Scratch Zambrano off my unrealistic Christmas wish list. ESPN just said he's gonna get 5 years/90 million. Press conference later today. That's just the realiszm of what we have to spend on 1 much needed hole. 18 million a year, plus 12 for a bat is 30 million easy, not including resigning Jennings and getting a new catcher. Even spending that much money won't even secure us a division title next year w/o filling the other holes and having a consistent closer, be it Lidge or not.
the nfl is the number one sports league so parity hasn't hurt them. we can obviously go down case by case, but the simple fact is some teams have alot more money to spend then others. mlb should have never put a team in tampa bay. the marlins won and they still had to sell off after two world series. baseball doesn't work in florida even with a champion. so it doesn't matter if you win, if you're in a small market you are still going to be at a severe disadvantage. just like pointed out in another thread, The A's have exceptional management so you can't expect everyone to be them. the brewers have only recently been competitive and they still had let go of Carlos Lee.
we're paying woody williams $6M/year at the age of 61. if jennings wanted to come back for $5-6M after receiving a clean bill of health, i'd certainly take him with the idea of still looking for ways to upgrade the rotation. guys who can grind out 180-200 IP/year have tremendous value assuming their ERA can stay at or near league average. but if they think a "healthy" jason jennings is any answer to upgrading their rotation, they're deluding themselves.
Is this really a testament to parity though? Each of those teams had an extremely high payroll the year they won the WS. It seems more a testament of the role that luck plays in baseball and of the idea that the playoffs are a crapshoot to some extent. But parity is about an equal playing field, not the theoretical ability to compete. Ultimately, if you have equal management and one team has an extra $100 million to spend, that team is going to be be better. There will always be outliers of good teams with low payrolls and vice versa, but suggesting that there's parity because having great management can overcome payroll restrictions is not right. The Royals should have to have substantially better management than the Yankees just to be on equal footing - that's the very definition of a lack of parity.
There definantly already is way more parody in MLB. We don't see 100+ win teams anymore, even if their the Yankess or Red Sox. But teams like Tampa, i believe are abusing the revenue sharing system with their 30 million dollar payrolls. I find it hard to belive they can't spend more money than that and the owner isn't profiting a nice figure. That's why i wouldn't mind a salry floor if your gonna have a salary cap. My personal opnion is baseball shouldn't be a profitable sport for the owners. I think they owe it to the city and the fans that pay 5 bucks for a hot dog and 8 for a beer to throw most of that money back into the team. They can give themselves a nice salary like GM's make for their hard work, but not tens of millions. It's the city's tax payers that pay hundreds of millions for their stadiums to play at, yet get no discount on tickets or anything. Teams like Tampa, KC, and the Pirates, ect, just never drafted good. The Brewers had been a laughing stock of the division for years untill now when they finally managed to bring up the right amount of quality young guys all at once. I doubt Ben Sheets will stay when his contract is up, so they better have another young gun ready to fill his shoes. Not to mention they still might not win the division. Lower and Mid market teams need to know when to blow up their team with a firesale while they still have a good amount of talent to get competitive again, just like Florida and Cleveland have done in the recent past if they want to be competitive again within a few years rather than a decade. That's why i was upset when we didn't blow up the team this year, because i don't believe Drayton will go out and spend an enormous amount of money in the off season. It will have to be more than ever before. We have a core for a great championship team, but will that be all? I really hope i am proved wrong.
Oh, that is a great idea, because one of our guys is terrible, let's sign another terrible guy for less money. In the words of the Geico caveman. "Yeah, I gotta response......uh...what?" DD
We absolutly do. However, i can't see us winning a pennant with Jennings as our #2 go to guy. Especially in a playoff series if we somehow got there. We also need a #3, and that's where i think Jennings should be and 7-8 million is reasonable for a reliable #3 pitcher that can eat up innings, whether any of us like that salary or not. That's just the economics of baseball and it's only going to go up. Worst pitchers got more last off season. A real #2 pitcher should rival your Ace and that will cost double whatever Jennings gets. If you look at the good teams and their #2 pitchers, the ones under club control will get tons of money in the FA market when they get there. The #2 pitchers on good teams that signed as FA's make way more than Jennings will get.
Why do the Astros need another big bat? They're committed to Berkman and Lee as the big bats in the middle of the line-up. Playing Burke, Luke, and Pence full time should make the offense pretty darn good. I'd re-sign Lamb, but he won't be terribly expensive. Finding a catcher won't be cheap and certainly won't be easy, but the only big-ticket FA that the Astros should go after is a really good starter.
OK, just wondering what the people that don't want to resign Jennings, what your plan is? Would you like JJ as your #3 for 7 million/year? We still need a real #2, and then a servicable inning eating #3 pitcher not named Wandy if we don't resign JJ. How do we go about filling those 2 holes in the off season? How much money would you expect to spend on a stud #2 and decent #3 guy? Are there many guys around Jennings age to sign? Again, not arguing here, just wan't to know other ways to get a #2 and #3 pitcher. Like who and for how much? What better options out there do we stand a chance of signing?
Problem is, Jennings is not a #3 pitcher. He's at best a #5 pitcher the way he's pitched this year. I don't think it's hard to find a starting pitcher with a 6.00 ERA for a lot cheaper.
Since when is Jennings a servicable inning-eating #3? 4 of the last 5 years, he's had an ERA over 5.00 - that's worse than league average. He has a career WHIP over 1.55 - that's beyond horrific and doesn't suggest any reason things are going to improve with him. If your #3 pitcher is worse than league average - and you're paying him $8MM a year at that - you're going to be a terrible ballclub. He's had exactly ONE good year in his career and has an ERA over 6 this year. I'd rather have any combination of Wandy, Woody, Albers, Sampson, Backe, and Oswalt than Jennings for $8MM a year. All of them are as good or better than Jennings, and 5 of them are cheaper (4 of them substantially so). What on earth makes people want to spend $8MM on Jennings?
THIS. Jennings has YET to prove that he is worthy of being a #3, let alone a #2 pitcher, throughout his career. Just because there are slim pickings in free agency for pitchers doesn't mean we have to go and spend buckets of money on someone we already have. If we can patch together 3 pitchers out of Backe, Sampson, Albers, Rodriguez and Patton (we have to call him up, it's the only logical thing to do) and hope that Williams can give us 3-4 runs in 6 innings, we can offer Jennings 3 years $15 M. He wants anything more than that after the year he had, he's either A) a complete douchenozzle with no conscience or B) delusional. Actually, what's more delusional is the fact that there are teams out there that probably WILL give him 3 years $22M because they desperately need the pitching.
The offense would be pretty darn good right now if Berkman hadn't fallen off the map. Now that we have Twiggy, I don't think the Astros will try very hard to keep Lamb. The only way we keep him is if no one else wants him, and I'm pretty sure someone will want him. I'm not worried about C. Munson has done a nice job this year, but I hope we keep Ausmus for one more season. As a backup, he could play 1 game a series and teach Munson all the stuff he doesn't know yet.
OK, so supposing we don't resign Jennings at all, then what? You know my feelings are he would be a good #3 if healthy. I'm not going to try and swede JJ haters to like him, that's your respectful opinions, just like i hate AE and don't believe his D makes up for his O. Other than Roy, we don't have a real good pitcher on the staff. I could consider Wandy a #4 pitcher after this season on a good team, nothing higher. Backe is also a #4 talent. Sampson isn't a #3 talent, so you can't plug any of the above into the #2 and #3 slots and realistically expect to win. The #5 slot is never set in stone since guys go down and new ones come up. So we still need a stud #2 pitcher that gives us the edge to win most games and rival Roy. Also still a quality #3 pitcher that gives us a chance to win everyday and eat up innings. I still don't understand how we get a #2 and #3 pitcher. If reshuffling the rotation was the answer, JJ wouldn't be a #2 (which he shouldn't be, except for this year on this staff), and we still don't have a contending team's staff by any counts. So, what #2 and #3 pitchers do you guys want to target, how much do you think they'll cost, and would they even come here? Do you think Drayton will spend the money? That's what i'm trying to understand. I don't see us getting much better resigning JJ, only getting worse. Someone quoted me and mentioned that we don't need another bat. I still believe we do, especially when putting AE back into the lineup. Plus, this team isn't exactly a top run producing team like previous clubs that got us to the post seasons. I think we still need an upgrade, he doesn't have to be a power guy, a better choice would be high average guy to get on base, preferably with some speed. Pence plus that FA could get us more fast baserunners and steals, then Berkman and Lee would have an extra guy to knock in. Even with Pence, we still weren't scoring enough runs to win many games. Especially with a sub par or even average pitching staff, we need more hitting. We can't play small ball anymore like we used to with the Roy/Clemens/Petitte years if we don't have the best pitching staff in the league.
