McHugh having a rough outing today. White hasn’t looked great either so far this spring. I realize I shouldn’t put much stock in ST performance but I’m just not excited about White being an everyday player
The 2 month deal has to do with Super 2 arbitration status, so I'm guessing folks were conflating the 2.
Tucker's fate for this year was sealed the minute the Astros signed Brantley. If they don't have a spot for Tucker to play everyday in the majors they will keep him in AAA. His best shot at being on the mlb roster is an injury or White or Kemp having a terrible start to the season. Since White and Kemp are out of options you can expect them to get a longer leash than a lot of people will want.
Neither Bregman or Correa accrued a year of service time when they initially came up midseason. Counting this season, the Astros have Bregman for four more years, and Correa for three.
McHugh's performance has me legitimately concerned. He was so good coming out of the pen last year, and he's just gotten rocked as a starter this spring, albeit in a small sample size. I really wish Lunhow could find a way to put together a rotation of five guys that didn't include McHugh so he could go back to the bullpen. But maybe I'm way off base, and he'll kill it as a starter once the season begins.
Hinch being interviewed by the booth a minute ago: "Seems like Tony Kemp is putting a lot of pressure on you trying to make this 25 man roster." "Nah, I got him on it." Unsurprising, really, but he was pretty definite about him and Jake being the 4/5 OFers. Reddick still working at 1B, he got the start there in their minor league game today. Hinch said the most important thing was him getting pitches in. Will get a start in a minor league game to expand his workload. He got discombobulated when Strailly was trying to bunt and walked him, then as Hinch put it, "we messed around with the infield in, which burned him"; admitted he was "out of sorts" but didn't sound too concerned. Wind was blowing out to LF, the 2B he gave up is most likely not a 2B in an MLB game. (eta: Alvarez is in LF. He is not good in LF.)
That's not how this works. Players aren't given either 1 or 0 years of service. So Tucker accrued so many days of major league service, so to control him for 6 years after this season, his combined total of service days between this year and last has to be less than 172.
You are correct about this. My mistake. From looking at the transaction log, Tucker accrued about 50 days of MLB service time last year. So for the Astros to get six years of control after this year, they would need to keep him in AAA through early June.
This is correct to the best of my knowledge. I didn't see anything in this (from '11) that looks to have changed (don't quote me on that though), so: https://library.fangraphs.com/principles/contract-details/service-time-super-two/ Looking at MLB's glossary, I'd bet that this is the line that got @DVauthrin understandably confused: A player is deemed to have reached "one year" of Major League service upon accruing 172 days in a given year. FYI: Tucker accrued 51 days last year.
I wonder who gets that last bullpen spot assuming James gets one? Osuna Pressly Devenski Harris Rondon James ? Sneed and Guduan have looked good. Perez also looked good in his first appearance.
Bregman accrued only 70 days in 2016. So he has 2.7 years of service time. So he’ll have to play four more seasons as an Astro before becoming a free agent. Correa accrued 119 days in 2015. So he has 3.119 years of service time, and will be a free agent after three more seasons. As for Tucker, he only accrued 50 days or so of service time because he never stuck on the big league roster. July 7-Aug. 1 was his first stint, Aug. 11-Aug. 21 was his second, and Sept. 16-Sept. 30 was his third.
I think if we went to Tampa tomorrow it would be Guduan, still quite a bit of spring left though. If they feel Perez could give them more multi inning outings he might have the edge, cause with our 3-5 and a shorter pen than what AJ is used to having, a guy who could go 3 innings could be very valuable down there
The Astros didn't want to just give away Tony Kemp for nothing. Combine that with possibly getting an extra year of control from a player who could be demoted freely it was the logical choice to make from a personnel standpoint. Now Kemp can hang around and possibly build on what he did last year. He provides a capable backup option if somebody gets hurt, or if White fails to perform.
I’m sure injuries will sort it out, but it’ll be interesting to see how the playing time is divided in the early going. Based on the article about White from earlier this week, he may be an odd man out as a benchwarmer until something changes. But with 13 position players they’re going to have a hard time getting the 4 “extra” guys (Diaz, Marisnick, White, Kemp) regular ABs. Essentially if they divided it equally, White would only get about 25% of the time at DH and 25% of the time at 1B, with Diaz backing up SS/3B, Kemp 2B/LF, and Marisnick CF/RF, although that would fail to take advantage of platoons.
I still foresee White being the primary DH/1B when Yuli sits and starting 75% of the time, at least to start the season. Marisnick will basically platoon with Reddick and cover Springers off days like last season. Yuli and Brantley will also get pretty regular off days. I imagine Kemp and Diaz will just have to stand by and take whatever innings they can get until somebody gets hurt.
Right. I just found it odd that Hinch pretty much went out of his way to specify that White would not get the majority of the DH time. To me it just made so much sense to have him as the pretty-much-full-time DH with Marisnick as the outfield backup (and platoonmate with Reddick), Diaz as the infield backup, and Kemp as an extra lefthanded hitting bench player who can pinch run.
