Yesterday, I was asked to give someone good news about the 2011 Astros. The question stumped me. Now, I was probably stumped because I was in the middle of reading about standing, and my brain felt like mush, but my list pretty much consisted of Jordan Lyles and checking in on the farm. That's all I could come up with after ten minutes or so of thinking about how to craft my answer via email.

It was an unsatisfactory response to the question, or so I thought at the time. I spent the rest of the day mulling the question over. Hunter Pence? Nothing good to report—especially after looking at his arbitration figures. Same goes for Wandy, and Bourn. Clint Barmes? Nope. Bud Norris? "Well, xFIP...but BB/9..." Jason Castro? Hopefully. Same goes for Brett Wallace. Chris Johnson? Where to begin... And so my night went.

In my response, I explained that I am intrigued by the 2011 season. Not excited, but intrigued. An entire season of quasi-youth is a novelty for Astros fans, but the best is yet to come on the youth front (we hope). I don't think I have stumbled on to things that haven't been discussed this offseason, but it was the first time I saw the forest through the trees.

Six days ago, David queried the huddled masses to see if we could elucidate "the story" of 2011. The most hopeful of the responses were "new owners making a splash signing" and "the trade deadline." I want to rephrase that question today: What is some good news about the 2011 Astros?

One storyline dominates Astros news: Jeff Bagwell and PEDs. In the last 48 hours, the baseball media elite have tripped over themselves trying to rationalize their aversion to voting for Bagwell because he hit homeruns in the 1990s or rush to his defense. Objectively speaking, the latter camp has the cogent and compelling case. The "character clause compels us" camp, however, is likely succeeding at playing on people's lingering doubts about 1990s sluggers.

As someone who grew up idolizing Bagwell, I find myself stewing in vitriol when reading factually and logically weak indictments of Bagwell's accomplishments. But then I find myself pausing, and reflecting on the doubts I have wrestled with in the last five years. It reminds me that there is validity to doubt, but also reminds me that there are many ways of accessing the validity of doubt.

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via product.images.fansedge.com

During the trade deadline, I kept waiting to hear word that a team was especially interested in acquiring Matt Lindstrom. When Matt Capps was dealt for a top-tier catching prospect, I imagined that there was something worthwhile on the auction block if Ed Wade would just say yes. Lindstrom was young, still under team control, and though tapering off, started 2010 strong. That Lindstrom continued to don an Astros uniform confused me—especially given his strong numbers in July (10.6 K/9, 4.50 K:BB, 1.51 FIP, 3.12 xFIP).

When August went awry for Lindstrom, I supposed that MLB clubs had read something in the tea leaves. I also expected that Wade would just bide his time and hope Lindstrom got off to a strong start in 2011 before shipping him out.

I was wrong on about all of that. Thomas Harding, of MLB.com, first reported that the Astros and Rockies consummated a deal for Matt Lindstrom. There were a few minutes where it was possible to imagine that there was something of worth coming back. Then Carrie Muskat, also of MLB.com, confirmed the return package: Wes Musick, a former Astros draftee, and Jonthan Arstil. That's it. Lindstrom was sent to the Rockies for a 23 year old with strong command in A-ball and a 24 year old with no command. Nothing I read in Jonthan Mayo's write-up of Muskat and Arstill has me feeling any differently than what I can glean from their stats. Essentially, then, the deal involves Ed Wade relieving the payroll of about $3 million.

We have been trying to figure out where the 2011 payroll would stand. Ed Wade made some statements alluding to the fact that the Astros had payroll flexibility early in the hotstove season, but it is hard to reconcile payroll flexibility and this trade (along with Jeff Keppinger trade rumors, etc.).

The questions remains, though, as to why Drayton McLane has set the budget where he has. Is it because 2010's revenue took the Astros uncomfortably close to operating in the red? Or is it because he thinks that creating a leaner payroll will add to his bottom line the sale he is contemplating? Or is it something we're not thinking of? Perhaps the uncertainty of the Astros new TV deal has McLane worried about the future.

As for the trade itself, I find it hard to feel anything but blasé. I would have preferred Wade to hold onto Lindstrom in the hopes that his trade value increased. I would have hoped that Wade could have received more for Lindstrom. But this deal doesn't reek the way the Paulino/Barmes trade did, so maybe the medical reports on Lindstrom are not favorable (or something to that effect). Plus, Lindstrom is a luxury commodity for an Astros team that will struggle to even feign competitiveness in 2011.

Even with all of the rationalizations I can throw at the trade, I can't shake the feeling that Wade didn't get everything he could for Lindstrom—either now or next July. That leads me to believe that Wade had to free up payroll space, and for some reasons the Rockies have been willing swap parts with the Astros this winter. 

So more than anything, I am left curious. Curious as to why the Astros payroll is such a concern, and curious as to why Ed Wade seems to cozy up to a team and then crank out deals with them in such a repetitious fashion.

There are moments in my life I will never forget. One of those moments is watching Orlando Palmerio get thrown out at first base to end Game Four of the 2005 World Series. I watched the game with Evan, and few other bandwagon-y college friends, in Evan's apartment. As crushing as the moment was, Evan and I began to talk about next year within ten to twenty minutes (every baseball fan's perennial best friend).

You all know the story from there; it is not pretty. Aside from 2006 and 2008, sub .500 has been the name of the game. Even in 2006 and 2008, I spent large stretches of the season contemplating what the Astros needed to do to right the ship in their next season.

I recently have spent the last month under a rock. The last substantive piece of Astros news I have tried to really think through is the Paulino trade. Other than that, my energies and focus have been elsewhere. In lieu of dissecting relative Astros news, the part of my brian that has been conditioned to contemplate the Astros had to compensate. Its compensation has been tracing back my Astros thinking to the moment it became apparent to me that things were headed to a five to seven year stretch of near, if not below, mediocrity.

I have tried this thought experiment several ways. I have started from Orlando Palmerio's pinch hit at bat and moved forward. I have started from Felipe Paulino's trade and moved backwards. I have plotted out the major signings, trades, and drafts of the last few years. None, of it though, has taken me to a moment, game, personel move, etc. where something clicked in my head and I knew that things were going to get much worse before they got better.

The closest I have come is April and May of 2007 when Hunter Pence was setting the PCL on fire and Chris Burke was playing below replacement level baseball. The Astros front office kept reiterating that it was about rewarding veteran experience, etc. It's the first time I can remember prophesying doom. But I am not sure that is really when it clicked for me. It might have been that year's draft. But even still I think I kept clinging to the feeling I had in October in 2005.

The moment where I think I finally was ready to view the bleakness of the Astros current and future state probably came in the Winter of 2008, when Ty Wigginton was non-tendered. There was something about the absurdity of then being forced to call on Geoff Blum's services to save $4 million because there was likely no relief coming from the farm system that made it fully click with me—the Astros were screwed.

I doubt that is it, either. But I'll keep working at it. 

I know that this is kind of a depressing topic. And I know that the last two days have been about Christmas spirit and hopeful wishes. I'm sorry to crash that party. But until I get myself fully briefed and focused on the Astros, I'll likely following this mental rabbit trial. Instead of making this a solo trip, I wanted to see what moment, personel move, etc. everyone else points to.

Hopefully tomorrow there will be something less morose to discuss.

Although the availability of Bill James' projections on FanGraphs seems to have generated little excitement here at a TCB, projections season always excites me. Whether I wholly disagree with them, agree wholeheartedly, or somewhere in between, it's always nice to sit down and pour over them.

This year I am especially excited to obsess over one player's projections: Chris Johnson. He of the .387 BABIP/26.7 K%, and 4.1% BB% scares me. Our efforts to make sense of the discrepancy between what Mr. Johnson's various peripherial stats suggest about his 2011 performance hasn't elucidated much in terms of a consensus. But projections serve as means to evaluate what the various algorithms make of our unanswered questions.

And now we have a our first projection to salviate over. Bill James' projection system sees the following for Chris Johnson: .287/.320/.466 triple-slash, .342 wOBA, and .338 BABIP. There is obviously more, but I'll leave it as simple as that.

My initial thoughts are that I would be very, very happy if this is what Johnson procduces in 2011. My next thought is that Bill James is usually bull-ish, so Johnson is probably due for a steeper decline. I then come to a comfortable middle ground where I believe that Johnson's average will plummet, but that even though he probably won't hit above .265, his line-drive swing will provide substantial gap power. Hopefully, though, Mike Barnett will find a way to instill some plate discipline in Johnson that might offset his likely decline in OBP fueled by a decline in BABIP.

There is nowhere to go but up from a 4.1 BB%...right?

My favorite part of projection season is not my stream of conscious analysis of the projections. My favorite part comes from hearing everyone's reaction to what the various systems see. Our collective knowledge and observation often provide greater than the projections which start the discussion; that's why TCB has done a community projection project the last two offseasons.  So, let's start the projection season off with the enigmatic Chris Johnson: Vote and Discuss.

Recently, Beyond the Box Score set forth an engaging, thought provoking philosophy for their community. It caused me to spend to some time reflecting on both my own philosophy and TCB's philosophy. I feel that this reflection is both timely and worthwhile given that we're venturing into the hot stove season.

Beyond the Box Score succinctly phrased their site philosophy as:

This is not a blog about sabermetrics. This is a blog about understanding and analyzing baseball through the sabermetric lens.

While TCB is neither of those things, it comes closest to resembling the latter. Remarkably, this approach to analyzing the Astros has been successful; a result Evan and I did not predict when we were brought on board in 2008. But the posture this blog takes on the Astros, though saber at times, is something more refined (in my opinion), and it is certainly not the work of Evan or myself.

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Recently, I have reviewed the Astros payroll efficiency in 2010. The undertaking served as a macro overview of how and where the Astros got a solid return on investment; in the converse, how and where the Astros saw dismal returns on their investment.

I was inspired to go down this road because of the anomalous feeling the 2010 Astros gave me. Yes, the 2010 Astros were different than recent iterations, but:

[T]he anomaly dealt more with the aberrant trajectory the Astros' won/loss record tacked to, relative to the personnel orienting it. Prior to trading Roy Oswalt and Lance Berkman, the Astros posted a .422 winning percentage. After the trade, they posted a .550 winning percentage. Yes, arbitrary end points produce somewhat arbitrary results, but the point is demonstrated nonetheless.

The oddity of that split begged a question. And while I have not set out to answer that question, per se, I believe part of the answer lies in the benefits derived from the "youth infusion." Because young players simply have to play above replacement level to generate value—prior to arbitration at least—bang for the Astros' buck indicates that the youth orienting the second half Astros might translate to an improved 2011. Aside from proving that hypothesis, I also hoped the macro view provided by the analysis might give lessons to learn from the 2010 hot stove.

Having completed both, I would now like to tie it all together. My hope is that this might serve as "crib notes" for our contemplation and analysis of the Astros' 2011 hot stove season.

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On Frdiay I wrote the following:

[T]he anomaly [of the Astros season] dealt more with the aberrant trajectory the Astros' won/loss record tacked to, relative to the personnel orienting it. Prior to trading Roy Oswalt and Lance Berkman, the Astros posted a .422 winning percentage. After the trade, they posted a .550 winning percentage. 

Yes, arbitrary end points produce somewhat arbitrary results, but the point is demonstrated nonetheless.

With all this said, I am not actually going to focus on the anomaly, per se. I will, however, tackle the components that underlie the anomaly: the on-field production the Astros received. As a look to the future, I will also context that on-field production in light of the cost the Astros paid for it. I will attempt this over the next few days. In doing so, I will cover the Astros' pitching, hitting, and the draw from both sides of the coin to give a full perspective.

What I gleaned from looking at the return on the Astros pitching-investment is that the Astros' got the most bang for their pitching-buck from their top five starters and two late-inning relievers. Obviously, investing smartly in those two categories should produce strong results. However, pitching comprised roughly 1/3 of the Astros on-field investment in 2010.

Today, we'll take a look at the other side of the coin, the thicker side, hitting.

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To me, the Astros' 2010 season is an anomally. It started off so badly, got worse, and then, in what seemed like the darkest moment of all, things got much better. That sentence is a gross simplification of the what actually transpired, but it isn't too far off the mark.

The season is such an anomaly to me, most likely, because there was a lot of roster turnover. Moreover, there was an infusion of youth. Although the latter is more so than the former, both had not happened in some time for the Astros. Such a season will likely always be anomalous for one who analyzes the Astros' peripheral statistics on the internets.

However, the anomaly dealt more with the aberrant trajectory the Astros' won/loss record tacked to, relative to the personnel orienting it. Prior to trading Roy Oswalt and Lance Berkman, the Astros posted a .422 winning percentage. After the trade, they posted a .550 winning percentage. Yes, arbitrary end points produce somewhat arbitrary results, but the point is demonstrated nonetheless.

With all this said, I am not actually going to focus on the anomaly, per se. I will, however, tackle the components that underlie the anomaly: the on-field production the Astros received. As a look to the future, I will also context that on-field production in light the cost the Astros paid for it. I will attempt this over the next few days. In doing so, I will cover the Astros' pitching, hitting, and the draw from both sides of the coin to give a full perspective.

Today, though, we start with pitching.

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The two most surprising storylines of the Astros 2010 season have got to be Brett Myers and Chris Johnson. Myers for his homerun limiting, workhorse excellence, and Johnson for, well, being good. Myers is engigmatic from a statistical standpoint, but his body of work is such that drawing distinctions between this year and his career offer substantial insights. Johnson, however, amassed a grand total of 23 MLB PAs prior to this year. There has been no greater nightmare for me than Johnson flirting with .400 BABIP because he has no meaningful body of work from which apples to apples comparisons can be drawn (reminder: BABIPs typically range from .290-.310 unless you're incredibly fast or incredibly lucky/unlucky).

Johnson's minor league career has produced seasons during which he posted abnormally high BABIPs. However, his previous two career highs of .363 (2008 at AA) and .334 (2009 at AAA) in no way suggest that Johnson profiles as the kind of hitter who could carry an abnormally high BABIP through an entire MLB season. Players, typically, don't suddenly get better once they go from facing good competition to great competition.

Regardless of those statistical insights, Johnson continues to collect hits. Even if I group his BRef gamelog into a random sets of fifteen or twenty games to find a slump, I struggle. The best I could do was a stretch of twenty games where he hit .250/.282/.338 yet still posted a .334 BABIP during that time.

What on God's green earth are we supposed to make of this? My skillset doesn't give me a whole lot to work with here. Johnson hasn't given us another apple by which to compare his 2010 apple. Instead, we have the orange that is his minor league body of work, and that just won't get us as far as we need to go.

The longer I have spilled electronic ink on these electronic pages the more I have learned this: In times when I can't find an answer that satisfies the objective part of my brain, the collective wisdom of the TCB community can generally supply something that comes closest to resembling the truth. So, that's what I will ask of you before college football takes over your life today.

**I must credit Joe Pawlikowski for coining the phrase BABIP-fueled whilst describing Chris Johsnon's 2010 season. It is the perfect blend of both diplomacy and incredulity.**

One of the many things that changed for the Astros post-trade deadline are their payroll obligations for 2011 and beyond. They shed the burden of having to decide whether or not pick up Lance Berkman's option, $7 million worth of Roy Oswalt's contract, and the burden of having to decide whether or not to pick up his 2012 option. Kaz Matsui will also no longer receive a pay check from the Astros, nor will Pedro Feliz (vacuous waste of space he was). As result of this, only three Astros are guaranteed to receive more than $5 million next year, and five at most are likely to get that much after we consider arbitration raises.

Since the trade deadline, that is how I have been laying it out in my head. The Astros have gotten younger, and they have gotten cheaper—glorious. It's the kind of thought that can lead an unattended mind astray into the zone of prognostication regarding free agency. It's dangerous, and that is mostly because the free agent list is just very, very ugly (for players that may actually be in the sweet spot of the Astros' price range and the Astros' positional needs).

Stating the way I just did, made it too easy for me to assume the Astros were going to be bargain basement cheap in 2011. I knew that they weren't, but it was too easy for my mind to boil their payroll obligations down to something so minuscule sounding. So yesterday, in the basement of the library, in between pondering whether the stream of commerce theory still maintains enough weight to be determinative in wake of Asahi and why my life is so sad that I was pondering that, I decided to throw all the Astros payroll obligations into a spreadsheet and hit SUM(). The results (after the jump), I think, give us a fairly clear picture of who the Astros will be in 2011.

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Six months ago, I peered into the crystal ball and tried to divine all the things that could go wrong and make the Astros 2010 efforts devolve into an unwatchable mess of tragedy. The result of my effort was deep, mournful depression about how tenuous the Astros 2010 seemed to be. My preparation for the article was to list out "situations" I could see arising on my lunch break. Five minutes later, I had to stop because I had written a rough draft of the article without even thinking about it.

I knew that the Astros had been pieced together with duct-tape and chewing gum, but the speed with which I was able to topple the whole structure down was gut-wrenching. It wasn't like I had high hopes for the Astros either. Just a few days earlier, clack and I published the results of our projection for the 2010 Astros. We found them to have a true talent level of 79 wins (it seems like so long ago, to me, that I was DQ).

Even with the low expectations, by the time I got finished with my five minute scratch work, I had arrived a nightmare situation that would be drawn out into these words:

Oswalt and Norris both make a early June exit to the DL, from whence they shall not return...

...By July, either Lindstrom or Lyon has gone down, too.

Two weeks before the All Star Break, Tommy Manzella, who has been struggling with his glove and bat, is sent back to AAA to regain...they'll say his confidence, but it'll basically be an option to AAAA purgatory.  The entire pitching staff, who have been harmed by Manzella's less than adequate glove, continue to get screwed over by the wonder tandem of Blum and Keppinger at SS.  

Then, while making his morning coffee over the All Star Break, Kaz Matsui herniates two disc in his back because he didn't stretch properly before reaching for coffee filters.  Edwin Maysonet, who has been our new bench guy, takes over at SS, but Keppinger and Blum just slot over to 2B.  By August, Chris Sampson has to leave to get Tommy John, and whomever is left from Lyon/Lindstrom falls apart, too.  The last six weeks of the season make the last six weeks of 2009 look like the last six weeks of 2005.

I fully expected to check in later and find the comments filled with "Oh God, the sky will fall" type comments. The piece was instead greeted with a quite of bit of silver lining finding. It caught me off guard—quite a bit. Perhaps because of how taken aback I was by it, I have searched for those silver linings throughout the season. For whatever reason, that sentiment has been running high in me and I read through my nightmare scenario and thought, "most of this happened (not for the reasons I thought it would) and this season has me feeling better about the Astros in August than I did in April."

So I want to rewrite my nightmare scenario in the context of the silver linings that have written themselves into it.

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Nearly a full twenty-four hours since Ed Wade announced on MLB Network that the Astros were pretty much just dotting the i's and crossing the t's on a Brett Myers extension, Alyson Footer let us know that the deal was finally done (there must have been a lot of i's and t's). The deal reportedly will carry Myers through 2012 for $21 million, with club option that could vest through performance in 2013, then raising the value of the contract to $28 over three years. Finally, there are some built in performance bonuses that could add an additional $1.5 million to Myers' payout.

In a week that has seen tumultuous changes to the shape and trajectory of the Astros franchise, capping it off with the extension of Brett Myers feels like an odd move. Why? Because many, myself included, viewed Myers as the trade chip to end all trade chips to infuse the Astros farm system with blue chip blood. Yesterday, rumors did swirl that many offers were being made by teams to acquire Myers, but none that Ed Wade found impressive enough to send Myers, turning thirty in two weeks, away in what is too simply described as his career year (a decision I cannot find fault in given the meager returns that pitchers were generating on the trade market this year).

It is one thing to not undersell Brett Myers, but it is another thing entirely to sign him to a 2-3 year extension within forty-eight hours of stripping the Astros of Roy Oswalt and Lance Berkman. And it is because of the timing of Myers' extension that it should not simply be analyzed in terms of dollars and cents; the same way that the trading of Roy Oswalt and Lance Berkman were not so much about winning or losing the trades, but rather about the message it sends to us—the fan base—about where the Astros are heading. As such, evaluating Myers' extension is not just about present, future, and surplus value because whatever we think those values may be have to fit with an organization that is like a battleship trying to turn around on rough seas.

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Starting with a line up that had an average age of 27, four rookies, and a first baseman playing in his first major league game, the presumable Astros the future did their best to make us forget about the pain of losing two franchise players. After a forty-eight hour period that stripped the team of their two franchise faces and set a lot of buzz about rebuilding, the baby 'Stros and won in shut out fashion for the second night in a row.

Wandy Rodriguez, perhaps happy to not be on a plane to another city, rewarded Ed Wade for not selling low on him by going 8IP, allowing five hits, striking out nine and walking one on one hundred and seven pitches (Ed Wade perhaps, though, is also licking his chops contemplating how this is raising Wandy's off season trade value). I'll have to say is this, "Good Wandy, it's good to have you back."

On the offensive side of things, the Astros got on the board early by stringing together hit, after hit. Jeff Keppinger and Chris Johnson had three hit efforts, with Jason Michaels continue to reward Brad Mills for starting him by contributing two hits—both doubles.

If this is what rebuilding continues to be like...

via www.fangraphs.com

...No one burst my bubble.