I have this bad BAD feeling about my baseball team. BAD BAD feeling.
I wonder if this is how Pirates fans felt when the team preferred to sign Andy Van Slyke to a long term contract instead of either Bobby Bonilla or Barry Lamar Bonds. You can see an empty farm and the beginning of a long LONG downward spiral because of owner stupidity/greed and the GM
1 – being unable to do anything about it
2 – doing not so smart things with the moves he WAS able to make.
sigh
We all knew Fast Eddie has always been obsessed with middle relievers, and LaTroy Hawkins is getting 3.5 mill next year while Doug Brocail is getting 2.75 mill. Meanwhile, we have the Blum-Boone-no platoon for 1.85 mill, which will far and away underperform what we could have expected to receive from Wiggy at 3 mill.
Alyson Footer, usually sensible, said “Prediction: With regular playing time, Blum will be surprisingly productive. Blum’s defense is a strong suit and will be an upgrade over Wigginton.” On what planet does Blum have defense as a “strong suit?” Answer – Wiggy was actually just barely below average as a glove at 3B (which surprised the heck out of me) – as rated by +/-, he was (-) 1 and Blum was +2. Big Deal – But more importantly, Wiggy is SO much stronger on offense, that even Chris Dial has Wiggy significantly beating Blum on Offense + Defense: 13.4:(-)1.3. That is a HUGE difference. Aaron Boone won’t be getting more than 20% of the total PAs and the BlumBoone-NO platoon will most likely be hitting 7th.
Alyson correctly notes that “This will be a straight platoon situation, with the left-handed-hitting Blum likely to receive more starts and Boone on hand to face lefty starters. Boone has a career .247 average against lefties, while Blum has a career average of .255 vs. righties.” Well, yeah, but Ty hit .275/.278/.285 over the past 3 years (and that is just BA) while Blum hit .254/.252/.240 and Boone hit .251/.286/.241.
“The Astros may miss Wigginton’s power production — he’s averaged 23 home runs over the past three seasons, while Blum and Boone have combined to average just 13 over the same period of time.” SLG over the past 3 years? Wiggy slugged .498/.459/.526 compared to Blum .366/.367/.418 and Boone .370/.423/.384. NO comparison
“That said, Blum had a nice season offensively in 2008, hitting 14 home runs in a part-time role in 114 games.” Big deal – he slugged .418 and Wiggy didn’t slug LESS than .418 except for his first year in the bigs, 2003.
Lousy + Lousy does NOT = OK. Neither Blum nor Boone has an Adam Everett glove which saves so many runs that it overcomes lack of bat.
sigh
But we all knew that the Blum-Boone-NO platoon supposed to make up for the absence of Wiggy with “grit” + “character” was a bunch of, uh, spin.
I supposed we are supposed to endure this with the understanding that next year, Tejada’s expensive roidless corpse will be gone and replaced with Manzella and Chris Johnson will be the new 3B – all nice and cheap and then we can afford, uh, um – well, guess Drayton will come up with SOME excuse like – well, the fans didn’t come out the year before so we have to cut back on payroll.
Yeh, those greedy baseball players.
They should just ask for a small salary – like Bud Selig’s.
Tags: Houston Astros
i thought i had your RSS feed subscribed on my google reader but apparently that feed stopped working?
i just found all of these recent posts
i had to resubscribe.
anyway- you’re on point as usual.
thanks gf
welcome back
Yeah, I as gonna say all that but I just got depressed and couldn’t even bother to post anything. I wonder if Ty would have signed with us for $3M for two years? Shoot, that would have been awesome. Amazing that he gets $3M in 2009 when he would have gotten $8M-$10M in arbitration. wow. the market has really tanked.
Hey Lisa,
You lured me to your website by your post on Chron.com in the “Catching up with the 2005 Astros” where you state about good defense being important:
“i do admit the same is true with respect to carlos lee, but of course, it doesn’t matter because he hits .300, drives in 100, hits 30 homers and grounds into double plays instead of striking out like a Real Ball Player should because that is how it was done Back In The Good Old Days”.
I have to admit that you completely puzzle me with these statements.
First, if you look at the stats for all the Left Fielders in the Major Leagues who played at least 100 games, Lee is actually 2nd in fielding percentage and has the second fewer errors. This means that statistically he was the second best left fielder in the entire major leagues second only to Ryan Braun.
Secondly, the statement about double-plays confuses me. Carlos Lee hit into only 8 double plays in 480 at-bats last season. If you carry that number of double plays to a full season of 660 at-bats you get 9 double-plays for the entire season. That is well behind other “big names” like Pujols (16), A. Rod (16), Jeter (24), David Wright (15), and even Manny Ramirez (12).
Lee is far from being a big “Double-Play Machine” and the numbers he put up through August of last season were definately well on par (if not better than) most of those players mentioned above.
James,
Fielding percentage is one of the worst stats to use. It’s like using wins to determine how talented a pitcher is. Bear in mind that Manny Ramirez and Pat Burrell are in the top 5 qualified leaders in least errors. Anyone who watches the Astros knows Carlos Lee is an awful fielder.
Carlos Lee also led the league in double plays in 2007, so I’m not surprised that comment is there. Of course, the person who should get that crown for this team is Tejada who led the league this year.
As for the topic in hand, there were still quality players to be had due to the economy. While I wasn’t surprised Drayton cut the payroll, that doesn’t excuse Wade for essentially blowing $10 million to sign run-of-the-mill relievers and bench players that have no excuse being on a major league roster.
I do find funny that the Reds signed more money to Taveras than Wiggington. And that Randy Wolf rejected 3/28 for 5 mil from the Dodgers: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/6250973.html
What a screwy off-season.
hi james!!!
welcome
i know all about carlos lee and his not having many errors, but all this means is that he doesn’t get to very many baseballs. he has poor range, even outside of the Box and his throwing arm isn’t exactly good. any ball hit to left which isn’t in front of him or right to him is an easy double, even for slow-footed runners.
carlos also hit into significantly fewer DPs last year, mostly because he was hitting behind lance berkman, who was smashing the heck out of the ball until, basically, carlos got hurt. he hit into 27 last year and 22 the year before.
smile
and his numbers weren’t better than pujols or arod or manny
i’m not complaining about carlos’ production, i’m poking at astros fans who really REALLY do believe that the only measure of a ballplayer that actually matters is batting average
we all know that fast eddie’s weakness has always been middle relievers. 3.5 mill for latroy hawkins – grrrrrrrrrrr
randy didn’t reject 3/28 – the astros pulled it before he could sign it – his agent was reviewing the contract. and then the astros didn’t want him back at all for any amount of money over basically minimum wage.
i also think it is hilarious that willy t got more $$$ than wigginton. then again, willy’s agent is boras, the guy we love to hate
sigh
i’d rather watch rooks struggle than watch the replacement level bench guys. we’re gonna lose 80 -90 something games and i’d simply rather see chris johnson/mark saccomanno than aaron F boone. but i guess drayton/pam decided that i would be in the minority of fans who actually GO to the ballpark…
“carlos lee and his not having many errors, but all this means is that he doesn’t get to very many baseballs. he has poor range”
Ironically, there is a stat for determining range of a fielder and Carlos Lee happens to ran 5th among all Left Fielders meaning that he gets to more balls than all but 4 left fielders in the majors. His range factor is 1.88 which is higher than Matt Holidays (1.82), Manny Ramirez (1.82) or Jason Bay (1.75).
“and his numbers weren’t better than pujols or arod or manny”
*Smile*
Oh really? Are you sure?
That is funny, when he got injured in August who was leading the majors in Home Runs and RBI’s? Was it Pujols or A. Rod or Manny? No, Ironically, it was Carlos Lee. If Lee hadn’t gotten injured and had managed 640 at-bats like the other guys did, what would his numbers have looked like. Well, if he continued his pace that he had through the first 3/4th of the season, his numbers would have been as follows:
Lee .314, 40 Home Runs, 146 RBI’s, 90 Runs.
How does that compare to the other players numbers?
Manny R. .332, 36 Home Runs, 121 RBI’s, 102 Runs.
A. Rod .302, 35 Home Runs, 103 RBI’s, 104 Runs.
Pujols .356, 37 Home Runs, 116 RBI’s, 100 Runs.
So, you can see, that the numbers Lee was putting up last season were actually well above the numbers put up by any other those other hitters.
Of course, you can make the argument that these other hitters put up better numbers than Lee in other years, but I will point out that these other players play in stacked lineups. In Milwaukee, Lee had never gotten the chance to play in a stacked lineup until last season. And, suddenly, when he is in a strong lineup equal to the other players his numbers are better.
Yeah, having watched the Astros just about every night, I have to agree about the assessment of his defensive skills. And I don’t even hold it against him that he broke Adam Everett’s leg two years ago. Am I honestly supposed to be impressed that he’s got a higher range factor than Manny Ramirez? That he should appear so high makes me question the rankings, because Manny Ramirez is one of the most laughably pathetic defensive players in the history of the game.
And I give Lee credit for cutting way down on his GIDPs last year. But he came in as one of the top guys in the league in GIDPs, and as was pointed out, he led the league year before last. Though he had some help, of course. He spent of the year batting behind Tejada, which means the bases already tended to be cleared. Also, Berkman was hitting like a mad man for half of the season, which also cut down on Lee’s GIDP chances. I think he’s a GREAT hitter and an asset to this team overall. But he does have detriments, and I don’t see anything wrong with pointing that out.