Being a fan of the team for 50 years, until the past few years I’d come to believe Craig Biggio was the greatest position player in our history. Biggio was a five-tool player (he added power later on when the team needed this) and he took less money to stay in Houston instead of moving to St. Louis (in truth, not revisionist BS as is often spouted around other signings). Biggio was an easy role model, although I confess I did not follow him much post-retirement. As for Biggio’s sidekick Jeff Bagwell, while the strike-shortened season saw Bagwell live in what would later be known as “Bonds-ian air,” his body of work and the intangibles fall short of Biggio’s in my eyes.
When the Astros drafted Bregman, I was skeptical due to his stature. Given the Appel flop-in-the-making and the Aiken fiasco, I assumed we needed pitching, especially with the excellent selection of Correa as a MI. I was so wrong. Bregman, to me, is an almost flawless player, and he should be in the top 5 of the AL MVP voting for a long, long time. I predict he will be a first-ballot HOFer and recognized as the greatest Jewish position player in MLB history. To this day, I encounter baseball “fans” outside Houston who have no idea how great Bregman is. And I further believe Bregman senses same, as he seems to play with a chip on his shoulder.
A big “Thank you!” to Jeff Luhnow for making this call, having earlier made the right call with Brady Aiken earning the Bregman pick, a call for which the Astros were vilified by the pundits (who never apologized when Aiken’s arm blew out 12 pitches later). Probably Luhnow’s most genius moments.
Uhhhh I love Bregman, I love him being on this team. I want him to retire as an Astro having played for no other team. He’s not top 3 in Astros history. For my money it goes Bagwell, Altuve, Biggio, then you can go Bregman because of postseason success but I’m not sure he has passed Berkman yet or even Springer for that matter. He will pass both of those guys for sure but he has a ways to go before he reaches the top 3 guys
I love Alex Bregman, but, right now, Jose Altuve is the best player in Astros’ history, and Bregman has a lot of work to do to catch him. Both Bagwell and Biggio are ahead of Bregman for now, too.
I know WAR isn’t the be all end all but there is Berkman level career between Bagwell and Bregman right now. If you doubled Bregmans WAR so far he has 5 WAR less than half of what Biggio has.
Eta
It’s not close, yet. Well see if he makes it a real conversation
FIFY
I’d like to see a little more from Altuve and quite a bit more from Bregman before I throw them in there with Bagwell and Biggio who are 1A and 1B and the only reason Bagwell is not alone at the top was the shorter career.
Bregman has a way to go to eclipse Hank Greenberg. The Hebrew Hammer had 300 home runs and 1200 rbis and missed four prime years on account of military service.
First saw Biggio at catcher in a spring training game and thought he was overmatched for the big leagues. Also thought Altuve was a novelty act for a cellar dweller.
Enjoy knowing how wrong I was on both counts.
