roster based on how he pitched last season. Brown, Javier, Imai, and Burrows are locks for the rotation if they’re healthy. Weiss’s comments on Rome’s podcast make it pretty clear that he was told directly that he will be a starting pitcher with Houston; there’s a wrinkle there in that he can technically be optioned to the minors, but I think all signs point to him being on the opening day roster as a SP. That makes for a full rotation. I think the wild cards are McCullers and Arrighetti. There’s a case to be made that each of them are locks for the roster. But McCullers looked finished last year and the fact that no one in the front office has mentioned him at all this offseason tells me he is being discounted. Arrighetti has been talked about but 2 things give me pause about that: first, he’s currently 5th at best but potentially 7th in the pecking order of starting pitchers, and second, he’s got minor league options remaining. I think if Houston is going to make a move to add a bat, Arrighetti is a prime candidate to be traded. In the end I agree that Houston doesn’t need to add any more pitching. I don’t think Paredes playing 2B does much to solve Houston’s problem, since it means Altuve or Alvarez would be playing LF, which is bad. The only solutions to me are to trade one of Walker, Paredes, or Pena. I personally don’t see any way they trade Paredes or Pena without downgrading the offense, so those moves only work if they can find someone to dramatically overpay. It’s hard to say how desperate they should be to trade Walker, but moving him is to me clearly the most straightforward way for the Astros to clear their infield logjam and free up some resources to fill their remaining holes (a LH OF and a backup C).
David Robertson, Jose Leclerc, Ryan Pressly, Rafael Montero, Kendall Graveman, and Paul Sewald fit that bill to some degree.
