Well, that sucks.
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Thatās why you have to stockpile starting pitching. We added one yesterday so Iām happy. Hoping one of Pruitt, Javier or Bielek will step up during the season.
Time off? He didnāt pitch at all last year and was suspended for half of 2019, pitching 59 innings. He pitched 26 innings in 2018. Heās pitched a grand total of 197 innings in his now his 6th season. Being worn out has not been his problem.
Agreed, Matt. This is crazy. As I said elsewhere, small portion of crow for lunch if this is true. Is this three TJs since last year?
McCullers missed 2019, Verlanderā¦now Whitley. Osuna needed it but didnāt have the surgery I donāt think. Urquidy has had itā¦Iām sure Iām missing others.
Did not know Osuna skipped it. His āforearm injuryā sounded like JVās, and I think Whitley may have had a forearm issue last year.
Quite a leap from āI feel great and want 140-160 IPā to TJ.
ETA: Good grief, Steve!
Are the Astro TJ numbers high relative to that of other teams, and if so, why? Is it Covid, chance, or the regimen followed by the the program?
My time off comment wasnāt in regards to his being overworked. More that the time off will let him heal properly and hopefully get his head right. His arm issues didnāt just happen this week.
and maybe Hollywood will discover me, and Iāll be on my way to fame and fortune.
I am not saying this is the end of the road for him, but itās reasonable now to expect that heāll never pitch an inning for Houston.
I hope he comes back strong and healthy and motivated and lives up to his promise. If he does, thatās gravy. But thereās no penciling him into a future rotation anymore.
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They were on the low end for TJS several years ago and it doesnāt appear that much has changed since then which would alter that significantly.
The next 007?
And my comment was that time off hasnāt helped him much to this point. Iām not sure why it would now.
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The Odorizzi contract was for 2 years plus a player option for year 3ā$6MM signing bonus, $6MM salary for 2021, $5MM salary for 2022 and $6.5MM salary for 2023 if Odorizzi picks up his own option (there are performance bonuses as well). For CBT purposes, the agreement is treated as a 3-year deal and with $23.5MM in guaranteed salary that works out to a $7.83MM AAV. So the Astros are currently at $208.5MM for CBT payroll.
The implications if the Astros intend to stay under the $210MM threshold:
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As is obvious, the club has very little wriggle room to add players at the trade deadline.
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As Jake Kaplan has noted in The Athletic, the chances of non-roster invitees Steve Cishek and Steven Souza making the club are greatly reduced. Cishek would get (as previously reported) $2.25MM in salary if added while Kaplan reports that Souza has a $1.15MM salary if added.
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There is another implication of going over the threshold that I didnāt outline before and that pertains to if the Astros sign a free agent with a QO attached next offseason. Ken Rosenthal in his reporting notes that a club that stays under the threshold loses a 2nd round draft pick and has a $500K reduction in their international bonus pool. Going over means a loss of BOTH a 2nd round pick and a 5th round pick AND a $1MM reduction in the international bonus pool. Given the loss of 4 draft picks already in 2020 and 2021, these penalties (according to Rosenthal) are most concerning to Astros brass. And of course that would be on top of (as I mentioned previously) the reduction in draft pick compensation if Correa opts to sign elsewhere after getting a QO from the Astros.
You have to wonder if the teams donāt use the thresholds as bargaining tools.
In the Odorizzi case it seems fairly clear that it was. The performance bonuses (in addition to that player option which serves little purpose other than to stretch out the CBT hit) seem designed to bridge the gap between both sides in terms of getting to a number that the player could live with while giving the team enough flexibility (at least for the moment) to stay below the threshold.
Regards that player option (and this is explained at MLBTR): if Odorizzi declines the option for 2023 the Astros would have to pay him $3.25MM. So with an incremental $3.25MM at stake Odorizzi almost certainly would decline and then hit the FA market where he would make significantly more. So in reality Odorizzi will end up making $20.25MM from the Astros over just two years.
But thatās just the start and thatās where the performance bonuses come into play. They aināt that hard to achieve. 30 games combined starts in 2021 and 2022 adds another $3.25MM. Hitting 160 innings in 2022 adds $6.75MM more. So itās entirely plausible that Odorizzi could make $30.25MM over those 2 seasons. Which is roughly $15MM per season which is roughly double the CBT hit.
Creative (and no the Astros certainly arenāt the first to structure things this way).
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Odorizzi is taking jersey number 17, which hasnāt been worn since Berkman. According to McTaggart, a few years ago the Astros refined their standards for retired numbers to limit them to players who reach the HOF.
I think thatās a bullshit standard given that embracing beloved players who mean more to local team than the baseball community overall justifies having lower standards for retired numbers than HOF candidacy. But given the Astros over-use of retired numbers leading up to the Crane era, they probably had to pump the brakes at some point.
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The Astros use can never be considered āoverā as long as there is NYY.
I will admit the retiring of a jersey for someone who died of cancer is a bit of a stretch.