Chas McCormick’s lack of playing time has some Astros vexed, speculating over weight

McCormick has appeared in 95 games this season despite batting .289 with 20 home runs.

Some, who spoke to the outlet, said they have been frustrated by his inconsistent playing time.

“No, why (would) you even ask that?” Baker replied on Wednesday when asked if McCormick’s weight was an issue.

“That’s something that you’re always aware of, you know what I mean. As long as it doesn’t affect your performance, then it’s not really that much of a concern.”

Baker did acknowledge that McCormick was playing with a little more weight on him this season.

The Astros outfielder said that he put on the weight during his stint on the injured list.

“I feel stronger. I like being this heavy,” McCormick said. “I guess if I was a little lighter it’d be easier, but easier to move a little better. I feel stronger. I feel healthier. I feel I can do more being at 220 (pounds). Usually, I’m at 216. When I’m 210, I’m too light. I was 214 last year, I think, and I felt too light again. I kind of like being where I’m at right now, at 220.”

Astros reliever goes berserk after balk call brings in winning run vs. Dodgers

There are a lot of ways to lose a baseball game, but the Houston Astros managed to lose to the Los Angeles Dodgers 8-7 on Saturday night in one of the most annoying ways possible: a balk.

Let’s set the scene. It’s the bottom of the eighth inning, the score tied 7-7. Astros reliever Ryne Stanek is pitching to Miguel Rojas with runners on second and third with two outs. The game hangs in the balance. Then, the home plate umpire calls a balk, which brings in the go-ahead run for the Dodgers. Stanek is not pleased.

Rob Manfred says granting Astros immunity ‘not my best decision’

Manager AJ Hinch and general manager Jeff Luhnow were suspended for the entire 2020 season and eventually fired by the Astros, who also lost draft picks and were fined $5 million. But the players’ immunity drew widespread criticism of Manfred, who said “there are some decisions that I would like to have back,” in a wide-ranging interview with Time.

“I’m not sure that I would have approached it with giving players immunity,” Manfred told Time, which published the interview Wednesday. “Once we gave players immunity, it puts you in a box as to what exactly you were going to do in terms of punishment.

“I might have gone about the investigative process without that grant of immunity and see where it takes us. Starting with, I’m not going to punish anybody, maybe not my best decision ever.”

Nats’ Dave Martinez decries ‘brutal’ baseline call in wild loss

Washington manager Dave Martinez began his postgame availability by holding up a picture that showed Meyers running on the grass on his way to first.

“There it is right there,” Martinez said. “Take a look at it. Is that on the line? I don’t think so. I’m over this play. Seriously. They need to fix the rule. If this is what the umpire sees that he’s running down the line, I’m tired of it. I’m tired of it. Fix it. We lost the game, and he had nothing to say about it because he can’t make the right call. Brutal.”

Ignoring the specific call here the general issue is a hobby horse of mine.  I don’t understand why MLB doesn’t implement the softball base rule Put a “runner’s base” on the foul side of first base.  Right now there is just no way for a runner to stay in the runner’s lane and touch the base.

Astros’ Lance McCullers Jr. undergoes season-ending surgery | The Athletic (paywall)

Houston Astros starter Lance McCullers Jr. underwent season-ending surgery Tuesday to repair the flexor tendon and remove a bone spur in his throwing arm, the organization announced Wednesday. Here’s what you need to know:

• McCullers suffered the injury, which he previously described as a “small forearm strain,” in February.
• He hasn’t pitched this season and last appeared in November in Game 3 of the World Series, allowing seven runs in 4 1/3 innings.
• McCullers previously underwent Tommy John surgery in 2018 and missed the entire 2019 season recovering.

The Astros have begun their initial descent from baseball’s top echelon

Houston also seems to have made a philosophical shift by hiring Dana Brown as GM after choosing not to re-sign James Click. Brown comes from a more scouting-oriented background compared to the quantitative-centric hires who turned the so-called “Diasastros” into a dynamic organization.

The Astros of the last few seasons rarely missed when making player-acquisition decisions. But the new regime appears to have missed badly with free agent Jose Abreu, the major middle-of-the-order addition who hasn’t yet homered this season.

His power outage shouldn’t be completely shocking given his age, 36, and the park fit. Of the 228 hitters with at least 175 batted balls in play last year, Abreu ranked 203rd in elevating batted balls to his pull side into the air (15%). The Crawford Boxes in left field don’t work unless you can pull the ball in the air. Otherwise, Houston’s home park isn’t all that favorable to right-handed hitters.

But perhaps the effects of that brain drain are being felt most sharply in the farm system.

The Astros ranked 10th in Baseball America’s organizational talent rankings in the spring of 2018. It was the fifth straight year they ranked in the top 10, and four times they ranked in the top five.

But they fell to 27th in 2020 due to injuries and graduations. They then ranked 26th in the 2021 preseason, 28th last year, and slotted 25th in Baseball America’s organizational talent rankings this spring.

Astros’ Luis Garcia needs Tommy John surgery on right elbow

Houston right-hander Luis Garcia needs Tommy John surgery and will miss the rest of the season, another major blow to the Astros’ starting rotation.

A date for Garcia’s surgery has not been set, and the Astros said that he is expected to return at some point during the 2024 season.

Former Astros player admits to PED use and sign stealing in Twitter rant

For no other reason than what we have to assume he felt like it, Gattis took to Twitter on Monday and was a completely open book. But in doing so, he made numerous admissions about his individual role in the sign stealing scandal.

Specifically, Gattis not only admitted that his home run in Game 7 of the ALCS against the New York Yankees was a “trash can bang”, but that he was probably on PEDs at points of the season as well.

Though his Twitter feed was full of a number of admissions and revelations in his own tweets and certainly in the replies, perhaps the funniest one of all was talking about how he and the Astros knew what was coming from Yu Darvish and they still couldn’t put up a run on the now-Padres pitcher.

Evan Gattis admitting to steroids and trash can bangs

RoyalsRetro (AG#1F) Posted: April 10, 2023 at 09:44 PM | 48 comment(s)
  Beats: astros, evan gattis, peter magowan, sign-stealing

WSJ: Houston Astros Owner Mucked Up in JeffCo Bankruptcy

We release things drip by drip…and when I have my sewer bonds settlement statements ready for this year, I’ll release them!

Stuck at the unfortunate end of the debt-clogged sewer system of Jefferson County, Ala., you’ll find Houston Astros owner Jim Crane.

Fresh into his takeover of the Texas baseball team, Crane has been ordered by a bankruptcy judge to reveal details of his settlement with J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. over $35 million worth of sewer bonds that he bought from the investment bank four years ago—a personal investment that quickly turned to, er, garbage.

Those dirty details, which are not public, are what Jefferson County attorney are seeking amid their own fight with the bank over the complicated series of dealings that, with a little help from a corruption scheme that ensnared the county’s top elected leaders, left the county swimming in a pool of toxic debt.

Ultimately, the county—Alabama’s most populous with roughly 658,000 residents—filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection, marking the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history.

Crane said he got stuck with a bum deal, too, according to court documents filed in Texas state court.

MLB: Astros reach one-year deal with Cust

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Jack Cust, who has hit 105 home runs in a 10-year Major League career that has spanned six teams, has agreed to a one-year deal with the Astros that includes an option for 2013, according to a baseball source.

The deal is pending a physical and could be announced as soon as Wednesday. Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow declined to comment.

Cust, 33, appeared in 67 games before being cut loose last July by the Mariners, for whom he batted .213 with three homers and 23 RBIs. He spent the previous four seasons with the Oakland A’s, hitting 97 homers and driving in 281 runs in that span. He’s played primarily left field, right field and designated hitter in his career.

The addition of Cust likely puts him in the mix to start in right field in an increasingly crowded group that includes Brian Bogusevic, Jason Bourgeois, J.B. Shuck and Fernando Martinez, the former top prospect of the Mets who was claimed off waivers last week.

RLYW: Salvaging a Sunken cost

Burnett projects to have an RA of 5.03 in CAIRO.  The following possible starting pitchers project better than that.

CC Sabathia (3.57)
Michael Pineda (4.37)
Freddy Garcia (4.55)
Brad Meyers (4.56)
Hiroki Kuroda (4.57)
Phil Hughes (4.63)
Ivan Nova (4.93)
...

If that’s true, then every start that goes to Burnett is a start that should be going to one of the above.

...

Unfortunately, since Burnett is owed $33 million over the next two years, the Yankees probably feel obligated to try and get some value out of him.

I don’t think they can do that by pitching him…. trading Burnett’s bad contract to another team for their bad contract might be a way to recoup some of that value.

MLB Trade Rumors: Bartolo Colon Agrees to Sign With Unknown Team

Bartolo Colon has agreed to a deal with an unknown club reports Bob Nightengale of USA Today (on Twitter). The right-hander wouldn’t divulge the team because he has not yet passed his physical.

Pretty sure it’s either the All-Stars or the Champs.

Adam Everett retires, joins Indians as special assistant

I forget if Roger Clemens said it or if someone said it to him when he went to the Astros…but the “Now I’ll/you’ll finally have a Major League shortstop behind me/you.” was pure Jeterkill.

I guess this means Adam Everett is officially retired.

Everett was released by Cleveland in the middle of his 11th big-league season last June, and the light-hitting, Gold Glove-caliber shortstop has decided to end his playing career and join the Indians’ front office as a “special assistant to baseball operations.”

Everett hit just .242 with a .294 on-base percentage and .346 slugging percentage in 880 games and never won a Gold Glove, but consistently rated among the elite shortstops in baseball according to various defensive metrics. He also earned about $12 million in addition to the signing bonus he received as the Red Sox’s first-round pick in 1998, so all in all that’s a pretty solid career.

F-Mart to the Houston Astros

Shop smart…

One-time top Mets prospect Fernando Martinez is now a Houston Astro.

Houston, which has first dibs in waiver claims by virtue of its MLB-worst record in 2011, selected the 23-year-old outfielder…

Because Martinez has an option remaining, he needs to remain on Houston’s 40-man roster, but can be optioned to Triple-A in spring training if he does not make the major league club.

Martinez is a lifetime .183 hitter with two homers and 12 RBIs in 131 at-bats spanning the past three seasons. His biggest obstacle has been injuries, including an arthritic knee that severely limits his mobility, even when technically healthy. Including his major league activity, Martinez has averaged only 77 games a regular season since 2006.

Blasts from the Past

With the Hall of Fame results being announced today, we decided to take a trip down memory lane and dig up some old scouting reports from the Baseball America archives on some of the ballot’s notable candidates. . .

8. Barry Larkin, ss, 21, 5-11, 175, R-R
Larkin looked right at home in AA, hitting .267 for Vermont. He didn’t show power (one home run in 255 at-bats), but that will come. The key for him was just getting his feet on the ground, and he was not overpowered by the high level of competition (21 strikeouts in 255 at-bats). He will have good power for a shortstop.

6. Edgar Martinez, 3b, 25, 5-11, 175, R-R
Martinez’s discipline will produce runs. He’s averaged 70 RBIs the last four years. In the field, he’s solid, with good reactions and the soft hands of a middle infielder.

Neyer: Elect Jeff Bagwell To The Hall, And Cooperstown Will Bloom Again

Apparently “Craig” only needs a first name, like Cher, Madonna or Snooki.

This morning, Craig [Calcaterra] wrote a couple of compelling Hall of Fame-related posts.

In the first, he noted that attendance at the Museum is way, way down: more than 20 percent just from 2007 through 2011… In the second, Craig gave some Calcaterrian whatfor and whatnot to three Chicagoland Hall of Fame voters who have (again) not voted for Jeff Bagwell because of suspicions that he used performance-enhancing drugs (not including amphetamines, because hey if Willie Mays used greenies it’s cool)...

While I believe Bagwell should be in the Hall of Fame, I’ve never quite understood the argument that a Hall of Fame voter—if he thinks steroid use is germane—should ignore every scrap of evidence that doesn’t appear in the Mitchell Report or wherever… I believe that it’s intellectually indefensible to disqualify a player solely because you think he used steroids ... but I also believe it’s perfectly defensible to decide for yourself, based on everything you’ve seen and heard, if a player did use steroids.

Some of that makes sense, I hope. And I really didn’t intend to get into this whole thing. Really, I just wanted to express my mild surprise that Craig didn’t make any connection between Hall of Fame voting and Hall of Fame visitors. The Hall of Fame derives 98 percent of it publicity from one thing: new Hall of Famers. But lately—and for some years into the future, I’m afraid—a great deal of that 98 percent is going to be negative. It will be about Roger Clemens and Barry Bonds and Gary Sheffield and Mike Piazza and all the terrible things they did, and there might well be years when literally nobody is elected to the Hall of Fame. You think attendance has been down? You ain’t seen nothing.

MLB: Astros add two to baseball operations staff

Astroland: A Team’s Obsessive Bid to Win the World’s Most Ruthless Baseball League!

The Astros have hired Sig Mejdal as Director of Decision Sciences and Stephanie Wilka as Coordinator of Amateur Scouting, General Manager Jeff Luhnow announced today.

Mejdal, 46, had worked with the St. Louis Cardinals since 2005, most recently as Director, Amateur Draft Analytics. While with the Cardinals, he was involved with modeling, analysis and data-driven decision making throughout all levels of the organization and was a key contributor in the draft decision processes that led to more Major League players than any other organization during that time frame.

Mejdal earned two engineering degrees at the University of California at Davis and later completed advanced degrees in Operations Research and Cognitive Psychology/Human Factors. He has also worked at Lockheed Martin in California and for NASA. Mejdal has been active in baseball statistics and analytics since earning his membership in The Society for Baseball Research (SABR) while in grade school.

Rosenthal: ESPN’s Keith Law: On the move again?

Oh, Lisa…

Keith Law, a senior baseball writer for ESPN.com, interviewed last week for a number of front-office roles with the Houston Astros, including the job of scouting director, according to major-league sources.

Law met with both new club president George Postolos and general manager Jeff Luhnow, but the team has yet to offer him a position, sources say.

In his current job, Law oversees ESPN’s scouting-related content. Prior to joining ESPN in 2006, he spent 4½ years as a special assistant with the Toronto Blue Jays. Prior to that, he was a free-lance writer for Baseball Prospectus and ESPN.

Justice: Baseball lucky to have had McLane around

Richie and Drayton sittin’ in Wade’s tree…

Drayton McLane slipped out the backdoor that final day in Milwaukee last month, off to a life out of the spotlight after 17 years as the owner of the Houston Astros.

I’m taking this opportunity to say now what I didn’t have the chance to say then. Thank you, Drayton.

Thank you for being my friend. Thank you for making me laugh. Thank you for never having had a bad day, at least not that I could tell.

Thank you for all the times you took my calls when I was a columnist for the Houston Chronicle and working on something that now seems insignificant.

...Through it all, McLane never once failed to return a phone call. He believed that part of his responsibility as the owner of the local baseball team was dealing with reporters, even the annoying ones.

Baseball was lucky to have him for as long as it did. His legacy in baseball will be that he led the Astros at a time of their greatest success on the field, including six playoff appearances during one nine-year stretch.

Ed Wade Returns, Hopefully to Claim His Ring

The Phillies will be living trophies in his diabolical collection!

Wade’s tenure as Phillies GM wasn’t considered to be a particularly good one at the time, but he returns to a team that still fields a talented group of players drafted during his time here, including Chase Utley, Ryan Howard, Cole Hamels, and even Vance Worley. (Worley opted to go to college, but was again drafted in 2008, this time by Pat Gillick’s regime.) Charlie Manuel was also his guy, and he selected Shane Victorino in the Rule 5 draft (but almost returned him). Wade and his scouts drafted the recently departed Ryan Madson, as well as Pat Burrell.

That’s not to say he didn’t also make some critical missteps. It’s hard to think of anyone who was less popular during a Philly tenure than Wade. But, in its own cruel way, history has been increasingly kind to his legacy. The guys listed above finally did win us a World Series. While Wade couldn’t himself put it all together, he drew the prototype on the cocktail napkin and saw through it the startup phase. I certainly didn’t appreciate what he had put in place at the time, how close he was.

The Gillick Era will be seen by many, particularly as years pass, as the phase in which the Phillies went from being the bums who were a constant letdown to the heroes who have owned the city’s sporting hearts from 2008 ‘til question marks. But Gillick would be the first to credit Wade for the work he did leading up to that.

The Cooperstown case for Jeff Bagwell

Here’s the dilemma facing the BBWAA: Due to the imperfect knowledge we have of who did or didn’t do steroids, the voters will have to end up doing one of two things —either elect a guy who did steroids or keep out someone who never did them. Given our lack of concrete evidence, it’s hard to avoid one of those two options.

Bagwell is an interesting test case for the BBWAA. To date, the only other steroid candidates on the ballot are pretty open-shut cases. Mark McGwire’s congressional testimony created a widespread belief he was took them, and he’s since admitted it, and Rafael Palmeiro famously flunked a drug test.

Report: Sox trade Lowrie, Weiland for Melancon

Looks like a bit of an overpay to me…

The Red Sox have traded infielder Jed Lowrie and pitcher Kyle Weiland to Houston for reliever Mark Melancon, according to a report by FoxSports.com.

Former GM, ESPN analyst Steve Phillips understands direction of Astros

He believes newly-hired GM Jeff Luhnow fits “the Astros’ way.”

“My sense is the Astros wanted to hire a guy that is focused on what a small-market GM would do,” Phillips said. “It’s not going to be somebody who spent their time looking at major league free agents and spending money on big time players. The Astros have more of a commitment of growing it all from within.

“In their words, it’s probably having an Astros’ way of doing things. They want to develop players with an understanding of what the expectations and consequences are. They want youngsters with an understanding of what the development process is like, how to go about doing things and letting it all play out.”

...He wasn’t surprised with the Astros’ hiring, stating Luhnow’s background gave him the best training in becoming a general manager.

“It’s kind of a copycat league,” Phillips said. “Where there is success in some places, people think it will translate well into someplace else. Small-market GMs with successful ballclubs tend to have assistant GMs that become candidates for the other small-market teams. Somebody from New York City, or a place where they’re spending a lot of money by doing it a different way, may not correlate to that exact same level of success.

“Assistant GMs with player development backgrounds have experience in developing things at the lower levels. Whether they come through as scouting or farm directors, that is an important part, as well. I’ve always believed that somebody who’s been a farm director has the best training in becoming a general manager. Why? Well, they’re serving as a general manager for seven minor league teams by being in that type of role.”

Thanks to Fuller.

Rule V Results

1.Astros take Rhiner Cruz from Mets.
2.Twins take Terry Doyle from White Sox.
3.Mariners take Lucas Luetge from Brewers.
4.Orioles take Ryan Flaherty from Cubs.
5.Royals take Cesar Cabral from Red Sox; traded to Yankees for cash.
6.Cubs take Lendy Castillo from Phillies.
8.Pirates take Gustavo Nunez from Tigers.
  21.Braves take Robert Fish from Angels.
22.Cardinals take Erik Komatsu from Nationals.
23.Red Sox take Marwin Gonzalez from Cubs.
  25.Diamondbacks take Brett Lorin from Pirates.
  29.Yankees take Brad Meyers from Nationals.

Boston Red Sox - Johnny Damon says pinstripes would suit David Ortiz - The Boston Globe

A couple of nice quotes in this article. I bet the second quote only makes Astros fans more excited at the prospect of Friedman coming to Houston.

Damon also had some advice for Ortiz: Sign with the Yankees and take advantage of that right-field porch at Yankee Stadium.

“Shoot, I was trying to tell him if he went to New York his 30 home runs turns into 40,’’ Damon said. “He still has a great chance to win. I’m happy I got to experience both sides [of the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry]. Both sides were very incredible for me.

“What people don’t understand is that there’s a business part of it. As a player, I wish I could have been in Kansas City my entire career. But once you get traded, you get to thinking and you accept whatever comes your way and you try and make whatever team you’re on better. David can do that.
...
“I haven’t even talked to them just because our GM [Andrew Friedman] is a free agent,’’ Damon said. “He’s not going to sign me and then leave. If he goes to Houston, his hometown, he’s going to try and bring me along with him. That’s where my waiting game is.