I LUUUUUUUUUVVVVVVV Superbowl Sunday. Not that I like football, mind, but because you can keep your males’ eyes glued to the TV for hours, it makes it sooooooo easy to slip out the door with all your female friends and head straight out for the shoe sales. Yes, I NEEDED to go look at shoes and, um, other female-type interesting things because after reading Josh Dubrow the other day, I just needed to assert my femininity.
And just when I was starting to feel a little better, here is Dayn Perry, almost as bitchy as Josh Dubrow, to give his compliments to the Astros. From his latest column about giving hope to the hopeless,
“They have the worst farm system in baseball, and the front office has inexplicably concluded that the team can contend in ‘08. Oh yeah, this was supposed to be positive … Um, Roy Oswalt’s a first-rate hurler, and Hunter Pence is an exciting young talent. That’s all we’ve got.”
Well, I am beginning to seriously hope that the Astros outperform all expectations, just to shut up those, shall we say, mean grrrls. Not that I have any arguments with their agreement with Baseball America/ESPN/Baseball Prospectus’ evaluation of the Astros farm system.
Anyway, 12 or 13 players (depending on whether or not Chris Sampson makes the 25 man) will be new to the Astros. We all know that the Astros had their first losing record since 2000 and the second since 1991. I wondered what happened in the past to teams that changed over half of the players on their roster from one year to the next. Did they do better?
So I wrote it up for the Hardball Times. Click here to read.
Tags: Houston Astros, MLB
I, too hope that the Astros perform better than expected in 2008, but I doubt that they will. The Astros changed the names of some of their players, but they didn’t seriously upgrade, and they didn’t address what was supposed to be the most important thing–pitching and defense–unless of course you consider getting a bunch of middle relief arms an upgrade.
The Astros may win a few more games than last season simply because dumping Ensberg and Lane amounts to addition by subtraction. They won’t contend.
i agree with you mark. they are not likely to contended. i do think they are a better team than last years. I think they will be over .500.
They could surprise if Wandy and Backe shine.
I predict an entertaining but frustrating year. I also think the team will be streaky.
Steve,
I’ll put away the chisel.
Berkman was still great last year, and I agree he should be better this year. But Pence isn’t going to hit .330 again. However, .280+ would suit me just fine.
I know Tejada is a much better hitter than Everett (so is my one year old son). I meant that the astros subtracted everett and scott and added bourn and tejada for a net gain of very little.
Matsui’s OBP has never been 10% higher than biggio’s, with or without Coor. Away from Coors in ’07 .304. At Coors .381. Aggregate of .342. Biggio’s ’07 OBP .285. A difference of 1.9%, 9.6%, and 5.7%, respectively. Notice the latter two figures are heavily influenced by Coors. He’s headed to Minute Park, where as a switch hitter, he’ll be hitting left handed most of the time in a park which is hard on left-handed singles and doubles hitters. He’s 32 and has a career OBP of .325. If he were to do that he’d be 4% better than Biggio in ’07, w/ no real power advantage.
The real difference will be in Towles, and alot of that will depend on whether he gets a real opportunity (he should).
Better defense at second and center, worse at ss.
Same team, different names.
Obviously, I hope they beat the odds.
I hope they’ll do well, but I don’t think that’s possible. They’re rotation is awful (beyond numero uno).
In fact, for all these moves thay’ve barely improved, if at all.
Improved outfield defense. Worse defense at short. Better defense at second in the form of an awful hitter.
And how much will the lineup improve? Bourn and Tejada take the AB Everett/Loretta and Scott/Burke got. That’s a real close swap. Matsui over Biggio is next to nothing of an improvement.
They just swapped out names in the bullpen. (So long as they’re not named Lidge, Right?)
Pretty much agree with you here, Kevin
I’m not getting my hopes up OR buying more overpriced season tickets either
Um, Kevin, look — sure it’s easy to be pessimistic, but we really don’t know how this is going to go and I think you’re overstating the case a bit.
You ignore the fact that Tejada is a significant offensive upgrade over Everett, even though he’ll never return to the numbers he used to have.
Kaz is a massive defensive upgrade over Biggio, and he is an offensive upgrade as well, even if we omit the Coors numbers. His OBP is 10% higher, minimum.
Lance ’07 should be a huge upgrade over Lance ’06, when he got off to a horrible start. And Wiggy will be steady, if unspectacular at third.
Towles is a significant upgrade offensively over Ausmus, and we’ll see how he handles the pitchers.
Lee will be Lee, Pence will be Pence except we have him for the entire year (and maybe he won’t hurt himself , which took him out for a while, also) and Bourn is the unknown, though he’ll play a much better CF than Burke did at the beginning of ’07.
So this is a stronger defensive team with more offensive capability than ’07.
Starting pitching is a hole, no question. But I’m willing to see how it goes, because last year was soooo bad (Jennings, Williams) that it won’t take a lot to match that performance and even improve on it. And if we’re scoring an extra run or two per game, that helps, also.
Let’s not draw the tombstone yet.
Well, first off, check your math — the three OBP improvement percentages you stated for Kaz over Biggio (1.9%, 9.6%, 5.7%) are actually 6.7%, 33.7%, 20%.
To calculate the percentage improvement, you divide the amount of improvement by the number being improved. In other words, if Biggio’s aggregate OBP is .285 and Kaz’s is .342, then .342 – .285 = .057 improvement, so then .057/.285 yields an improvement of 20% — .342 is 20% greater than .285. In other words, .285 * 120% = .342.
As for whether the ‘stros are better, worse or the same as last year, I project them to be a bit better, but we’ll see. They are also one or two major injuries away from being the worst team in baseball.
grinning
i learned right quick steve schramm knows his math. i know how to punch a calculator button all right but unfortunately for me steve knows the RIGHT buttons.
and this
“They are also one or two major injuries away from being the worst team in baseball.”
is dead right.
but then again, i’m really not expecting to win, so it won’t bother me as muchas it might could when they don’t.
remember back in 03 when bill stoneman refused to change a single player from the 02 WS team? sigh. fans don’t usually like it, but trades/getting new guys even if they replace popular old guys is part of baseball and always was
Steve,
I see. I didn’t put it exactly as I should have. I meant 10% as in the difference b/w .200 and .300 (which now occurs to me as being patently absurd, since so such scale exists- maybe not though, b/c the plain vanilla generic major leaguer and AAA lifer will usually post something in the low .300′s); not an aggregate of .285 + 10%. Which, strictly speaking, makes your point absolutely correct. I got a little carried away.
The point is, nontheless, offensively Matsui still sucks. And, given an equal number of AB, he’ll struggle to outhit the likes of, say, Chris Burke.
And that’s all beside the point anyways. My point is that they’ve changed names w/out significant improvement. And, again, you’re absolutely correct that they’re an injury or two away from being one of the worst teams (God I hope not!!).
Yes, well, I agree that things do not look too terribly good on paper (or on my computer) statistics-wise. But that’s why they play the games on a baseball field instead of in computer simulation. There’s always that team chemistry issue that might help
Or not. We’ll see…