Wednesday Morning Astros etc Round Up

by Evan Hochschild on Sep 9, 2009 8:10 AM CDT in Link Dumps

One Astro's health is improving, while two others could have been a lot worse:

Jeff Keppinger and his gimpy back should be go to go in the next couple of days. It's going to be a crowded third base, with Kepp joining Bloone's Farm and Chris Johnson...although CJ narrowly missed suffering a significant injury himself after getting hit in the head with a ball during a Yorman Bazardo simulated game. Outside of a headache, Johnson was no worse for wear.

Roy Oswalt was sent to see a doctor yesterday with flu like symptoms. Despite the flu and his early exit last Saturday against Philadelphia, Roy O is not expected to miss his next start.

Anyone who isn't all that enthused about the possibility of Tommy Manzella being our starting shortstop next season should take a look at this. Again, when your club has a talent deficiency it is absolutely essential that potential outs are converted. Manzella would be a solid addition to the defense, and would stand to give the Astros a very solid "up the middle" with Michael Bourn, Manzella and the possibility of Jason Castro by mid season 2010.

This study should be broken down and pasted to the lockers of Felipe Paulino and Bud Norris. It's all about location, location, location. Having a good fastball is a gift that few to the degree of these two. Let's hope they don't waste it.

Baseball is supposed to be fun, right? Well apparently, it's not supposed to be that fun- just ask the San Francisco Giants. Seems like this is another example of baseball being too uptight and inflexible.

Now that the minor league seasons are over, the best and worst teams are official. Our own High A affiliate the Lancaster Jethawks was among the worst teams in the minors. It's tough to win in a park like that, and when you're pitching-thin like the Astros organization is, this was a recipe for disaster.

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Manzella

Uh Oh. I hate when the statement says… “a talent deficiency” immediately followed with “solid defense”. Solid defense means can’t hit. I hate to be the one to point this out to you but unlike football you cannot score on defense in baseball. Add to that the fact that you cannot win if you don’t score and what we have is a player who might get a 90 grade on defense and maybe a 10 on offense. The composite score is a 50 and the last time I checked a 50 is failing, discounting a curve. Manzella is just one of an infinite number of one dimensional would be’s. Good defense, can’t hit a lick, and an average runner. Sounds just like another .500 or worse season to me.

by l34w29 on Sep 9, 2009 9:00 AM CDT reply actions

manzella has been effective offensively at RR this year with about .754 OPS. That isnt great but with his defense, its great. If he can provide a near .700 OPS at the bigs id be happy. Our offense isnt great w/o him and a little worse with him, but the defense is exponentially greater with him, i dont think people understand how much his defense will help

by Subber10 on Sep 9, 2009 9:15 AM CDT via mobile up reply actions

He hit .289 at AAA this season

Far from one-dimensional. My guess is he’ll be a mediocre or slightly below average hitter at the big league level. That’s fine for shortstop as long as you get your offense from the other positions.

We desperately need better defense. Give him a shot and see what he can do.

by OremLK on Sep 9, 2009 9:15 AM CDT up reply actions

definitely agree

by Evan Hochschild on Sep 9, 2009 10:06 AM CDT up reply actions

I wonder if he could be a grower?

A Marco Scutaro type down the road?

by OremLK on Sep 9, 2009 11:14 AM CDT up reply actions

it's fun to play the projection game

especially since, like we’ve all pretty much alluded to, we don’t know much about these players beyond box scores and the occasional televised game. scutaro has had a nice late career renaissance (or really just a one season upswing), so it may be difficult to compare manzella to him. definitely though, with manzella being an older minor leaguer its a possibility that he develops later, going into his thirties. another problem is that (hopefully) jiovanni mier is ready within the next 2-4 years, and manzella can become a nice utility player or maybe second baseman

by Evan Hochschild on Sep 9, 2009 11:21 AM CDT up reply actions

Hmm...I have a hard time with that comparison.

Perhaps Scutaro’s best offensive trait is his ability to take a walk. Scutaro basically has a 10% walk rate over his career. Except for one bad year with Oakland, Scutaro has never had a walk rate lower than 9.4%, and in most seasons it is 12 – 15 . Manzella’s best walk rate was in A ball at 8.4, but most seasons in the minor leagues have been consistently in the vicinity of his BB rate this year, 6.9%. At age 26, some would argue that players won’t change their career walk rates by a large amount.

By the way, Manzella has reverse platoon splits, i.e., his offense was much better against RHP than LHP. This holds up on a career basis as well as last year (when the split was fairly big). I don’t know what that means, other than it means that a major league manager could easily screw up his offense with a “normal” platoon.

by clack on Sep 9, 2009 11:51 AM CDT up reply actions

I had forgotten that Scutaro's OBP was so high this season

by OremLK on Sep 9, 2009 12:32 PM CDT up reply actions

See, folks,

this is partly why defensive contributions are grossly undervalued in both basketball and baseball. People’s minds latch on to scoring events and value them more than good defensive play. For whatever reason, fans (and, oddly enough, players, coaches, and GMs) can totally ignore the value of half of the game.

The issue with Manzella is that we don’t know how good he really is. He might be a great defensive player, he might be merely good, and that determines whether or not his defense makes up for his poor offense.

Your friendly neighborhood Dream Shake mod.

by Only_A_Lad on Sep 9, 2009 9:53 AM CDT up reply actions

if you look closely

i didn’t mean that manzella has a talent deficiency, i meant that the astros as a whole have a talent deficiency. i really don’t know much about manzella (i dont think any of us do), but what we have heard is that he is an above average defensive shortstop, which miguel tejada is definitely not at this point.

by Evan Hochschild on Sep 9, 2009 10:06 AM CDT up reply actions

Birmingham Barons - Best AA team in the land

Love it (5 or 6 players that started with the Barons this season are playing in the Majors (and that was before September callups )

Astros fan for life

by Joe in Birmingham on Sep 9, 2009 10:37 AM CDT reply actions

How about defensive by position?

Where is all that bad defense coming from?

by entropic soul on Sep 9, 2009 1:00 PM CDT reply actions

The worst culprit is Miggy

Miguel Tejada and Carlos Lee are both pretty terrible at -10.8 and -7.3 UZR respectively.

Bourn and Pence, on the other hand, are very good at 10.4 and 7.7 respectively, but they’re our only players who truly excel defensively. Almost everyone else is below average.

Despite the good words you often hear about him here, Kaz Matsui only musters a -2.3 UZR… which is pretty similar to what everyone else on the team does.

by OremLK on Sep 9, 2009 1:40 PM CDT reply actions

Miggie would be much defensively at 3rd than he is at SS, theres no way to know how much that im aware of, and theres nothing we can do about lee, except maybe liposuction and a better diet that doesnt include mcdonalds during spring training…

by Subber10 on Sep 9, 2009 2:19 PM CDT via mobile up reply actions

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