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Seth and Sean assess what the Astros can do to get better this offseason.
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00:00I, I myself have wanted to ignore the obvious. I know it's time to move on from, from Revaldez.
00:05If he's going to get the kind of contract that people are projecting him to get, I don't think
00:09the Astros have an appetite for it. I know most Astros fans don't have an appetite for it. And
00:13yet the, some like the, the brass tax bottom line is he pitches a lot of innings. He's incredibly
00:20durable. And like, you've got to, you've got to replace not just the starting pitcher, but a
00:25starting pitcher who is, is just eats up a lot of innings. And this is on a staff that
00:31had 36 different pitchers throw a pitch for the Astros last year. Those numbers are startling.
00:36And I don't know if that includes a Cesar Salazar or not, but he lays it out. Yeah. 36 men threw
00:42a pitch for the Astros last season. Three of them are position players. So Salazar, Chaz,
00:50you know, they waved one of their best pitchers, Chaz McCormick this week, uh, five of five
00:55more have undergone significant arm surgeries. Eight others were either released or traded
01:00during the season. One of them is Ryan Gusto, who was part of the ill-fated trade for Jesus
01:06Sanchez, the outfielder from the Marlins. Gusto threw 86 innings in an Astros uniform before
01:12being shipped to Miami. Only two Houston pitchers threw more innings, Hunter Brown and Frambois
01:20Valdez. Right. So Ryan Gusto, who they traded in July, ate up the third most innings on the Astros
01:27last year. Remember when we did that little exercise where we were astounded by the number
01:32of guys that you barely even remembered were on the team, but that were relievers were in the top
01:36five. Yeah. Or some of the guys who were late comers or whatever. I mean, Colton Gordon threw
01:40the fourth most pitches on the team. Yeah. And it just felt like forever ago since he was around.
01:45Yep. And then Oakert had the fifth most on the team. Yep. It's, uh, it's astounding just how many
01:51different guys they used in pretty heavy doses, but it's just impossible to keep track of how,
01:57uh, of how many, it's not fun either to keep track. No, it's not fun at all. No, that's the
02:02really thing. I mean, you gotta go way down the list to see how many innings you got out of Eric
02:05Getty and Javier. Like you had way more guys, the guys, they were your chosen named top five
02:11or six guys at the beginning of the season. You know, Javier ends up pitching 37 pitches,
02:16Eric get earth innings, Eric Getty 35 and a third. Those guys are down into like 13th or 14th most
02:22innings on, on the team last year. Just a frame team. And I know Seth, as you sort of acknowledged
02:29by saying that Astro fans don't probably don't have the appetite to go six years, one 90 or whatever
02:34it's going to be for Framber. The fact of the matter is some of that is probably colored with
02:39how this past season went. It wasn't Framber's best year, both on the mound and in general in
02:43the clubhouse press conferences, things like that. But this is what you're letting walk out the door
02:48since becoming a full-time starter in 2020, the COVID year Valdez has thrown 973 innings. Okay.
02:55That's a lot. How many, how much is that? Only four pitchers have thrown more innings and only one of
03:01those four has a lower ERA than Valdez. And that's Philly's ace, Zach Wheeler.
03:07Few pitchers like that exist on the open market. This is Chandler Rome talking now and the Astros
03:11aren't in the business of paying those who do. So you're looking at a, you're looking at,
03:16uh, you know, and again, this is bullet point number one of three. We'll get to the other two
03:20in a second, but this is the priority. If, if, if Chandler is doing them in order,
03:25he's got them in the right order. Replacing the lost innings is the a number one thing for
03:29Dana Brown to have to figure out and go do, and whether that's through trades and bringing
03:33in guys or whether it's through bargain shopping and free agency. Yeah. If some of that is some
03:38of the injured guys coming back development of younger guys on the farm, the, the problem is
03:44there's not nearly, there's not nearly as many solutions in house as there have been the last,
03:49or at least feel like potential solutions in house that there had been the last few years.
03:54It's Hunter Brown and a bunch of other dudes, right?
03:56And the, the upside of blue ball, perhaps who's sitting on a 179 ERA, but only in,
04:01he's had 30 or 40 innings or so. Uh, yeah, like to the pink staff, it's guys that have veteran
04:08experience and is, you know, like it, nothing to get excited about, but it's definitely a
04:14one-year deal in case of a emergency, Peter Lambert, you know, um, the, the, the, I guess the,
04:22the Verlander thing I'm way more comfortable with right now than I would have been in the last two
04:26years. Last year I was still fighting. I was fighting it. I was saying, no, there's no way
04:30they could have as many injury issues this year as they had last year. Why on earth would you bring
04:35in Justin Verlander? We like, we need to have guys that are younger and have upside and everything.
04:39Where now, all right, they've got some guys that are, are young and have upside, but some of them
04:44are either a totally, um, like unproven in blue ball, Eric Eddie. I don't know what the hell's
04:49going on with him. I still don't know what he is as a major league pitcher. Right. And, and then
04:53you stack on top of that, he's got a mysterious, uh, soreness in his elbow. Yeah. It isn't a,
04:58then we know how that goes with the Astros. You're trying to cobble something together,
05:01man. You can't get choosy as to how you do it. Yeah. If Verlander wants to come here on a
05:05reasonable deal by God, get it by dadgummit, get him in here. Well,
05:08the other thing too, with Verlander going into 2025 is he was coming off a season where a,
05:12to your point, he was hurt for a lot of the season and B when he did pitch, he wasn't good.
05:16Yeah. 5.48 ERA part of a big reason why I'm cool with them giving Verlander a reasonable one-year
05:23deal is he looked like the old Verlander for the most part over the second half of last season
05:27in San Francisco. But I would, I would imagine that Dana Brown obviously has his eyes wide open
05:33about a guy, his age is that you just flat out. Don't know. You can't go into a season
05:38expecting that Verlander is going to be there for 170 innings. No, you just, you just flat out can't,
05:43but it can be part of God. It can give you these innings. He threw 152 last year. I would take that.
05:50I don't know. I know. I would take that too, but I'm just also saying, but he's also 34,
05:5433. He'll, he'll be, he'll be, he'll be 43. He'll be 43. He wasn't 34. Yeah. He'll be,
06:02he'll be 43 when spring training starts next year, next spring dyslexia popping up. I took 43
06:08and turned it into 34. That's all right. That's okay. Um, is there a late stage? Is there like,
06:13uh, does it ever come on at the age of 50? Yeah. I guess that's just dementia. Damn it.
06:19Yeah. Yeah. I'd much rather have dyslexia. Um, so that's number one, replace the lost innings and,
06:26and, and Chandler mentions Verlander as a possibility here and a few of the other names.
06:30What did I say that got dumped? Did I, did I swear then the, the dad gum GD? I wasn't sure.
06:38Oh, okay. Gotcha. Okay. All right. All right. Got it. I saw the flashing light there. All right. Number
06:43two, what is Jose Altuve's role on this team? This puzzle is really interesting to me that Dana
06:49Brown has to put together here or eliminate a piece of maybe at some point because they've got,
06:56they've got Jose Altuve and Jordan Alvarez who both should be D aging, right? That, that should be
07:02their roles on the team. And yet you can't have two DHS on the infield. You've got Carlos Correa
07:08and Isak Paredes who are both all-star caliber third baseman. Jeremy Pena is not going anywhere
07:13unless they make a trade, unless they, if they trade Jeremy Pena for a bunch of prospects,
07:18then that tells you what they think about where they are as a team right now, probably,
07:21or what they think about Pena. I just don't know.
07:26Like the solution back to shortstop. No, no. And he doesn't want to be a shortstop.
07:29He didn't want to be a shortstop. And they traded for Correa knowing that I think he was better off
07:33playing third base. It's easier on his body. I agree. I'm just pointing it out. Like
07:36everything's on the table. It would seem right now. Not Pena. I don't think Pena gets traded,
07:40but I think it's, I, but I think you got to at least put it in your mind. So, well,
07:45I think most Astros fans are at the point now where I like, why bother falling in love with
07:49any of these guys? Cause you don't retain any of them, right? You know, unless Pena signs a deal,
07:53one of, one of those Jordan type deals, uh, he's already been way ahead of his, uh,
07:58way ahead of his free agency. He was offered. His response was he hired Scott Boris.
08:02Yeah, but there really is. It's almost like you're, it's like you're,
08:08it's like if your mom's promiscuous or something and she's coming home with a different guy every night,
08:12you're like, I'm not going to start thinking about these guys as my next, my next daddy.
08:16Jeremy Pena is not my next stepfather. Right. I had a friend whose mom was like that. And, uh,
08:21she was very fond of both policemen and firemen. And, uh, he grew up having a warped view of
08:27policemen and firemen. Yeah. Oh, it was just like responders. They help us.
08:35Your mom's just giving back. Yeah. Yeah. They have a hard job. You got to keep their spirits.
08:39But it was, uh, it was cool. It was went from like when he was real lot, he was like, oh my gosh,
08:43you're a fireman to like, ah, great. Here's another, here's another fireman. Yeah. Fireman
08:47of the month. All right. Had the whole, she had the whole third station house down here.
08:52That's how I'm starting to feel with some of these Astros players. I get it. I get it.
08:55Jeremy Pena. All right. He's just, uh, just, just, just Jim Crane's latest, latest, uh,
08:59little, little hussy. So he'll be gone. I'm not going to fall in love with him. So here's the big
09:04question. Um, with you're done now being back, you know, is he going to play some second base
09:11this year? The Chandler suggests like the, you just go, all right, you know, one guy will be
09:17left field. One guy will be DH. And we just kind of playing second base. No, no, no, no. Did I say
09:21second base? I meant left field. Sorry. Um, that you're not here for it. You're not at Altuve as good as
09:27Altuve is probably, um, the Jordan and Altuve would be in some sort of DH left field platoon
09:33with each other. How, um, how are all the, the baseball intelligentsia, the people that told me,
09:39uh, over and over, he told us that not you, but me and other Astros fans that like, Hey,
09:44why are you guys so nervous about him playing left field? It's no big deal. And I got convinced. Um,
09:49and I thought, okay, yeah, it is true. It is true. It's not rocket science or anything. He's
09:53athletic enough to do it. The height shouldn't necessarily, his height isn't any more of
09:57a concern in left field as it is at second base. Like, uh, the range is the range.
10:02The only problem with that was that with that, with that hypothesis turned out to be that when,
10:07when a ball goes over his head at second base, it's a base hit, right? When, when he jumps at
10:11the wall and then it bounces off the wall, it's typically extra basis. Yeah. The problem was the,
10:16the problem was though, it wasn't for a lack of jumping ability. It was his timing on the
10:19job. It was awful, which I could get though too. You're in your thirties. You're trying to learn
10:22how to time that up. That's never done it before. Yeah. Yeah. Which I mean,
10:26that's something you consider when somebody is about to move to left field, but then also too,
10:31because people would say old Sethers, listen, his arm strength is really not an issue because
10:36how often do you actually have to enough times that it ends up mattering is what it is. Yeah.
10:41It's enough times that it ends up mattering in certain specific matters, throwing home plate and
10:47throwing a third base and things like that. So what is Jose Altuve's role is a huge question because
10:52this, we know he's going to be in the lineup every day in some capacity. So what is his role?
10:57That's number two. And again, we're going through Chandler Rome on the athletic, the three big things
11:01the Astros need to answer or address. The third one is deciding who to trade. And this, this goes
11:08more probably should have saved all the Korea Paredes talk for this one because they've got an extra guy
11:13right now. If Paredes can't play second base and the word on the street is that there's not a ton of
11:18confidence in him out there, both in the building and outside the building that he would be a good
11:22second baseman. Then they've got to move one of, they're not moving Korea. Korea is here for the
11:29long haul. They traded for him for a reason. They've got to move one of Paredes or Christian Walker in
11:35all likelihood. And whoever sticks around plays first base. Cause I don't, if they don't think
11:40Paredes can play second base, I don't, if they, they don't think Paredes can play second base,
11:45then you may as well put out two way at second base. You know what I mean? Like if you're going
11:48to play, play a bad player at second base, just put out two way there. And then that solves your DH
11:52problem. Um, but Paredes is estimated to be making 9.3 million this coming year after arbitration
12:00Walker, we know will make 20 million bucks. I can't imagine the team they trade Christian Walker
12:06to, if they were to move on from him. Um, I can't imagine that team's paying the full freight on
12:12Christian Walker. The Astros would probably have to pay some of the 20 million in each of
12:16the next two years. Uh, Chandler makes a great point in here, which is if you're going to keep
12:21one of the two, keep in mind Paredes is cheaper wing that Taylor made for minute made park has the
12:30better eye at the plate is the more disciplined hitter. He was an all-star last year. I say keep
12:36Paredes, give the man a first base glove, find somebody to take Christian Walker. Christian Walker
12:41led the team in home runs and RBIs last year. And it was the phoniest home run and RBI leader that
12:47I can remember in my history of watching the Astros. Cause there was never a time throughout
12:52the year where I consistently felt like that guy was going to do anything, but strike out when he
12:56came up with guys on base and that slow mopey walk back to the dugout that he has, man, trade
13:03that thing out the door, pay the whole 20 million to get that out. I'll tell you the thing. When we
13:06start talking about where guys are going to play in the infield and everything, if you go back to the
13:09heyday of the Astros, the golden era, especially in, you know, uh, 2017 through 2022, they were
13:16pretty consistently in the top five defensively in terms of fielding. They were a really, really
13:22good fielding team. I think the COVID year they weren't, but, um, everything was off that year.
13:27They were bad. Yeah. Yeah. So, but like it's, whereas it's been kind of a slow degradation over
13:33the last few years where in terms of runs, defensive run saved, I think they were 19th
13:38or 20th this year or 20th this year. Um, it's just, they're not the same as they used to be.
13:43And that was one of those, that was one of those awesome little things like their judgment at the
13:46plate, their fielding, all of those things above and beyond, above and beyond OPS and everything
13:53else that like, this is just a, a, a fundamentally pure and sound baseball team. And it was cool.
13:59And it just, they've fallen so far away from all of that. Yep.
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