With it being a recurring and highly discussed topic in the offseason thread, I thought a poll would be fun.
I'm not sure if the market has reset itself after last off-season. As such, I went other as I think deals will generally be less than what is being projected (not counting pitching), but really need to see some deals made to get a feel for the market.
What we should do and how many resources we spend on catcher depends on what we are able to do at other positions. On the top end we could go after Realmuto and on the low end we could put someone merely serviceable with Stassi. Either could be the right answer (IMO). I would like to see our starting pitching rotation addressed first. JV, Cole, McHugh? and two unknowns at this point? Plug up one of those unknown holes first I think.
The Astros have multiple needs... starting pitching, a catcher and a bat. The Astros have money and minor league collateral to fill these needs. So the question comes down to whether the Astros are going to get better value spending minor league capital on pitching or catcher/bat or the other way around. My strong inclination is that the Astros use money to fill the need for a bat. That would mean someone likely older on a short but higher dollar deal like Cruz. I think starting pitching is through trade with so many arms potentially available like Stroman, Greinke, Paxton, Salazar, Kluber, Carrasco, Ray and Taillon.
I wonder if the Blue Jays would go half and half or so on Russell Martin's salary in return for a fringe prospect or someone that's kind of blocked? The Astros love their veteran catchers.
Unlike McCann, who was still pretty good for NY before Houston traded for him, Martin was pretty awful for Toronto. .194/.338/.325 slash line, 91 wRC+, 0.7 fWAR. To me Martin doesn’t offer anything that the free agent has-beens (McCann, Lucroy, Wieters) don’t also offer, for way less money.
Steamer projects him to be a league average hitter next year. He's probably not going to duplicate his super low Babip next year, and he's probably more athletic than the FA options.
Rate Realmuto, Ramos, and Grandal's defense (i.e. throwing out runners and preventing WPs/PBs). They're all above-average hitters, especially for their position.
This is the worst, but truest, answer: it all depends I don't think there's one correct answer in a vacuum. It depends on the market, on what our other needs cost, on what becomes available and at what price. If anything, this past year showed us that an all-star caliber catcher isn't really a need. We don't need to take on a large contract at catcher to be good. Certainly it's an area that could be improved, but we won 103 games. It really just depends. If we get a legit bat elsewhere, I'm completely content with Maldonado returning. Fans want to moan over the playoffs, but he's a good player and October baseball is random. He's a fine defensive backstop that had a shaky October. That doesn't mean he isn't good or doesn't have value. I certainly do not want to allocate 65m to Grandal, and even 40m for Ramos seems to high. Both are good hitters, but man. That just seems like a luxury for a team trying to keep as many stars together as possible. Regardless, in Luhnow I trust.
So many moving pieces. If the Astros get a bat like Goldschmidt then they can likely get away with a catcher that isn’t quite as good a hitter. The Astros are looking at some pretty well thought of pitchers from what I am told. If the Astros are paying 80% of Greinke’s deal, then I’m not sure we have the funds to get someone like Grandal. During the playoffs I posted that I was told the Astros were going to look for an ace type pitcher after the season as a top need. It surprised me at the time. I had the same person tell me today that if the Astros can get an ace for anything remotely reasonable they will; prioritizing it over everything else. Greinke was mentioned as a strong possibility.... which really caused me to raise an eyebrow. That is a lot of money to commit to unless the DBacks pay some of it.
The claim of Chris Herrmann hasn’t been discussed much, probably because he hasn’t been very good when his career is looked at as a whole. But it’s possible his claim is indicative of Houston’s plans at catcher. He hits left handed and is out of options. To me that indicates Luhnow expects him to be the backup catcher I think a Greinke deal would look a lot like the Verlander trade. Arizona would pay it down to $20M/yr. But I would hope the prospects wouldn’t be quite as good. Could also see Goldschmidt coming with him which would allo Arizona to combine those 2 assets to get back meaningful prospects. Astros get: SP Zack Greinke 1B Paul Goldschmidt $45M Diamondbacks get: RHP JB Bukauskas LHP Cionel Perez 1B AJ Reed That adds ~$35M, so it probably wouldn’t leave much payroll left to address the catcher position and anything else that comes up. They’d be looking more in the Wieters/Lucroy range (although to me a Narvaez trade would make an awful lot of sense in this case). I’d be shocked if they had more than $50M to spend this offseason. They should have at least $35M.
~$15M is more than enough to get a Catcher. The question would be how much is left over to sign a reliever (to replace McHugh/Sipp). I'd hope if they were to bring in such a great rental that they'd spend the extra 5-10M this year on a Britton/Miller caliber reliever
Fangraphs thinks a combination of Tucker/Whitley + Yordan Alvarez would be enough to get J.T. Realmuto. Quite a steep price. "I could approach this from an insider-y perspective and tell you what teams are telling me the price probably is, but that approach is limited in a few ways. First off, I’m not sure anyone really knows what the price is: the Marlins have turned down strong offers for a year now and still seem inclined to try to extend Realmuto, even though his agent said he's not having it. Since Miami has this one major asset left to move in its rebuild, they may act irrationally, but the market pieces may be falling into place for someone to pay a price that justified this delay. The Astros could deem RF Kyle Tucker (No. 8) off limits and still put together a strong two-player offer of RHP Forrest Whitley (No. 12) and LF Yordan Alvarez (No. 47), which essentially comes out to the same value as the Soroka/Riley offer. It’s unclear if Houston would trade Tucker or Whitley in a deal like this, but they could come up with the strongest offer, trading just one of them plus Alvarez and one more top-10 piece from their system, like RHP J.B. Bukauskas, possibly a lesser piece. Houston may also deem Whitley off limits as he and Tucker could both be important 2019 contributors making the league minimum." https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/so-you-want-to-trade-for-j-t-realmuto/ Josh Reddick thinks Lucroy would be a nice addition.
Not a fan of the way that article does math. If you say Realmuto be worth 7.5 WAR and cost $20M, he has about $50M in surplus value. The article FG published yesterday on prospect values puts both Whitley and Tucker at more than $50M each, yet somehow the author gets Realmutos surplus value up to $90M by adding in **** like framing, negotiating window, comp picks, and winners’ fee. A 3 prospect package headlined by Alvarez should be more than enough to compete, and it will just depend what other teams offer (assuming Luhnow is even willing to offer Alvarez).
