Saturday Morning-ish Astros, etc. Round-Up
by Stephen Higdon on Sep 12, 2009 10:43 AM CDT
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PrintAs most of you settle in for a long day of college pigskin with a desert of Astros baseball, here are some tasty treats to keep you satiated before Brian Moehler takes the mound:
- By far the most interesting of the links, Richard Justice's run down of Astros notes provides two juicy morsles to consider as we head into the hot stove season:
- For those of you still like me who were still waiting to hear the explanation for Roy Oswalt's poor performance on Thursday night, you can find two sides of the story here. Oswalt claims that it had nothing to do with is ailing back, whereas Cecil Cooper drops this bit of knowledge on us:
- Speaking of Coop, his blood pressure would really appreciate the Astros not waiting until the final three outs to win baseball games. The story is pretty generic, but this quote made me laugh until my stomach hurt. It's a true "back in my day" perspective:
- In where the hell did that guy end up news, Eric Munson just earned a call up from AAA by the A's. I saw Munson catch in the AAA All-Star game, but had been too lazy to figure out where he was doing his best Crash Davis impersonation.
- BtB's Daily Box Score column has quickly become one of my favorites to read just because I find myself thinking at the macro level of issues I usually take for granted. Yesterday's was about how we graphical represent data and it's worth the read and ponder.
- If the Astros finish this season below .500, does that mean Drayton should lower beer prices? Well, the WSJ has investigated winning percentage and beer prices. Read it here and decide for yourself whether MMP beer is over priced.
The Astros probably will ask Wesley Wright to compete for a spot in the rotation next spring...
...However, it seems like the club will attempt to re-sign both Jose Valverde and LaTroy Hawkins.
While Oswalt dodged questions about his back, Astros manager Cecil Cooper said that his ace did mention a "burning sensation" in his back, which may have impacted his throwing.
I don't remember us doing that too much of that celebrating, but today they do it all the time. But I think it's great. ... It's fun. I know the players like to do it, and I like to see the players show that kind of emotion.
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If they re-sign Valverde
Instead of hiring a #3 starter I’m going to be blistering mad. Valverde is a fine closer and all, but man would that be a poor move.
The idea may be that Bud Norris can be the #3 starter
Would you be upset over a rotation of:
Oswalt
Wandy
Norris
Moehler
Wright/Paulino
by entropic soul on Sep 12, 2009 2:08 PM CDT up reply actions
it depends on what the offense looks like...
if the only changes on offense are putting Manzella at short and Johnson at 3d base, the offense will produce worse than the current below average Runs/Game, perhaps in the bottom 2 teams ranking. And that rotation isn’t good enough to carry a bad offense. If the offense is downgraded, I think the rotation needs another good starter.
A closer is critical
A team need an anchor. It speads confidence to the whole team.
Valverde has done a great job even though he scares me every time out. If Astros can replace him with a Billy Wagner, fine ; otherwise I’m pleased with the news Astros will try to retain Valverde.
Astros fan for life
by Joe in Birmingham on Sep 12, 2009 2:12 PM CDT up reply actions
If Valverde can be retained at a reasonable cost, I’m OK with that. And I think Valverde may be surprised if he thinks he can get $10 million contract in the current market.
However, if Valverde is too expensive, I think it’s possible to get a second tier closer at a lessor cost. Howry and Sherrill are examples among FA possibilities (they both currently earn $2.5 million, as I recall). Wagner would be a very interesting possibility too.
Personally, I’d rather see the Valverde money spent on 2 or 3 above-average relievers (like Howry, as clack suggests) rather than all of that money invested in one excellent closer.
This is particularly true if Cooper stays on to manage. I think one of the reasons our bullpen got hit so hard this year was because there was a large drop-off in quality between the best guys in the bullpen and the back end. Having a few guys who are significantly better than the others (such as Valverde and Hawkins) puts a lot of pressure on the manager to run those guys out more often and use the back end less, possibly leading to more injuries.
In short: it’d be more cost effective to spread our bullpen eggs around multiple baskets.
Yes, but how many games are you costing yourself if...
you use an above average reliever in the 9th inning instead of an excellent closer?
by entropic soul on Sep 12, 2009 3:33 PM CDT up reply actions
Not that many, if any
It’s three outs. Most above average relievers do it in harder situations all the time. We just think of closers are more mentally tough because they do it in the 9th inning.
The Crawfishboxes
A good friend of mine used to say, "This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains." Think about that for a while.
by Stephen Higdon on Sep 12, 2009 3:34 PM CDT up reply actions
I hope you get Bob Howry as your closer
i’d say the chance of him performing as well as Valverde is tiny.
oh, no question Howry is not an equal of Valverde...
Without budgetary considerations, you always prefer Valverde. I would view Howry as similar to Letroy Hawkins. Neither one makes me entirely comfortable as a closer, but they both have had stints as decent, but not great, closers, although both guys are better as set up relievers.
Agreed completely.
I wouldn’t mind trying any of our above average relievers as closer. Or even close by committee. Closer is the most overrated role in baseball. And what does a sub-.500 time need with a $10 million closer anyway?
It’s one thing if your run production is good and you have a solid rotation. Then you can think about, what final pieces do I need to make this work. But when your run production sucks and your rotation is iffy, spending all that money is dumb.
Well, the point is we're trying to not be a sub .500
Like I said below, though, if we can take that money and buy a good starter, that’s a different story. Or if we can get someone who is as good as Valverde to replace him, then that would work too. But I don’t want to take the money and buy 2 or 3 guys that are good, but not quite as good as Valverde. Granted, they could use some improvement, but we have some good relief pitchers already.
by entropic soul on Sep 12, 2009 5:04 PM CDT up reply actions
On the other hand
How many games does it cost you if your closer has been used for too many days straight and you have to run out a Geoff Geary or a Chad Paronto type? Or if that one excellent guy gets injured?
My gut tells me that next year’s bullpen would be better off with quality depth rather than excellence at the top. I don’t really know how to go about quantifying it, I’m fairly certain that teams pay a premium for elite relievers, and the Astros are going to have to put together next year’s team on a relatively shoestring budget.
I'll stick with Valverde over middle relief
I’m all for finding a cheaper alternative, but it has to be just as good. (Arias keeps popping in my head for some reason, and I’m not sure why.) If we are not going to spend the money on Valverde, I’d rather just use it for a starter, instead of middle relief, since thats where the pitching puzzle begins.
by entropic soul on Sep 12, 2009 4:03 PM CDT up reply actions
I don’t know how much stock you’d put in Wins Above Replacement stats, but here’s those stats for Valverde and Arias in their time with the ’stros:
Valverde: 0.7 WAR (2009), 0.8 WAR (2008)
Arias: 0.6 WAR (2009)
Not a huge difference in value (although you can makes some arguments here about leverage and the relative difficulties of their pitching situations). And if you use the rule-of-thumb that 1 WAR = $4M in value, then it looks like Valverde hasn’t been earning his keep.
That’s not to say that I don’t like Valverde…the dude has held a special place in my Personal Hall of Fame since the day he took a liner off his face and finished the game anyway. I’d love to keep him on the team if they had a $120M+ budget. Unfortunately, odds are that the budget will be closer to $90M. I’m just looking for places to increase cost efficiency and the closer spot seems like one of them.
Another way to look at it...
Sampson also has a WAR of 0.7. And while Sampson is a good picther (was, at least) I would not put him on the same level as Valverde.
Also, looking at THT’s Pitching Runs Created, Valverde leads our relief corps with 34, depsite having pitched less innings than Hawkins, Byrdak, Fulchino. Sampson. He’s pitched about the same number of innings as Arias, but has twice as many PRC as both Arias and Sampson. In fact, Valverde is 4th on the team in PRC behind Wandy, Roy and Moehler (Moehler is barely ahead with 37, having pitched a whopping 3 times as much as Valverde.)
So I just can’t bring myself to agree that, if you are going to spend that money on the bullpen, that you should spend it on anything other than Valverde.
Off the subject (of Valverde anyway) I don’t see how they could put an absolute value on a win, when it comes to individual players. Unless the number of wins is 1, perhaps. Shouldn’t the value of an individual player’s win increase exponentially, for each win over the last? Since 3 WAR players are rarer than 1 WAR players.
Example
First win = $2m
Second win = $4m
Third win = $6m
(and so on)
by entropic soul on Sep 12, 2009 4:52 PM CDT up reply actions
I don't think WAR is a good way to measure closers/relievers...
In general, I’m suspicious of WAR results for pitchers. In the past, I’ve compared closers with Bill James’ Win Shares. Valverde already has over 10 Win Shares in 09, according to James’ web site. By comparison, Arias has 3 Win Shares in 09 so far. (He has consistently hit 14 WS over the last two years.) Assuming Valverde gets 11 WS this year (probably more than that), that is about 6 Win Shares Above Bench. If you plug that into Hardball Times market value estimator, that comes out to around $8.4 million. So, that means that Valverde has more than earned his salary this year, and probably created double value over his salary last year.
If Valverde could be signed for something close to his current salary ($7 – $8 million), I would re-sign him (although it would help to know exactly what the budget is before I say that for certain). However, if he is expected something like $10 million, I think you have to look elsewhere.
I concur
The Crawfishboxes
A good friend of mine used to say, "This is a very simple game. You throw the ball, you catch the ball, you hit the ball. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, sometimes it rains." Think about that for a while.
by Stephen Higdon on Sep 12, 2009 3:33 PM CDT up reply actions
Keep Valverde
Because I will never get tired of the video they play on the jumbotron when you comes out to pitch. You can see it on the front page of his website if you haven’t seen it: http://josevalverde47.com/
I had been wondering if Oswalt and Cooper....
were trying to cover up a public airing of another “miscommunications.”
After the game, Cooper said he recalled having a conversation with Oswalt, but couldn’t remember anything about his back hurting.
But the opposing manager, Bobby Cox said he could tell that Oswalt was injured.
And, for the first time I can recall, Oswalt didn’t make himself available to the press after the game.
Now everybody is saying everything is fine.
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