Apparently you need pitching to compete in the MLB

Guilty as charged. I root for the laundry. I hold grudges for anyone who harms the laundry.

 

You do realize if all your pitchers suck, one extra $40MM starter is not the solution, right? If anything, this is an argument for investing *less* in starting pitching.

 

but Tucker was a 10 WAR player

 

This team does not prioritize winning. It prioritizes the bottom line. We are past the team’s golden age. It was great while it lasted.

 

How does having a high payroll but not winning help the bottom line? There are some seriously weird takes in here.

 

By letting just about every player that produced results walk because they will not pay players what the players are worth.

 

That's where we part company. Players are not worth what they want most of the time. But we have some owners who blow their budgets and overpay. They can afford it. You need a Jones budget if you want to keep up with them.But you will be just as insane as them when you do.

 

There’s never an argument for investing less in starting pitching.

However, I still think they aren’t getting the most out of their players at the moment, and everyone is also getting hurt. I don’t think it can continue to go quite this poorly, but what the **** do I know. Losing streak now at 7 games.

 

If all your starting pitching is going to get hurt anyway, then it might better to have lots of cheap ones than a few expensive ones. You could then spend the money on offense and go with a volume strategy for pitching and hope for the best.

But the bigger thing is trying to figure out why everyone keeps getting injured. If they can't stop that, they are going to suck with any strategy.

 

The players *were* worth that much to the Astros - not after. Cole and Morton are really the only players that lived up to his post-Astros contract so far. Correa and Springer weren't worth it. Tucker is unlikely to be. Bregman might be. Even Altuve wasn't worth the contract he did sign. They paid LMJ and Javier and Verlander and we see how all those turned out. Framber currently has an ERA of 5. Kikuchi has an ERA of 7.

Teams that pay all their players market value will always fail unless you're the Dodgers and have a limitless budget. It's simply not a viable strategy in MLB or any other sport, really, except maybe the NBA.

 

They have "invested" almost 60 million into McCullers, Imai, and Javier this year.

Allocation is the problem... not a lack of investment in the rotation.

 

There were question marks but guys are underperforming.

Saying injuries has nothing to do with the team’s pitching performance is…at the very least hyperbole.

 

Wasn't sure where to put this. How much of this stuff are the Astros doing?

 

Finally, a reasonable take!

Sadly, I'm afraid the issue of the starting rotation's performance must take a back seat
until such a time as the front office first decides to address that of @Major 's posts.

Priorities, people.