[Official] Spring Training 2019

I caught most of the game.

Tyler White had some bad ABs. He had RBI chances and couldn't get a guy in from 3rd with less than 2 outs. Left 4 runners on base in 2 ABs

Alvarez has big league bat speed and hits the ball hard

Stubbs looked good at the plate. He had a hit and another ball was hit pretty good but the 2nd baseman tracked it down before it got to RF.

Fisher looked bad

Love watching Straw on the bases.

Rodgers doesn't look like anything special to me. He's a spot starter that stays in AAA until someone gets injured or skipped in the rotation

Sneed has good stuff with movement. The HR he gave up wasn't a bad pitch. It was a changeup down and in to Rendon and he went down and got it.

 

Kevin Eschenfelder has one of the best jobs in Houston

 

Jake Marisnick is still trying to prove to the world that he belongs with the big boys

 

Kemp isn't messing around. First AB a double off deGrom and then a triple his next AB off a lefty.

 

Great play by play/insight with AJ Hinch

 

Interesting sound bite from Verlander....

"We don't have Charlie, we don't have Dallas...well, don't know if we're going to have Dallas or not...I hope we do..."

 

JV sounds a little doubtful about our pitching staff.

 

We lost 3 very good starters from last season.

 

Him and everybody else.

 

I think it’s a better staff than what they had going into 2017... but when those guys underperformed or got hurt, they knew they had to get JV.

 

Except on here, cause any time I’ve said I want Keuchel it usually brings a bunch of “no we need innings for the young guys” and “he isn’t very good” and so forth

 

Kemp, White & Fisher each on base 3X today. Straw, Dawson & Toro each with 2 hits.

Bailey (4 K's), Bielak, Bukauskas, Scheetz each with 2 clean innings.

 

I don't necessarily want Keuchel back, unless the price is right, but I don't have any faith in rookies and youngsters until they make me believe.

Wildcards: McHugh, Miley, James, Valdez, Perez, Peacock are all unknowns following the big 2.

 

Keuchel would push the payroll right near the luxury tax which Crane said he wasn't going over.

Plenty of guys will be available at the deadline. We can give our young guys a chance until then.

 

Cool, maybe JV just don't know a lot about what it takes lol (cause that's how this convo started and I knew it would only take a mention of support for Keuchel to get something negative haha)

I don't want to go through the whole Keuchel conversation again and no one wants to read it so i'll leave that alone...but

There is no guarantee plenty of #3 or better starting pitchers will be available at the deadline, and there is less guarantee Luhnow would be willing to move whatever prospects is needed to pry one of them away. Yes it's certainly possible, but it's far from a given

I worry just as much about our pen also. Yes Osuna is a stud and Pressly sure looked like one as well last year. McHugh was the other stud down there last year though, and gave us a healthy 72 innings there. With him in the rotation, those have to be replaced. Sipp gave us 39 really good innings down there two and Smith gave us 46 decent ones. All of those need to be replaced, and if we don't get the same number of innings from the rotation we did last year (which is likely to be the case) those are added to the pen also. We are going to need multiple young guys to come through for our staff to hold up as one of the best in the game. One of the most important players for us this year is likely to be Devo, if he can revert to 2017 and before form, that helps the pen greatly.

Now, having said all of that...if Altuve/Correa are healthy this year, adding Brantley and a likely rebound (to some degree at least) for Reddick, we can just outscore most teams through the regular season. I just hope that if things don't work out great counting on so many unknowns on the staff, we don't wear our the studs that we do have there before the playoffs. Hinch is going to have to be very patient and understand that we are going to win the division and can win the whole thing without home field advantage if we are strong at the end

 

I would say get comfortable having uncertainties in the coming years. The Astros captured lightning in a bottle the last couple years. We had Altuve on an insanely cheap contract and almost all of our top players were either in arbitration or in pre-arbitration. It is very possible that Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa, and George Springer will cost the Astros 20 million MORE in salary for 2020 than they do in 2019. Jose Altuve also has a massive salary increase next year. We have to fill holes with young and cheap talent. The Astros don't make the kind of money that the Yankees, Dodgers, or Red Sox do. We have to play the game a little different. Luhnow has done a great job at having salary coming off the books every year to continue to be able to build around our core guys.

 

Oh yea Luhnow has done a great job for the most part with stuff like that (wish we weren't paying 13 to Reddick next couple of years, although he could certainly bounce back). It's also huge that he has assembled so many upside arms in the system, cause with little doubt I think we can say his goal is to sign the 4 (or 3 of 4 if all of them isn't possible) big everyday players and continue to develop arms....

Everything you say here is why I want one more solid mid to upper rotation arm this year though. We are without a doubt one of the favorites to win the whole damn thing in 2019, in a world where nothing is guaranteed, I want the best chance possible to win another one right now. Do I think we have a good chance to do that? Absolutely...does a rotation with Miley, McHugh, James/Valdez/Peacock worry me a bit when i'm looking at us as World Champions? Absolutely...

 

Agreed, but I think the Stros can wait until the summer. The rotation is the only big question mark on this team in '19.

 

I feel that we have a better chance to win not paying Keuchel the 17-20 million which would limit our ability to add at the deadline. You don't know what our needs are going to be whether it is from poor performing players or injuries. The free agent class next year is pretty deep and I expect their to be some really good rental players available at the deadline. I would rather trust Luhnow to make the necessary moves over signing Keuchel, hoping everyone stay healthy, and not having much flexiblity at the deadline.

Don't get it twisted. I would like an upgrade to the rotation but was hoping it would come via trade for someone not making nearly 20 million in salary.