and has a very good .383 OBP... 16 percentage points better than the hot hitting Tejada. This is with Berkman having struggled the first month of the season and Tejada hitting well above his norm. Berkman hasn't finished a season with an OBP below .386 since his rookie year and is a phenomenal .412 for his career. Meanwhile, if Tejada finished this season with his current .367, it would be the second best mark of his career. He has a career .342 OBP which is just slightly above league average in the modern era. Berkman has been hitting great (not just good) over the last month+. You can see his numbers for the last 7, 14 and 28 days here: http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/split.cgi?n1=berkmla01&year=&t=b If we were to put Berkman on the market, interested teams would certainly take note of his recent surge and return to his normal greatness. I don't think the Astros will trade him, just saying he would still be extremely attractive to a lot of teams despite the slow start to the season and the relatively low AVG.
Berkman ain't goin anywhere. We need to unload Lee, Valverde, and Tejada. Lee was a stupid r****ded signing. He should be a DH in the AL. That is who we should attempt to trade to Boston. Let him DH and play 1st base for them. Take back anything we can get.
Depends on the person. For example, that's kind of Vlad's strategy at the plate. He swings at balls in the dirt - and hits them. But if you never walk (6 walks all season), you'd think pitchers would just keep throwing stuff out of the strikezone and see what happens. So either pitchers are being stupid, or he's swinging and successfully hitting crap, you'd think. I haven't really been watching enough to know.
Berkman's a perfect example of the regression to the mean thing. He's been his normal self for the last 1.5 months. His terrible April (0.162 AVG, 0.718 OPS) makes his overall numbers look terrible, but after that, he's been what he always is - a 0.950 OPS, 0.300 BA hitter.
Completely agree with you on Lee, it was definitely a bad signing. What we should have done was been more aggressive on keeping the other Carlos. After getting Beltran, it seemed to have put/kept us in contention quickly (for a brief time) along with our good pitching. Drayton ended up giving a no-trade to Lee, don't see why he couldn't have done it for Beltran? IMO, Beltran better protected Berkman than Lee who seems to get his stats and call it a year.
Beltran was never going to sign here. His agent pulled the no-trade excuse after the fact. It was all about an extra $20M, of which Boras gets 4%.
three words, "4 games out!" as long as they're this close, drayton ain't trading anyone. if they fall apart OR someone else starts to play better, things may change
Not only that, Beltran was offered a limited trade clause which gave him the right to name the teams he would accept a trade to.
Keep in mind of all this is speculation - we don't know what really went down between the two sides. All we've heard is Drayton's version and Boras' version, both of whom have questionable reputations when it comes to negotiations and the claims behind them (Kile, Biggio, Bagwell all claimed different things about negotiations with Drayton at various points, I believe, and Boras' crap is all well documented)
In the end, Boras and Beltran wanted to be in NY. They preferred the Yankees, as I do belive the reports of Boras offering the Yankees plenty of "last second oppourtinities" to sign him... but he went to the NYM for more money than Houston was willing to offer. Even though there's no income tax in Houston, Boras doesn't get affected by that. He gets a % of Beltran's total contract, which was more in NY. Not to mention the potential endorsements were more in NY (of course, he hasn't had any endorsements nor has he become a baseball megastar).
The extra 20 mill isn't all that bad. Beltran $119/7 yr 17/yr Lee $100/6 yr 16.66/yr Seriously, 0.23 mill/yr was going to kill Drayton? No way, as bad as the Astros are now, albeit due to pitching, they're still putting people in the stands. Beltran brought the hype once he got dealt here as a rental and he showed his worth in the playoffs. I like Lee as a person, but it was a bad signing since we haven't been in the postseason upon his arrival and I know it isn't all his fault.
My previous reply didn't include this, weird. This is true, it's as if we get 2 stories consistently - the Astros side vs. the Agent's/Player's side. We'll never know who's side is "right."
Did they say the Mets were interested in Lee last night? We can make that trade right now. Lee for FMart and a pitching prospect. DONE.
did they say we'd get a pitching prospect too in speculation? I can't imagine getting more than Martinez for Lee and his bloated contract, even if they need him..
They didn't mention anyone in particular. They said Carlos probably wouldn't want to play in New York and talked about his no trade clause.
