Astros Crawfish Boil: November 14, 2022

Guess what? The Houston Astros are still the World Champions!!

Just wanted to remind everyone.

Houston Astros News

The Astros are identified as one of four teams in hot pursuit of Jose Abreu.

Omar López and Joe Espada have been brought back as Houston’s first base coach and bench coach, respectively, in 2023.

So it turns out that people like money. Mattress Mack is making good on his promises.

Is Aledmys Díaz going to return to Houston?

It seems the Astros just can’t stop winning.

Michael Clair dives deep on Jeremy Peña.

MLB News

MLB.COM put out a 2022 pseudo all-Rookie team.

A lot of information at the FanGraphs Blog.

The Cleveland Guardians aren’t interested in shopping Shane Bieber.

Old pal Zack Grienke is interested in pitching a 20th MLB season.

Baltimore Orioles in “win-now” mode for 2023 season.

Oops! All Astros: Pedro Báez

Pedro Baez is a six-foot, 232 lb. right-handed pitcher from Bani, DR. Born on March 11, 1988, he signed his first professional deal in 2007 with the Los Angeles Dodgers for $200,000.

Ultimately, Baez played in 355 games for Los Angeles, striking out 369 batters in 356 innings, along with a better-than-average 1.096 WHIP. He was granted free agency following the 2020 campaign, and signed with the Astros through free agency for two years and $12.5 million. Shoulder soreness limited Baez’ 2021 Astros season to four very low-leverage appearances. He whiffed five in 4 ¹⁄₃ frames, and gave up one run on two hits.

In 2022, Baez pitched in three April games, again in very low-leverage situations. In 2 ¹⁄₃ innings, he allowed six runs (three earned) on five hits and three walks. He struck out two. His final appearance was on April 19, and he was DFA’d a week later. After getting released outright on April 27, he was eventually picked up by the Dodgers for a return engagement, but was terrible at the Triple-A level. They also released Baez.

Baez threw exactly 132 pitches for the Astros, and was paid $10 million of his deal (according to spotrac.com). That works out to $75,757.58 per pitch. Good work if you can get it.