The Crawfish Boxes: An SB Nation Community

Navigation: Jump to content areas:



Around SBN: The Worst Season of Francisco Rodriguez's Career Bar-right-arrows



Villareal and Quintero Out, Borkowski and Towles Join the Astros

Looks like management has seen enough of Oscar Villareal in an Astros uniform. At least for the time being. He's been designated for assignment and Dave Borkowski has been called up to take his place.

You can read about it right here.

We all know Villareal sucked, so I won't go into his stats here. Borkowski sucked too... at least while he was with the Astros this year. So what about his performance in Round Rock? Not too shabby. He started one game and got the win by pitching 5 shut out innings.  He took one loss as a reliever in 11 appearances and gave up 5 runs. Those runs were given up in four games so he has seven scoreless appearances as a reliever, twice going more than 1 inning.

As for Quintero (if you didn't see last night's game,) he was hit in the head by a swing by one of the Dodgers batters. He fell to the ground and it looked like if may have knocked him out for a minute. He was eventually helped off the field and will spend the next 15 days on the disabled list.

J.R. Towles, of course, is taking his place. You might argue that he sucked even more than Villareal last time he was here, striking out just about every time he had the bat. He gets another chance starting tonight. He had an OPS of .954 in AAA with a few home runs recently and an On Base Percentage of .380. So maybe that will translate to something decent in the 8 spot.

Oh, and if you haven't heard, Lance will take part in this year's home run derby.

 

0 recs | Comment 3 comments

Story-email Email Printer Print

Comments

Display:

I'm kind of surprised by Villareal's DFA.

Villareal has a guaranteed contract for this season and next season, plus an option on 2010. If Villareal doesn’t accept an assignment to Round Rock, the Astros stand to lose $2.5 million or so, with nothing to show for it. Wade’s decision to trade for Villareal and sign him to a contract extension looks like a big mistake now.

The Astros have DFA’d Woody Williams, Villareal, and Chacon. In a worst case scenario where they lose the union grievance for Chacon, the Astros will have lost almost $10 million on those three contracts. (More like $ 9 million if Chacon isn’t paid for his contract.)

by clack on Jul 2, 2008 7:05 PM CDT   0 recs

Most of it Tied Up in Williams

The Williams loss was probably unavoidable. Unfortunately, he inherited that from his predecessor, and there was probably no way around it.

I’m sure Woody had a right of refusal on a trade, so we were probably eating the $6 mil one way or another.

Of course, given our bench and lack of quality starters, I wonder if it was possible to work him into a long reliever role.

by pel on Jul 2, 2008 8:24 PM CDT to parent up   0 recs

i could think of away around losing money on Woody

don’t sign him in the first place! :)

If a woman has to choose between catching a fly ball and saving an infant's life, she will choose to save the infant's life without even considering if there are men on base. ~Dave Barry

by TimStros on Jul 2, 2008 10:33 PM CDT to parent up   0 recs

Comments For This Post Are Closed


User Tools

Welcome to the Crawfishboxes, the SBNation blog for the Houston Astros.

FanPosts

Community blog posts and discussion.

Recent FanPosts

Lucas_arms_-_all_in_london_small
Projected Elias Rankings
Small
The Astros and Their "Expected" Wins
Crawfishboxes_m_small
MLB Approves Instant Replay : Begin Using it Thursday
Nsapcs13_large_small
Pence the Chess Master? Will it improve base running?
Crawfishboxes_m_small
Houston Astros Top 20 Prospects in Review
Crawfishboxes_m_small
For Mature Audiences Only - Non Baseball Related
Crawfishboxes_m_small
How are they doing? Ex-Astros Favorites
Crawfishboxes_m_small
Fantasy Baseball - Smack Talk Thread & Standings
Crawfishboxes_m_small
Astros Claim Jose Castillo Off Waivers
Crawfishboxes_m_small
Ty Wiggingon : NL Co-Player of the Week

Post_icon New FanPost All FanPosts Carrot-mini

Current Series

3 game series vs Rockies @ Coors Field

Houston Astros
@ Colorado Rockies

Friday, Sep 5, 2008, 8:05 PM CDT
Coors Field

Brian Moehler vs Ubaldo Jimenez

Partly cloudy. Winds blowing in from right field at 5-15 m.p.h. Game Time temperature: Around 60.

Complete Coverage >

Sat 09/06 7:05 PM CDT
Sun 09/07 2:05 PM CDT

NL Central Standings

W L PCT GB STRK
Chicago 85 55 .607 0 Lost 5
Milwaukee 80 60 .571 5 Lost 4
St. Louis 75 65 .535 10 Lost 1
Houston 74 66 .528 11 Won 8
Cincinnati 62 78 .442 23 Won 1
Pittsburgh 59 80 .424 25.5 Lost 1

(updated 9.5.2008 at 9:43 AM CDT)


Blog Manager

Crawfishboxes_m_small Stros Bro

Blogger

Nsapcs13_large_small clack

Christmas_small HighLeveragePerformer

Lovelance_small DyingQuail

ad

Site Meter