Houston Astros Ownership: Complicit or Fool?

Call me naive, but I had this thought. If ownership knew that the Astros players had an elaborate cheating system would the players still have received their extensions? Altuve received his prior to the 2018 season and Bergman received his before 2019 as 2 big examples. 

TLDR: I thought the star players on the Astros are underpaid, but maybe it’s all part of the plan

On one hand, you can see it as maybe the contracts not being crazy high because both parties knew what was going on. The thought process may have been like “we both know what’s happening behind the scenes so I’m not going to break the bank, but I’ll give you enough so it doesn’t raise suspicion and you’re not gonna be disgruntled. In the end we both get championships out of it”.

Altuve was age 27/28, coming off an MVP season (that arguably Judge should’ve won) and received a 5yr/$151MM contract (30.2 AAV) which, in my opinion, seems low. Especially when you see how much Mookie is making now over a 13 year extension (Important to note: Altuve’s 4-year bWAR average leading up to the extension was 6.3 vs Mookie’s 8.3). Altuve obviously isn’t Betts, but his prowess couldn’t get him somewhere between the extension he signed and Betts’? Maybe I’m putting too much stock into Altuve wanting to make as much money as possible. 

Here’s an excerpt from an Astros blog that also agrees Altuve is underpaid, but maybe, out of the kindness of his heart, decided not the hamper the teams’ financials:

“Overall, the contract extension between Altuve and the Astros seems to be a fair deal for both parties. Altuve is likely still underpaid, in the short-term, based on his past value. There is some inherent risk for the Astros though, […] , but enough promise is there for this partnership to continue to flourish.”

Here’s another from Forbes implying that the contract is low in terms of dollars and years, but that’s probably because, at the time, teams were finally smartening up and not paying players huge contracts only for it to sour towards the end. However, the question remains: why didn’t Atluve, a Boras client, ask for more when his client was/is still in his prime? Also, if Altuve really wanted to cut the Astros some slack and maximize his earning potential, why didn’t he sign an extension with less years and leave him as a FA at 31 so he can get another $100MM contract? 

Bregman was coming off a 2018 season where he was 5th in MVP voting when he signed a 5yr/$100MM extension in February 2019. The only person you can compare this contract & service time to is Mike Trout so it’s unfair to really compare the two. See Ken Rosenthal’s tweet. Bregman’s bWAR 2 years leading up to the extension was 5.7 where Trout’s was 9.7. Trout’s extension prorated to 5 years is  ~$120.5MM which makes sense. In my opinion, the extension seemed low, but we’re really only talking about $5MM+ difference. Trout is undeniably the better overall player and should be making a lot more money. Also, Bregman was quoted by his father that he intends on getting another $100MM anyway. So he didn’t seem to care about maxing out his potential on this extension.

So did Altuve and Bregman leave money on the table? I think yes (moreso Altuve than Bregman). 

Do I think it’s because the owners were in the loop on the cheating ring and that’s why they were able to leverage signing these two players to lower extensions than their potential? That’s complicated and there’s no real proof besides my speculation. Although, it’s hard to imagine the owner and GM not knowing about a complex cheating system taking place in your own building for more than a season (and through the playoffs). 

Now on the other hand, after this past series with the Dodgers you can see the Astros offense is struggling. Altuve, Bregman, and Springer went for a combined 0 for 21. As of Friday morning, the only players hitting over .250 with more than 10 ABs are Brantley, Correa, and Maldonado (Gurriel is batting .238). Their batting stats are middle of the road when compared to the rest of the team. Now you can definitely make a case to say that 2020 is a weird year and having to stop and quarantine before restarting could definitely have an effect on their performance. I’d argue that these stars making a lot of money could have definitely found a way to stay in shape. 

Here are some examples of players staying in shape. You have Joe Kelly practicing a changeup in the backyard and breaking his own window, Aroldis Chapman constantly throwing and doing some boxing, and even Freddie Freeman was taking BP from his son. Speaking of Freeman, he had dealt with a 104 degree fever in his battle with COVID-19 where he thought he was close to dying over the July 4th weekend. And yet he’s hitting .414 with a .892 OPS. 

Hard to imagine that stars like Altuve and Bregman wouldn’t be able to find a way to stay in shape (both with sub .700 OPS in the young season). Now could this be because the Astro players don’t have any aide (trash can or rumored buzzers) to help them? 

If the owners and GM were complicit in all of this, would they have wanted to spend large sums of money ($151mm or $100MM) on players who are now suffering without help? Why pay someone tens of millions dollars a season if they aren’t actually that good and it was the team’s resources that made them stars? On the flip-side, if Altuve and Bregman were really willing to leave money on the table then why wouldn’t the owners take that deal if they didn’t know any better? One can argue that the owners were none the wiser and thought that the team was actually playing at this elite level.

Or maybe the extensions were well worth the risk to the owners since the World Series title they aren’t being vacated. Everyone got what they wanted: the organization’s first World Series championship.  With how the season is turning out to be right now, you can definitely see the owners playing innocent and put the heat on the players to prove that they are as good as their cheating seasons. You can definitely see the owners be complicit or a fool.

There are a lot of factors behind the scenes that affect contracts that we don’t have insight into like an organization’s willingness to hinder their future buying power with mega contracts or a player’s willingness to cut the organization a deal for future sustainability. It’s still early in the 60 game season, but I thought that this was interesting enough to have a discussion about. What are your thoughts?  

Realistic Expectations for the Yankees in 2016

If you’re a New York Yankees fan in denial, let me be the one to tell you that the team this year isn’t good. They’re not bad like the Minnesota Twins or the Atlanta Braves. However, you shouldn’t expect the Yankees to be able to hang with the Boston Red Sox at the top of the AL East. Last year, the team was able to overcome their faults and make it to the playoffs, but the devil’s magic only lasts for one season.

This year the Yankees are fourth in the AL East, but the aging roster has really shown its….age. The roster is old (it has been for a while) and that’s just something Yankees fans need to accept. Too often, I read Facebook comments from Yankees fans saying that we need to “fire Brian Cashman” because the team isn’t performing as well as those other younger teams. However, it’s not Cashman’s fault for players aging. It’s also not his fault for signing the players that helped us win a World Series back in 2009.

Here’s a write up I did about how pre-arbitration and arbitration works for players with less than 7 years of service time in the MLB. Essentially, the team has control over salary for the first four years of a player’s career, then that player is given a fair price for their talent during their arbitration years. When they become free agents, the team loses all the leverage they had to control salaries and it shifts to the player. This is why contracts can reach up to $200 million over a number of years. Teams compete for a player’s service and they have to “one up” each other by adding extra years to the end of the contract despite the team knowing the player won’t be playing at a high level when the contract ends. This is what the Yankees are dealing with and have been for the last few seasons.

We won a championship with the players the Yankees signed nearly a decade a ago (Alex Rodriguez, CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira, and AJ Burnett) which made the contracts worth their price when they were younger, but it shouldn’t be a surprise that they aren’t playing at that same level now. The blame isn’t on Cashman; technically it should be on the Steinbrenners for making the final decisions, but that’s the risk every team makes when they sign players to a long term deal. You want players to be worth the contract when they are in their prime and every year past that is essentially for the players’ retirement fund.

This is the Yankees’ current situation. Teixeira and Carlos Beltran are in their the finals years of their contract this season, totaling $37.5M. Sabathia and Rodriguez’s salaries come off the books at the end of 2017 at a total of $45M. This leaves more room for Yankees to sign free agents in a couple of years (maybe Bryce Harper?) or maybe extend some of the younger players the team has on the roster now. In two years, the Yankees can also finish unveiling the prospects they have been grooming for the past couple of years. They are in a good position to re-tool the team before the next decade.

I forgot which website I read it on, but they described the Yankees’ team-building philosophies as “Yankees don’t rebuild, they reload on the fly”. I think this is a great description of how the Yankees work. They aren’t as bad as the rebuilding teams that I mentioned before, but they aren’t the best either. Yankees fans should keep their expectations realistic for the rest of 2016, but most fans would agree that the first five years of all of those contracts were worth the price.

 

I bet you forgot: Madson, Romero, Bard

I would say most of the casual baseball fans really don’t realize just how many minor league baseball teams there are. You tend to only hear about Double-A and Triple-A because that’s where the big name prospects are typically coming from. It can be easy to lose track of players after they are drafted because they can be placed in a lot of different minor league teams. The same can be said about major leaguers who get sent back down to the minors too. In fact, here are a couple of players who were at one point household names and even All-stars who seem to have lost their way.

Ryan Madson (FA, last pitched in MLB in 2011)

Ryan Madson started as a middle reliever being from the Phillies farmhand. He was even given a chance to be a starter but he was very ineffective. He was destined to stay in the bullpen. Although, Madson did become a very important part to the Phillies dominant years being the setup man to Brad Lidge. And when Phillies lost Lidge to injury in 2011, Madson filled in perfectly notching 32 saves in 34 chances with a 2.37 ERA and a 9.2 K/9. An impending free agent that year, Madson really set himself up to a big payday finding success in the closer role. Even though the market did not pan out the way he planned, he signed with the Reds in the offseason on a one year deal. But the 2011 season was the last time Madson pitched in the MLB. Towards the end of Spring Training, Mason tore his UCL requiring Tommy John surgery. After having his option declined by the Reds at the end of the 2012 season, Madson was then signed by the Angels as they hoped he can make an appearance for them for at least most of the season, but he was released after only making one rehab appearance. Out of the relievers coming back from major surgeries (Madson, Joel Hanrahan, and Andrew Bailey), Madson is the only one left waiting to find a ball club to pitch for.

 

Ricky Romero (TOR, last pitched in MLB in 2013)

Like Madson, Ricky Romero was good in 2011 then faltered since. The lefty pitcher was good enough to be selected onto the All-star team and he even finished 10th for the Cy Young award. Romero experienced control issues throughout his minor and major league career, although he was able to put it all together in 2011 as he slowly became a household name for Blue Jays fans. But a year after being an All-star, Romero just seemed to lose whatever ability he had to pitch effectively. He reached a career high in walks in 2012 with 105 free passes in just 181 innings. He also only struck out 124 that year, too. The Blue Jays stuck with their former “ace” for a whole year before sending him down after another 4 ineffective games in 2013. Romero’s career was at an all time low because he just couldn’t seem to find the plate and when he did he was hit often. At one point he was sent back down to High-A. He’s currently pitching in Triple-A and has been there since last year and it hasn’t been pretty. He has currently walked more batters than innings pitched.. At this point in his career, the 29-year-old former All-star is serving as organizational depth, but is reluctant to ever start again in the majors.

 

Daniel Bard (FA, last pitched in MLB in 2013)

Daniel Bard was a first round draft pick by the Red Sox in 2006 and quickly found himself in the Sox’s bullpen by the ‘09 season. It’s rare nowadays to see relievers with more than a 2 pitch repertoire, but Bard had 4. His mid-to-high 90s fastball eventually got Bard the job as the setup man to Jonathan Papelbon. He posted 9 K/9 in both the ‘10 and ‘11 seasons while pitched a little over 70 innings in each season. Bard was becoming a young and upcoming star for the Red Sox and many even saw him taking the reigns of the closer job with Papelbon’s impending free agency at the end of the the ‘11 season. But in a somewhat surprising move, the BoSox decided to try Bard as a starter which he hadn’t done since being drafted. Not to anyone’s surprise Bard was very unsuccessful in his transition. He lost the luster in his fastball and saw his walks rise and strikeouts fall. The experiment did not work at all and the Red Sox saw their promising reliever become a shell of what he used to be. Things only got worse from there. Bard was put on waivers, then claimed by Chicago in ‘13. He was released by the December of the same year because he couldn’t revert back to his former dominant self. If you really want to know how low Bard has gotten, he made 4 appearances for the Single-A Rangers club and only recorded 2 outs. Yes you read that right. He was released after giving up no hits, just 9 walks and 7 HBPs. It’s truly sad because I remember watching him dominate the Yankees during the good years of the rivalry.

 

An Introduction

Hello Internet friends

I first would like to thank you for stumbling across my blog. Hopefully you find me entertaining enough to want to stay and also come back. But I should really introduce myself.

I’m a 21 year old Adult-Child hybrid from the suburbs of New Jersey. I call myself a hybrid because the older I get the more comments I get about how young I look for my age. I can’t tell you how many times people have told me I look like under 16. Boston Terriers are my favorite dogs and if I had to choose, the Red Power ranger is my favorite power ranger. Although Tommy was cool as the Green ranger.

It probably comes to no one surprise that I consider myself a big baseball fan. The only reason why I’m starting my own blog is because my girlfriend is tired of what I have to say about baseball and I think it will help our relationship if I found another outlet to ramble about my thoughts. But other than NY reporters, when was the last time you read a blogger that was ACTUALLY a Yankee fan? Well, I feel like I can accomplish that feat. I’ve participated in fantasy baseball for many years already and, heck, I even manage my own recreational baseball team. It’s safe to say that baseball is a huge part of my life.

I hope that you, the reader, will stick around and find whatever I blog about to be just as interesting as it is in my head. Welcome to Hardball Alley.