1. Looking for a place to live, Moving to a Rental Place 2. Jet Lag - Imai and Wife will get tired, need to catch up on sleep 3. Working Out/Pitching at Daikin Park 4. MLB Baseballs are Polish, slick compared to sticky in Japan 5. Learning from Astros Scouts and Video Coordinator looking at graphs and charts on Laptop or Large Binders about his pitches. More video recording from Spring Training and breaking down his pitches. 6. Learning English 7. Learning his new Teammates 8. Learning the MLB Baseball Schedule
Unfortunately, those are risks the Astros have to take since they generally won't pay market value for pitching. It's a high-risk/high-reward contract but the only way the Astros can really acquire an arm of that caliber.
I think the flipside though is then you might just be paying someone $30-40MM/yr to rehab instead of $20MM. I think they really need to figure out if this is just the worst luck ever, or if there's something structural about what they do that's leading to all these injuries. If it's the latter, they shouldn't really be investing ANY money in starting pitching - just get 15 Jason Alexander fix-it projects and run through them until they all go down.
The alternative is to start spending on position players and just solely draft and develop pitching. Don’t pay any of these pitchers and only add through trade as necessary and short term deals on reclamation projects you identify. We’ve been burnt on pretty much every significant pitching contract we’ve handed out, including the initial Verlander one.
I have done a 180 on this one. If a team is correct on the talent a pitcher has, then the reason they end up with bad contracts is because they are unwilling to commit long enough to overcome an injury. You gotta build in 2 lost seasons due to injury. If a pitcher is a 4 WAR guy. $30M per season: 3 seasons = 4 WAR / $22.5M per WAR 4 seasons = 8 WAR / $15M per WAR 5 seasons = 12 WAR / $12.5M per WAR 6 seasons = 16 WAR / $11.25M per WAR 7 seasons = 20 WAR / $10.5M per WAR 8 seasons = 24 WAR / $10M per WAR The key is doing it early enough in career that the contract doesn't run too far into mid/late 30s. And if course choosing a true 4 WAR talent and not a 3 WAR guy who happens to be overperforming. If you extend. Then the early years can be less than $30M as well. For Hunter Brown, this would look like: 8 yrs, ages 28-35 $8M + $18 + $29M × 6 yrs. = 8yrs/ $200M 3.5 WAR × 6 years + 2 lost to injury = 21 WAR = $9.52M/ WAR = $25M AAV. * extension 2 years before FA vs injury risk allows lower AAV and gives Hunter incentive to agee. And TOR for 6 seasons
This is great in theory, but you don't know in advance which 2 seasons you're going to lose so you can't build the rest of your roster properly. Also, the ace pitchers aren't going to sign for your de-valued amount because someone else will pay them not assuming 2 lost years.
Right. He’s a 27 year old professional athlete, not a 2 year old or 98 year old. wtf. Who is letting him do these interviews. Hide his ass and tell him he needs to stfu and pitch. File a goddam grievance if the mf is so soft he can’t pitch unless dinner is served at a certain place and time. Unreal.
