[Official] Astros Off-Season Thread

Weiters and McCann are making w/in $2M of each other over the next 2 years. What do the Stros do if Weiters waits around for a bigger offer like he did and then chooses another team? McCann is most likely already traded by then. Stros are stuck with a massive hole at C late in the offseason.

I don't see what Napoli brings to the table, given that one of their goals was to diversify the type of hitter they have. There's also a reason that the 4 position players they acquired were either LH or S hitters. Fowler would have been a nice fit but that's way too much compensation.

Back to Heyman, they probably did overpay Reddick a bit but nobody around the league or in the media really said it was egregious (that I can remember). He also provides no details on the discussions, what Correa requested vs what the Astros countered with, what kind of long-term deal was discussed, nothing. So his whole tweet/article just comes across as him pulling numbers out of his ass.

 

Wonder what they were?

 

I can see Altuve, Correa, and Marwin as a clique, they are all up on each other's social media all the time. I can also see Springer and Colby as a "Club Astros" clique, with Gattis and Jake on the outside just trying to get in with somebody.

 

Playing the Mets today. How about another tie?

 

I just hope they hit Tebow.

 

Not sure about the context, but, generally cliques In a clubhouse are not good. The two you described seem rather innocuous and harmless.

Based on Neshek's comments about how Analytical Luhnow is and wondering what sort of data was being obtained and the fact he was traded leads me to believe he may have been a clubhouse troublemaker.

 

Why? That would give him a free base.... Just saying

 

Did anyone see Nori Aoki's beautiful diving grab in CF for the Japanese team? It was a SC top 10 highlight this morning. I'll try to find a link...

 

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/218288800/norichika-aoki-makes-stellar-leaping-catch/

 

Jake Marisnick faints!

 

Thanks @juicystream!

 

The man has had a great spring.

 

Neshek sure didn't mind Luhnow's analytics paying him $18M over 3 years.

 

I said it before the spring...I wanted him to force his way onto the team.

 

Could someone please post this Insider article?

http://www.espn.com/mlb/insider/story/_/id/18874773/can-anyone-better-year-mike-trout

 

Spoiler

I don't know that Mike Trout is the best player in baseball. Nobody knows that. Rather, based on all available evidence, Mike Trout is most likely to be the best player in baseball. Even non-Trout MVP voters concede that Trout is great while saying it's not just a best-player award. Insiders say Trout is the best. Outsiders say Trout is the best. He's young and he does everything, and it's all there in the numbers.

The most useful number for this is Wins Above Replacement, or WAR. It's the catchall statistic, and in 2012 -- Trout's first full season -- he was the WAR league leader, in both FanGraphs-brand WAR (fWAR) and Baseball-Reference.com's version. He was the fWAR league leader again in 2013, and then again in 2014, and then again in 2016. He didn't lead the league in 2015 -- he finished in second. Over the past decade, there have been seven player-seasons in which a player was worth at least 9.0 fWAR. Trout has been responsible for four of them. His average fWAR since becoming a regular is 9.4.

This time of year, baseball is all about identifying favorites and their strongest challengers. The Cubs are the favorite in the National League, and the Dodgers look like a strong challenger. Trout is the favorite to be baseball's best player again, and he's the favorite to post the best WAR. But which players might have the best chance to surpass him? He has, after all, been surpassed once.

Let's say Trout has another Mike Trout season and he doesn't get hurt. Who could be able to have a better season still?

Josh Donaldson
2016 fWAR: 7.6
Estimated chance of beating Trout: 5 percent

There's nothing Donaldson does wrong. He has been one of the best players in baseball for four years, and he has been fantastic on both sides, knocking balls down at third in between opportunities to knock the ball out of the ballpark. He's not even particularly old, having turned 31 in December.

Just two years ago, Donaldson basically had a nine-win season. He has an excellent eye, and his power is downright terrifying. The one thing holding him back is that last season he started to struggle through aches and pains. A hip injury, specifically, slowed him down toward the end, and his defensive performance wasn't where it had been. Durability tends not to increase with age. At his best, Donaldson can give Trout a run for his money; he's just unlikely to be at his best all of the time.

Carlos Correa
2016 fWAR: 4.9
Estimated chance of beating Trout: 5 percent

Donaldson is here because he already has established a certain talent level. Correa hasn't been close to that good up to this point, but here's the thing: Carlos Correa is 22 years old. He's younger than Keith Law's No. 1 prospect in baseball (who's also Baseball America's No. 1). He was born the same day as last summer's fifth overall draft pick. Correa has been outstanding in the majors as a relative kid, and there's still plenty of room for him to grow.

He's a plus on the bases, and he handles himself at a premium defensive position. The huge upside for him is in the power department, where Correa has a higher career slugging percentage going the other way than he does to his pull side. If Correa is able to consolidate his power and lift a few more batted balls off the ground, there won't be much stopping him. The Trout bar is high, yet achievable.

Corey Seager
2016 fWAR: 7.5
Estimated chance of beating Trout: 5 percent

Seager is here because he has to be: His rookie season was simply too good. You can't ignore a player who was worth 7.5 wins, especially when he did that in his age-22 season. Aging curves are generalized, and they don't apply to every individual the same, but it's generally true that highly talented young position players improve. Seager has been worth 9.0 WAR in 184 games.

I expect that Seager's defensive performance is going to come down, and he's neither very good nor very bad on the bases. He likes to swing, so he's not yet much of a
walk-drawer, but walks will come as opponents' fear grows. I don't think Seager has much remaining room for improvement, but he has reached such a high level already that he could almost fluke his way into taking one more step.

The Field
2016 fWAR: N/A
Estimated chance of beating Trout: 5 percent

Sometimes things happen you just can't predict, and how should I know if there's going to be another Corey Kluber sort of pitching breakout? Maybe Kevin Kiermaier suddenly starts beating the snot out of the ball. Maybe Andrelton Simmons does the same. Such cases are always unlikely, but when you're talking about hundreds of players, surprises are inevitable, and some of them are gigantic. No single other player out there has an obvious Mike Trout-level ceiling, but ceilings can change without warning.

Manny Machado
2016 fWAR: 6.5
Estimated chance of beating Trout: 10 percent

Now we're moving up a tier. Unlike the previous selections, I've put Machado's shot at 10 percent. Ultimately, that's a guess, but it's one that reflects my greater level of optimism. Machado isn't Correa-young, but he's still just 24 years old. He has proven himself to be an elite defender at third base, and he has been a near-everyday player two years in a row. So Machado has established a high baseline.

Two years back, Machado started hitting for power. In 2015, he was more patient; in 2016, he was more aggressive. Through last season's first three months, Machado actually had a higher OPS than Trout, before he tailed off. I expect that Machado will be the worse player, but if he blends his newer power with sustained discipline at the plate, he won't have a weakness. At that point, he could be Trout-ish at the plate and more valuable with the glove.

 

Spoiler

Bryce Harper
2016 fWAR: 3.5
Estimated chance of beating Trout: 10 percent

Of all the players here, Harper had the worst 2016. But he was also the one guy better than Trout in 2015, and even the down year started with a bang. It remains unclear exactly what happened. There's some evidence that, in Harper's breakout year, he got a bit lucky. There were also whispers last summer that Harper was hiding some kind of shoulder ailment, costing him swing strength and bat control. Nothing concrete ever materialized, so we're sort of left to wonder.

Harper is just a 24-year-old, and over the past two seasons, he has drawn about as many walks as he has had strikeouts. He doesn't take himself out of the zone, and he has put together some of the best sustained offensive stretches in recent history. It remains unclear exactly who Bryce Harper is. But he's the only guy who has been better than Trout since Trout came around. That cannot be ignored.

Kris Bryant
2016 fWAR: 8.4
Estimated chance of beating Trout: 20 percent

Bumping us up to guys I'd peg at having a 1-in-5 shot at topping Trout, Bryant has to be here, because of what he just did. In order to beat Trout, he would essentially just have to have a similar season, with a little more skill or a little more luck. It's most certainly within his reach. Remember when the Cubs claimed they were leaving Bryant in the minors to open 2015 so he could work on his defense? Bryant has been an outstanding defender, and at three or four different positions. His baserunning also gets lost in the mix; Bryant isn't big on stealing, but he's surprisingly fast, and his situational awareness is through the roof.

It's the bat that makes Bryant a superstar, though. Between seasons, he shaved his strikeout rate by nine percentage points. He showed the bulk of his power to the pull side, after rising through the system with an opposite-field reputation. With continued improvement hitting for contact and with more power to all fields, Bryant could be one of the rare candidates for 10-WAR threshold.

Mookie Betts
2016 fWAR: 7.8
Estimated chance of beating Trout: 20 percent

Think about how you picture Bryant. Then think about how you picture Betts. I'll guess you don't consider them similar, but as far as WAR is concerned, they're practically brothers. Last year, they posted almost equivalent defensive values. The same could be said for value on the bases. Bryant was the more valuable hitter, but Betts' slugging percentage was down by just 20 points, and he struck out half as often.

That last thing is the key to Betts' upside. He already does everything else, and he makes contact as often as Jose Altuve. Betts is a pest, but a pest who hit 31 home runs, which is a testament to his bat-to-ball skills. Players who make this much contact with such a refined approach take over control of their at-bats. More power or patience could push Betts' ceiling to even greater heights.

Clayton Kershaw
2016 fWAR: 6.5
Estimated chance of beating Trout: 20 percent

With all due respect to Noah Syndergaard, Kershaw is the only pitcher who belongs in this group. And here's the case: He was just worth 6.5 WAR in 149 innings, while dealing with that back injury that cost him a dozen starts. So let's say Kershaw is healthy again. Over his previous five years, he averaged more than 225 innings. If he just repeated what he did last year over that kind of sample, he would end up with a full-season WAR of 9.8. That's right in our target window.

It feels like Kershaw never stops getting better. He can't realistically get much better than this, but last year, he maintained his career-high strikeout rate while cutting his walk rate in half -- and he didn't have walk trouble before. He is the best pitcher in the world, and the Dodgers intend to have him start another 33 games. If he does, he has as good a chance of surpassing Trout as anybody.

This exercise has been about looking for players who could be better than Mike Trout, if Trout had another Trout-usual season. In any individual case, you could argue my estimated chance is too low. Putting all the numbers together gives Trout just a 1-in-3 chance of leading the majors in WAR, if he performs like his usual self -- and he's performed like his usual self for five years, and he has led the majors in WAR four times. So if anything, maybe the estimated chances are too high. Which means you get to come away from this with another reminder that Mike Trout is amazing. There are worse lessons to relearn.

 

We're playing the red birds tonight. Brings back memories of the 90's and the killer B's.

 

Anyone have a good Astros computer wallpaper? Looking to spruce up my office desktop. Nothing too childish, maybe of MMP or a schedule. Was hoping for a new MMP photo but I can't find any great ones online, and the good ones all look pretty outdated. Thanks!