Very minor quibble, but you've got the Huff deal confused with the Wigginton trade the following year (which Wheeler was in).
My bet is would decline arbitration. He could get a multi-year deal elsewhere, and you take that as a 37 year old reliever. Worst case scenario he accepts and you have your closer for next year. Miggy won't get offered arbitration. The Astros will try to resign him though.
on a slight derail, how f'in dumb are teams for giving pitchers more than 5 years and $100+ million these days? again, johan santana is a prime example. out for the season with arthroscopic shoulder surgery and $140 million left ?
It could be much worse. I think Barry Zito has something like 4 years 80 million remaining on his contract after this year. That's insane.
Nah, Santana really does have 4 years and 137.5 million remaining. In santana's defense, at least he was a proven commodity before his albatros contract. Zito was a little above average at best before being handed the Brinks truck.
My guess is that they will get a deal done at a greatly reduced salary number. If Manzella is ready to play SS, Miggy can play 3B. He played 3B during the WBC and has expressed a willingness to do so here. It could be a good move for us.
We would be so much better with Zobrist at 2nd base instead of worn down Matsui. Imagine Bourn Tejada Berkman Lee Zobrist Pence Blum Quintero
If we had Zobrist, he's batting in the 2-hole instead of Tejada. I'd put Pence in the 5-hole. Tejada has about a .335 OBP and hits into a ton of DPs. He's also slow and doesn't take pitches. He doesn't have the power to hit 4 or 5 if you have better options. Lee and Pence are better options. That means with Zobrist, Tejada hits 6 or below. That may seem crazy but it would be the right thing to do.
I don't think it's crazy at all. Tejada is skating by on (1) name recognition, (2) a hot streak early in the season, (3) the absolute suckitude of our 2B, 3B, and C. He's NOT a particularly good hitter by any stretch at this point in his career. He's fine at SS, but the idea that keeps coming up every few weeks of moving him to 3rd makes no sense to me. You'd be overpaying for his name recognition and getting a below average offensive 3B who's never even played the position, so he's not going to be some kind of defensive wizard.
I know what you are saying, but I don't think it's fair to call someone who is hitting .307 and is second in the NL in hits "NOT a particularly good hitter."
I am so tired hearing about "if we had Zobrist." We don't. We won't. When we traded Zobrist, he wasn't even considered that good of a prospect. He developed more than we had hoped he would when he was in our farm. I don't recall anybody saying how lopsided the deal was when we traded him. I am sure that the Red Sox nation would have loved to have had Jeff Bagwell back in the mid to late 1990s.
BA is a limited indicator. At the end of the season, he's likely to have a mid-0.700's OPS, which is slightly above average at SS, a fairly weak offensive position. If he was at 3rd, he'd be below average. He's near the top in hits because he never walks, so he has more opportunities. He's not only 2nd in hits, but 2nd in plate appearances also. Compared to the others in the top 10 in hits, he has 15 walks while all the others have 30-60. As a result, he's nowhere near the top in on-base %, despite the good average and lots of hits. Overall, that all makes him a not particularly good hitter. Not a bad one either - just not good. It works out OK because he's at SS, where there aren't a lot of good hitters.
In A-Ball for the Astros, he had a 0.900+ OPS. In AA-ball for the Astros, he had a 0.900+ OPS. I don't know what the organization thought of him and don't remember hearing his name as a top prospect, but his on-the-field performance certainly was not one of a not-good prospect. He had excelled at every level he was given an opportunity at when he was traded. Which kind of gets to the heart of the Astros' problem - always trading away people for short-term solutions in an effort to stay mediocre.
Purpura was supposed to be, if nothing else, intimately familiar with the farm system, and he believed that Zobrist didn't have the arm for SS full time and was going to be basically a utility IF. We were in the middle of the Adam Everett lovefest at short at the time, so that left 2B, where Biggio had another year left in him and Chris Burke was the former #1 pick who was the heir apparent at the position. Not defending the trade, but that's where they were coming from.
The real question is what kind of deal will he be offered. I'm guessing somewhere between 5-8 million per on a 2-3 year deal, though we might just sign him to a one year deal.
Zobrist was traded because the Astros didn't think he could play SS and would only make the majors as a 2B. At that time, we had Biggio finishing up and Chris Burke already named as the replacement. The no one, at that time, thought that Chris Burke wouldn't be a solid everyday 2B...let alone struggle to even be in baseball. It's akin to the Abreu/Hidalgo deal in the 90's. The Astros made their choice and, in the long run, ended up being wrong. It happens to every single team in baseball.
38. If it is a 3 year deal he is probably planning on it being his final contract. Personally I'd be a fan of a one-year deal with a 2nd year mutual option.
Absolutely - it just turned out to a be a mess. They picked wrong with Burke (Zobrist had better numbers in the minors than Burke too). And then they picked wrong with his potential positions as well. It is sort of amusing that after all that, Zobrist has started at 7 different positions on the field this year, and could easily have started the 8th if needed (1B). Given that the Astros had problems at SS, 3B, and every outfield position at the time, it's funny that they only looked at him at 2B despite him playing SS in the minors.
