What are you willing to give up for a rental of Josh Bell? Do you think JJ and/or Jones deserve any extended look at 1B before the deadline?
I think I would give the at bats to Gurriel over JJ and Jones just to see if he can turn it around. Bell is a first basemen and a rental so I wouldn’t give up anything crazy. I’m not giving up Leon or anyone like that. I would give up a couple guys in the Astros top 20 prospects.
I don’t watch them day to day but from what I have seen they are both bad. Mancini may be worse. Statistically they are both horrendous.
Josh Bell was a horrendous fielder the first 3-4 years of his career. He has been working on it and improved the last few years but was still below average. This season he has been an average fielding 1st baseman. He will never be as good Gurriel is as a fielder, but I’m not losing sleep over that because it’s 1st base and Bell is a lot better offensively than Gurriel right now. Bell is on pace for 6 WAR this year and Gurriel -1 WAR.
Bell's fine at 1B. Mancini is fine at 1B. Are either great? No. Is Yuli a great hitter this year? No. You're not going to find a GG/SS player at 1B on the trade market, so you take the better with the worse.
Idk, I just don’t see the value in trading prospects for a rental that brings offense but is at best “average” defensively. The makeup of the team this year is pitching, defense, and the hitting is starting to come along. Given how well this team can pitch and play defense, which can work out beautifully in October, I’m not so sure Gurriel needs to be replaced. I also am skeptical that it’s just an age thing. Every other year he has a down year offensively. This year is really down, but so is the entirely league. I could see him struggling most of the year and performing in October. That being said, I’m not against it, but I would be against not having Yuli on the team if we made a move for a 1B.
I would give JJ an extended look. I know the sample size is small but he looks promising as a defender. He appears to be more athletic than Bell/Mancini, and with room to improve as he gets more experience. The pop in his bat is legit, and he looks at least somewhat disciplined at the plate. If he can be a 250/30 HR hitter with plus defense that is a huge win developmentally. But we’ll never know if we don’t give him a chance.
.250/30 is pretty realistic for JJ. Though he struck out in 27% of his at bats in AAA. I expect that figure in the bigs to hover around 35% for his rookie campaign. What's salivating is his power, man had 12 HR in 145 AB in AAA, nearly 50 HR per 162 games. Guys with "eh" power don't send a Cole 100 MPH heater back at 109. When I made this thread, I honestly forgot you could do other things with Yuli outside of a DFA, and should have included benching as an option in place of a DFA. The problem now is that the team has a bit of a roster crunch with Pena returning. Siri just got sent down for Meyers (who so far looks good at CF), and that leaves us with Dubon, Diaz, Gurriel, and Matijevic, one of them has to go. Much to my chagrin, it will be JJ, even if he's out OPSing Yuli already. He simply doesn't have the versatility that Diaz and Dubon have, and I'd bet the FO would rather run that out than risk another Robel Garcia/Goodrum getting starter ABs situation. That is unless Dubon has options, then I'd send him down and see if JJ can pull off a passable OPS of .750-ish this year, with Yuli on call for a cannot-strike-out pinch hitting role. Then again, thats really unfair to Dubon, who's been decent on offense for us while filling out whatever position we need. Despite his horrid performance this year, I can't make a good faith argument to keep JJ over Diaz, you really don't want Niko Goodrum at bats ever again. McCormick could also be sent down, but the FO probably has more faith in Yuli than they do Meyers after two games.
I honestly don't think Chas is a better option for backup CF than Dubon if they wanted to send somebody down besides Matijevic. It's clear the Astros don't intend to try and work in Matijevic with some semi regular playing time so it's a pretty easy call, but I would like to see him get 3 or 4 starts a week with Yuli and Brantley getting days off. We have the cushion to try it, and frankly he can't be much worse offensively than Yuli has been.
Yep, I’d like to see McCormick sent down with Dubon the backup CF and Matijevic playing 3 out of every 4 games at 1B, LF, and DH.
Dubon does not have options - that's why SF traded him in the first place. He was struggling with them this year, and their hand was kind of forced. As far as Diaz goes, while he's always going to have his red hot streaks here and there, unfortunately he has some of the worst injury luck. This is a contract year for him, so I think we just let him walk after this year, and Dubon takes over the utility role.
