The brightside is that tickets in June will be $12 so you can take all the kids, nieces and nephews to the ballpark for $1 dog night to watch the home team get starched by the ****ing Pittsburgh Pirates. I found the brightside lol
Imai signed late in the FA cycle. I suspect that Imai and his management were asking for more than the market was offering. Imai's deal with the Astros is a show-me deal that likely is over in one year, i.e. the deal is over when Imai shows that he is a MoR-ish MLB starter. The Astros and Imai both expected Imai to be pitching well by the end of the 2026 season.
The biggest problem is that Imai holds the cards here. Things obviously have plenty of time to change, but unless there is a HUGE change it won’t be a 1 year deal. He ain’t opting out the way things are rolling along right now
Random, but what are the odds ?? Consider recent news, look close, and think..... Spoiler TWO worst teams Spoiler plus Astros..... Spoiler and MINN Spoiler even Correa's former suitors are suffering this "Los Syndrome". Scully and Mulder summoned.
I feel like Houston is trending to be in pretty good long term shape with an OF fivesome of Smith, Matthews, Cole, Dezenzo, and Loperfido. Especially when you think about potential platoon deployments like what Houston did with Dezenzo and Cole in LF tonight where they each hit a HR.
This illustrates the problem with a rebuild. If you trade everyone else for prospects and suck for a few years, then your good outfield will be aging out as soon as the rest of the team is aging-in, and you'll be back a messy financial mess again. The easiest path to success is to figure out how to do it in 2027-2029.
This is true. The main problem right now as that week to week that outfield has looked either badass or terrible. The truth is that nobody is going to make any moves until mid July, so Houston has no choice but to let all this play out. It’s fun for us to constantly discuss and speculate, but over the next 2 months everything will solidify. I am hopeful Houston can avoid a drastic rebuild mostly because I don’t want Altuve to have to finish his career on a crummy team. It’s also worth repeating that the no-trade clauses Houston has given out to their veteran players also work against the idea of a dramatic rebuild.
Regardless of how bad some on here may want a rebuild, as we speak the rangers and pale hose are in the final two wild card spots at 19-21, we are 3.5 out There is less than a 0.000001% chance that Crane would agree to a rebuild in anything close to the current situation The one thing that NONE of us know is what Cranes true thoughts of Dana are, if he is down on Dana and doesn’t plan on him being in charge after this year, I seriously doubt he would let him make the moves to start a rebuild. If he still believe in Dana my guess is we would have to be at least 8-9 game out at the deadline for Crane to agree to it
Fans are still showing up to the park. There is still hope. There are still young guys that can get better. There are still reinforcements that can get healthy. There is no reason to blow it all up. Crane won't blow it up unless fans become apathetic.
Pena and Meyers start rehab assignments this week so should be back this month. Hader on track to return 5/25. Pearson will probably rehab the full 30 days but could probably return any time between now and 6/5. Brown trending to mid June. Javier, Sousa, Loperfido, Trammell, and Yainer have had no substantive updates. I don’t expect Javier or Sousa to play again this season. They didn’t give any updates on the TJS guys but I’m assuming it’s still August for Blanco, September for Wesneski, and 2027 for Walter.
It will be very interesting to see what they do when Pena and Meyers return. Optioning Whitcomb is a given but who is the other casualty? Neither Allen nor Shewmake have options. Braden is playing too well to DFA. Do they DFA Allen or keep an infield heavy bench? If they keep both, do they send Dezenzo down, or finally option Cam? Or do they DFA Meyers?
If I was a betting man I would say Dezenzo is the odd man out, but if Cam doesn't show a spark in this series I would rather see him sent down. They might also extend Meyers' rehab to buy some time.
