SB Nation - John Gall

Lance Berkman lands on the DL; Where do the Astros go from here?

HighLeveragePerformer — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:51:29 -0000

More photos » by Pat Sullivan - AP

See ya in a fortnight, Big Puma.

First of all, thanks to Joe and Timmy for breaking this story.

This is not the kind of news you want to hear heading into another tremendously important week-one that sees the Astros head on a two series road trip against both the Cubs and the Cards.

Richard Justice's take on the situation can be found here.

Of course we're bummed, but this is the hand that fate has dealt us. Where do the Astros go from here?

Edwin Maysonet has been called up to join fellow Round Rock staple Matt Kata on the big league roster. Maysonet did fairly well in his 19 games as an Astro earlier this season, totaling a .315/.356/.763 line in just 54 ABs. He can play all over the infield, and is a plus defender at second at third. He won't come close to replacing Lance Berkman, but nobody can. In terms of wOBA, Lance's fifteen day departure leaves a gaping hole in the infield:

Miguel Tejada, wOBA= .356

Jeff Keppinger, wOBA= .323

Kaz Matsui, wOBA= .289

Geoff Blum, wOBA= .316

Matt Kata, wOBA=.179

Edwin Maysonet, wOBA= .337

Chris Coste, wOBA= .319

Lance Berkman, wOBA= .397

Considering how .340 is roughly average for a major leaguer, this is not a pretty picture. We know that Kepp and Blum get on base at a nice clip, but wOBA tells us that they do so with mostly singles. Kaz is just now creeping out a season long slump, so expect his numbers to rise in the coming weeks. Matt Kata does not need to be on a major league roster, especially one missing their best offensive player. Berkman's replacement, Maysonet, is a league average player right now, but he probably can't sustain that kind of production this season given the amount of at bat's he's almost sure to amass during Berkman's time on the pine.

What could make these next few weeks a bit more bearable? Well for one thing, substituting John Gall or Mark Saccomano for Matt Kata would help. Yes, I realize that Cecil Cooper loves him some Kata because he's got "experience" and "versatility", but he won't be helping at all offensively. As I was reminded, neither Gall nor Saccomano are on the 40 man roster which means they are not eligible to play for the Astros as of now. With the glove, he is adequate at second base. However, the Astros already struggle mightily with hitting for extra bases, and Saccomano and Gall would both offer better options than Kata in that regard. What's more- Maysonet offers a similar skill package as Kata, but is better in most every aspect of the game- getting on base, hitting for power, defene and baserunning. Matt Kata is a superflous player on this roster. Jason Michaels inexplicably takes up a roster spot, and now so does Kata.

I don't want to lay all of the Astros' problems at Matt Kata's feet, but in a time as important as this, he just doesn't stand to help the cause. Perhaps it was fortuitous, a GM's intuition, or both that led Ed Wade to sign Chris Coste. He was a nice story for the Phillies, but now he has to be more than that for the Astros. Expect him to face left handers with regularity, as his career numbers indicate he produces well against them. Jeff Keppinger should remain the designated third basemen when facing lefties, while Geoff Blum can fill in at first sparingly.

Reality has hit Astros' fans square in the face today. If nothing else, these next few weeks are going to be interesting, if not season defining. Mr. Santana will greet them on the other side..

In which the Teapot Dome is a baseball stadium

DanUpBaby — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:00:20 -0000

More photos » by George Nikitin - AP

Rick Ankiel, off the DL, watches Nick Stavinoha hit a double.

Browse more photos »

I've been reading a fine (though occasionally scold-ish) history of the 1920s recently, which is convenient because this road trip strikes me as the Cardinals' return-to-normalcy moment after a hazy, bizarre May. For the first two weeks, the Cardinals couldn't hit; for the next week they couldn't be hit. But starting with the shutout loss that opened the Brewers series, and, for a change, featured two aces throwing up zeroes, the Cardinals have approached the league average OPS with the bats and, while still on an impossibly hot pitching streak, moved back from MVP closer territory.

Yesterday was a perfect example; Wainwright wasn't quite sharp enough, Pujols pasted the ball without much benefit, and the Cardinals, while chasing Jonathan Sanchez early, weren't able to get any traction against the Giants' bullpen. It's not the brand of losing the Cardinals practiced in early May—it's plain, frustrating losing, the milquetoast companion to their 6-2 win the day before, in which neither team was nearly no-hit or suddenly unstoppable.

It hasn't been all that pretty—they've split the first two series, and remain in a dogfight for first place—but the sheer blandness of the last few games has been a comfort. And that's normalcy, as our man Harding defined it.

I don't think anybody's been excited about Nick Stavinoha since, say, May of 2006, when the thrashing he gave the Midwest League upon being signed in 2005 gave way to a man-among-younger-men performance in AA, but within the boundaries of possible Stavinoha enthusiasm I was excited to see him draw a walk on Sunday, perhaps even more excited than I was to see him drive in two runs. Counting that hard-fought free pass against Jonathan Sanchez, who has been known to inadvertently walk players on his own team, opposing bat boys and mascots, and himself, the Super Noha has now walked twice in 96 career at-bats, for a walk rate of 2.1%.

He'd be a tweener even without that handicap—the slow guy/.300 average/doubles power skill-set seems like the perfect formula for producing a AAAA hitter—but with it he becomes frustrating to watch even as a marginally successful fill-in/fifth outfielder/third catcher. Even John Gall, his glorious ancestor, has a career walk rate that approaches 10%, the magic number at which hitters become bearable to watch. But Stavinoha's command of the strike zone was bad when he was a flash in the prospect pan and has only gotten worse, even as he's shown himself a capable AAA bat.

LG	G	AB	H	2B	3B	HR	BB	K	AVG	OBP	SLG	WR
A	65	250	86	9	2	14	23	25	.344	.398	.564	9.2%
AA	111	417	124	26	3	12	28	81	.297	.340	.460	6.7%
AAA	139	501	131	17	0	13	31	81	.261	.309	.373	6.2%
AAA	112	427	144	23	3	16	20	50	.337	.366	.518	4.7%

I get the feeling that his stint in low-A is about what it would look like if you threw Jeff Francoeur into the Midwest League—not a lot of walks, but more, and an out-of-character home run binge. This would be an odd progression, a startling one, except from the moment he was drafted, as a 23-year-old, it seemed clear that he was too good for A-ball, and he was; he could wait for his pitch, and hit it for twice as high a home run rate as he's managed in the high minors. And he's been too good for low-A ever since. But like a lot of players—most of whom are already in the majors when this happens—he was basically the same player at 23 that he is at 27. And that player is less frustrating than playing Joe Thurston or Adam Kennedy in left field, but not a lot less frustrating.

Pet prospect update: Gary Daley, Pham-forbid my favorite Cardinals suspect, struck out 8 in 5.2 innings and walked 4, to bring his ERA down to 7.15. He's managed to reverse his 2008 nightmare and go... all the way back to where he was in 2007: tons of groundballs, tons of strikeouts, tons of walks. I don't know what he's like to watch, but he can't have a big fastball, because that kind of profile screams for a Blake King-ian relief conversion.

Meanwhile, if you've got a Trey Hearne-sized spot in your heart for a flawed, interesting internet prospect, consider Daley's teammate, slugging lefty(!) catcher(!) Charles Cutler. In his baseball-age 22 season, he's hitting .386/.435/.507, with a nice K:BB ratio near one. The Cardinals' 2008 fourteenth rounder, he had a quiet .300 average in short-season ball last year. If he's got any glove at all, he's got a fighting shot at being the high-average left-handed catching prospect who's blocked by Matt Pagnozzi in 2011.

Know Your Enemy: Houston Astros

Al — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 13:00:11 -0000

Roy Oswalt.

Those are really the only two words you need to know about the 2009 Astros, because Roy Oswalt is really their only starting pitcher. And no team has ever made the postseason with only one starting pitcher. (Well, some of those 19th Century teams did, but you know.)

Some call him "Fat Elvis". You can see why. photo via www.baseballaha.com

Of course, that's an exaggeration. Roy Oswalt isn't going to start all 162 games for the 2009 Astros, but they're going to wish they had his clone for the 128 or so he doesn't start, because the rest of their rotation depth chart includes: Wandy Rodriguez, Brandon Backe, Brian Moehler, Russ Ortiz and Mike Hampton. Now, the back end of that group (Moehler, Ortiz and Hampton) might have looked pretty good... if this were 2000 instead of 2009. But those guys are old and injury-prone (for that matter, so is Backe, and he had a 6.05 ERA last year to boot) and so the Astros are going to give up a ton of runs; Wandy Rodriguez may win the occasional game for them with his junk-lefty stuff. It doesn't matter that they have an outstanding closer in Jose Valverde, either, because the rest of their bullpen is... pretty bad. LaTroy Hawkins has actually reclaimed his career as a good setup man, but he may not have much to set up after guys like Wesley Wright, Tim Byrdak and Chris Sampson get done with the middle innings.

The Houston offense, which took a big hit after Carlos Lee went down in midseason last year, barely scored more runs in 2008 than the Reds, who I profiled yesterday. But with guys like Lee, Lance Berkman, Hunter Pence, and Miguel Tejada leading the way, the Astros offense ought to be at least in the middle of the pack in the National League. With C-Lee healthy this year, they ought to better their 2008 total of 167 home runs in their hitter-friendly ballpark.

There's another factor here that I pointed out to people last spring and no one believed me. The 2007 Arizona Diamondbacks had a 90-72 record and made the playoffs despite having a negative run differential (712-732). That's almost impossible to do, and they outplayed their Pythagorean W-L projection by 11 wins. Teams that do that tend to seriously regress in the following year, and the 2008 D'backs were no exception; they won 82 games, exactly dead on their Pythagorean numbers.

The 2008 Astros did almost exactly what Arizona did a year ago. They scored 712 runs, and allowed 743, but went 86-75, outdoing their Pythagorean projection by nine wins. Thus I would expect them to regress in 2009, and since their pitching has gotten markedly worse, it could be by ten wins or more. (Their offense didn't look so great, either, in that two-game series moved to Milwaukee against the Cubs, in which they got a grand total of one hit.)

Now that Puerto Rico is out of the WBC, Ivan Rodriguez is expected to sign with Houston. This will have ... absolutely no effect on the Astros, as Pudge is several years (and quite a few pounds, apparently) away from his best seasons. J. R. Towles was pretty bad last year after he won the starting job in spring training, but with Houston going nowhere this year, they really ought to just put Towles out there and let him play. He hit well after he was demoted to Triple-A and is only 25.

Astros having good springs include ex-Cub Jason Smith (.455, but only 1 RBI) and former Cardinal John Gall (.429). Most of the big Houston bats are having bad springs: Miguel Tejada (.263, 1 HR, played most of this month at the WBC), Hunter Pence (.238) and Carlos Lee (a scary .087). The Astros are 1-15 and they're almost certainly not that bad; but this isn't going to be a good year at the Juice Box.

Predicted finish: fifth place, 70-75 wins.