Based on fangraphs rankings, this is where Houston’s roster stands: C Terrible 1B Average 2B Excellent SS Below average 3B Excellent RF Excellent CF Below average LF Above average DH Excellent SP Above average RP Below average Marte (or Buxton) and a trade for an elite LHRP (Hader or Rogers) would go a long way to rounding out this roster.
I think catcher, Terrible, actually understated it. Which is crazy bc Dusty literally has the ability to make it average-ish just hitting Castro strictly against RHP, even if you want to keep the platoon 60/40 in Machetes favor. I’d quibble a bit on 3B (less than excellent unless we get a bounce back) and relief pitching (I’m fine with the reworked pen, even without Graveman, especially as JV re-signing will eat some innings and send some other talented arms back there. I would be pretty surprised, absent an injury to Presley, if the bullpen isn’t average next year. If 3B goes back to being excellent that will go a long way to making a successful season. I’d probably make LF average unless Yordon gets 40 or so games. Bringing in Marte and making Brantley a platoon player would go a loooong way to fixing the OF and turning it into an overall strength.
Sign Marte and Graveman, plus a cheap SS stop gap like Galvis Trade for Nola or Castillo Bring up Lee in June and hopefully Pena is what he looks like he is. This makes the Stros the leading WS contender and can be done. BTW, the AL batting champ, who's a GG caliber fielder is avg. Damn these guys are hard graders.
He was the 8th best first baseman in baseball last year, I think average is probably a fair assessment.
Fangraphs has Astros 1B unit ranked a perfectly average 14th. That’s a combo of a lot of teams having really good hitters at 1B and the projections expecting Gurriel to take a step down in babip and defense. But the difference is really minor. What’s interesting is that only 4 1B in the league (Vlad, Olson, Alonso, Goldy) project to top the 3.4 fwar Gurriel put up in 2021 (they project Gurriel for 1.9 next season).
Must be the lack of power or they are projecting he will decline because of age. He is really good defensively and hitting for average. Pretty clutch as well. Don’t have much of a problem with any of the other ratings.
They probably account for the fact that he doesn’t have much power, at a position where most of the other top players hit 25+ homers.
He was 8th in baseball in fWAR among first basemen in 2021 and he's going to be 38 next year. I think it's a fair assessment.
They actually project him to hit more HR and have a higher ISO next season than he did in 2021. The decrease in value is from a projected drop in babip (.336 to .297) and slight decrease in defensive value (-10.7 def adj to -13.9).
Another way to look at this is the Delta War at each position from the best team at a position to the Astros projection (i.e., Best Team WAR - Astros WAR projection) to see how much room there is to improve at a position. Pos Delta WAR C 2.6 1B 4 2B 0.2 SS 4.2 3B 0.6 LF 1.5 CF 3.1 RF 2.8 (Holy Toledo Steamer loves Soto) DH 0 Rot 3.2 BP 3.4 If one like's MM defense 1 WAR better than the average catcher that isn't accounted for in easy to measure metrics, that would close C gap to only 1.6 WAR. This type of evaluation focuses on SS, 1B, and CF as areas that have the most room for improvement among the position players. Given decent health, I expect Astros outperform the Rotation projections the most out of the FanGraphs projections. I'd guess either LF or 3B is where the Astros current roster most underperforms.
Interesting way of looking at it and I agree with your take. I think looking at it from that angle further reinforces the idea that the only meaningful way for Houston to improve their roster is to add impact players; there’s really not much they can do on the margins IMHO. But it also points to the possibility that maybe adding an elite reliever (or 2) would have nearly as much relative impact as adding a star SS/CF, and possibly be much cheaper.
Fantastic... happy to see people dumping on Yuli and his lack of power. He will prove everyone wrong again and drop 30 bombs next season.
FG projects Dubin’s k/bb/hr rates for be essentially the midpoint between Pressly and Maton (in terms of fip/era he currently projects as Houston’s 2nd best reliever). I agree he’d likely be a badass RP.
how about Peter Solomon, seemed to be really good in his brief time. Small sample size or could he be a contributor out of the pen next season?
That's an incomplete take... So you're getting Realmuto's bat replacing our worst in Maldonado with a corner outfield spot to fill... The corner outfielder is probably going to hit much better than Maldonado... Your argument is payroll value alone...
