Today, the blog would like the readers to take a shot at being the Astros’ GM for a day. Kind of like what Mr. Trump was saying about what he would do the first 24 hours he was president. If you were given GM Dana Brown’s job (and the free rein that he may or may not have), what three things would you immediately do or attempt to do this off-season?
OK – maybe “immediate” in this context is what you would do in your first month in charge. Remember that nothing will happen until the conclusion of the World Series when all those eligible to become Free Agents hit the market.
Some potential options are below:
- For those living in a fantasy world – fire Joe Espada and replace him with?????
- Sign Alex Bregman to a bright, shiny new contract – 6 years / $190 MM??
- Sign Kyle Tucker to an extension before he hits the free agent market after the 2025 season – let’s say 8 years / $240 MM??
- Sign Framber Valdez to an extension before he hits the market after the 2025 season – let’s say 7 years / $200 MM??
- Sign Yusei Kikuchi to a free agent contract – let’s say 3 years / $60 MM??
- Sign Justin Verlander to a free agent contract, say 1 yr /$10MM plus incentives??
- Tender an arbitration offer to Chas McCormick (or let him hit the road)
- Tender an arbitration offer to Jake Meyers (or let him hit the road)
- Tender an arbitration offer to Jose Urquidy (or let him hit the road)
- Trade Valdez for younger MLB-ready talent and/ or prospects.
- Trade Tucker for younger MLB-ready talent and or prospects.
- Pursue a new first baseman through free agency or trade.
- If Bregman leaves, pursue a new third baseman through free agency or trade.
- If Kikuchi does not sign and Framber stays, look at picking up a swingman pitcher who can help with the rotation early on or move to the bullpen as some combination of Lance McCullers Jr., Luis Garcia, J.P. France, Jose Urquidy, or Cristian Javier return.
- Declare that you are ready to stick with your already signed core and fill in with youngsters Shay Whitcomb, Zach Dezenzo, Ryan Gusto, Forrest Whitley, Pedro Leon, A.J. Blubaugh, Colton Gordon, and Logan VanWey…..or others.
And there are lots of other options possible here. That is up to you. What would be the three actions you would pursue first?
ALL THINGS ASTROS 
26 responses to “Astros’ off-season: You’re GM for a day!”
7. Give myself a pay rise
LikeLike
Sheesh – auto correct …
’decent incentives’ not event incentives ….
LikeLike
Get a deal done with Kikuchi.
Trade Framber for a young outfielder more advanced than Melton, a young lefty first baseman and a young arm.
Aquire Yoan Moncada for one or two years max.
LikeLike
Why? Kikuchi replaces Framber’s innings. We get younger. Dana Brown has the get quality talent in return though. That’s his job after all. Moncada is a health risk, but a 10 or 12 million risk that would replace Bregman in the short-term.
LikeLike
It’s really easy for me to sit here and say I would trade Framber or Tucker, but the truth is it’s dependent upon what type of return you could get. Just like letting Correa and Springer sign elsewhere the team is probably better off not extending either of them. I say probably because Tucker is certainly a player I would like to keep around another ten years…but probably not at the amount of money certain other teams would be willing to pay. He’s going to have to want to stay in Houston.
LikeLike
Thoughts
LikeLike
On your last bullet – do we believe bringing back our playoff roster from 2024 is good enough to win the division and be competitive in the postseason next year? My fear is Crane will believe the answer is yes and put that possibility on the table of bringing back all three. That concerns me because we’re not seeing improvements at the lower levels of the minors (yet) and while Sugarland won last season, they don’t have a lot of guys who are going to help the MLB club. This isn’t fanstasy baseball where we can choose to bring back Bregman or Kikuchi for just a year unless they somehow can’t find offers they like in the open market. Any multi-year deal to either will hurt us, but the question is at what point in the contract that happens.
LikeLike
In my mind we are talking about a range of years here
So, there is a range of risk with each signing and I just don’t know what interest they have in taking on risk in each case
LikeLike
Dan, as you know, I worry about the Astros falling into the same cycle of denial and stagnation we’ve seen with the Saints—pushing off change, relying on fading stars, and hoping for “one more run.”
The Saints have a few bright spots (e.g., Olave, Kamara, and a couple of others), but age and experience bring issues of their own: injuries, inconsistency, and slumps.
The Astros are at a critical juncture, and I believe their decisions this offseason could set the course for the next decade. In today’s world of high salaries and shifting rosters, one or two wrong moves could spell disaster for a while.
In the wise words of a seasoned financial advisor: don’t borrow from the future to pay for the present.
As much as I like Bregman (I’m a Louisiana guy, remember), I think his production could be replaced for less than half the cost. Of course, his presence in the locker room and his chemistry with Altuve matter, but as players often say… “it’s a business.”
My best guess? We’ll see a trade (or a walk, like Bregman’s) that’ll make us cringe, but let’s remember that we felt the same about some players when Crane took over and began trading and releasing and building for a winning run.
The Astros could benefit from taking a hard look at the Saints—now sitting at 2-6 and on the verge of firing their head coach.
LikeLike
t
LikeLike
t
LikeLike
I had been unable to sign in since my last posting, Early October, however my mask was taken off on a post that I wrote on October 9th. ‘Tis ok, I have nothing to hide.
Hopefully this post will be online…
LikeLike
Hi Sarge,
Glad to hear from you. I can generally send a short take. Hope this gets to you.
LikeLike
As the GM, I would have a pow-wow with Espada and order him to get with the ASTROS’ way and create a better strategy for the team next season.
On my own accord, I would:
LikeLike
I’ve given a lot of thought to Tucker and an extension, and I don’t have a better answer. The Astros are just not the franchise for a 10-12 year commitment. He is, understandably, in a spot where he can “secure the bag” as players are saying today.
I don’t know that I would say here is a 12 year, 360M dollar deal, but the Mets might, the Giants might, the Yankees might, the Blue Jays might. There are going to be suitors. If we aren’t going to play with that kind of contract, and there is a good argument not to since the number of 10 year+ contracts that have worked out don’t even need a finger on a hand to count, we should explore a trade.
It just leaves a giant hole in RF right now. And 2025 still has to be played. I guess it depends on the return.
LikeLike
I agree.
LikeLike
I’ve given a lot of thought to Tucker and an extension, and I don’t have a better answer. The Astros are just not the franchise for a 10-12 year commitment. He is, understandably, in a spot where he can “secure the bag” as players are saying today.
I don’t know that I would say here is a 12 year, 360M dollar deal, but the Mets might, the Giants might, the Yankees might, the Blue Jays might. There are going to be suitors. If we aren’t going to play with that kind of contract, and there is a good argument not to since the number of 10 year+ contracts that have worked out don’t even need a finger on a hand to count, we should explore a trade.
It just leaves a giant hole in RF right now. And 2025 still has to be played. I guess it depends on the return.
LikeLike
It’s hard to list off a bunch of things you would do in a vacuum because each move would inform the next.
On one hand, it SEEMS like they have 5 different ways they could go. I’ve written many different ways out in an attempt to see them all, and, well, they all end up with giant holes.
That is why I don’t think you can trade Valdez or Tucker. Tucker leaves a huge hole in the lineup, Valdez leaves a huge hole in the rotation, and neither of them are going to be filled by better players. Then I thought, hey, we can moneyball it, and think about how you replace them in the aggregate. But it’s not there. Is Jake Meyers really the CFer? Is Chas really a non-tender candidate? You trade Tucker, and instead of having 2 gaping holes in your outfield, you will have 3. Is a Brown-Blanco-Arrighetti rotation good enough if you think you can mix in a returning Garcia and McCullers?
We don’t have all the information we need to GM it for a day. First thing is what is Cranes thought on the budget? Is he OK passing the first threshold again? What about the second threshold? What if my marching order is the best, most competitive team I can while staying under the first level? OOOOOOFFFFF. At least between the first and second level I have some wiggle room.
None of these account for a returning Bregman or Kikuchi, which moves the goal post.
The Astros have to play too many guys right now that are not write em and forget em. A write em and forget em is a guy without matchup holes. You can play Kyle Tucker or Jose Altuve or Jeremy Pena or Yordan Alvarez or Yainer Diaz against anyone and get the result you expect to get from them. The rest of them, they have to be mixed and matched based on the matchups with the pitcher, or replaced defensively, or pinch ran for, or whatever their hole is. That’s asking all 5 of those guys to stay upright. When they don’t, you get miscast guys batting cleanup that should be hitting 8th, or Singleton forced into action against a lefty, etc. But there is no readily available fix. If you had the salary freedom you could make a competitive offer to Teoscar Hernandez to play LF and bat 4th all year. But you can’t.
I don’t think Bregman is back. I think Kikuchi is 50/50 but I don’t know that I would pay for him to be back considering you are probably talking 3/50 for a 33 year old that was never as good as he was in 10 games in Houston. The 4.57 ERA in 809 innings is a more likely indicator than the 2.70 in 60 innings about which way he goes. I think your most likely candidate to return is JV because it will be a Brantley type 1 year deal, hopefully with better results, but I don’t know that he will be.
If I were the Astros, knowing I can come back pretty much intact, with a returning Garcia, hopefully McCullers can give you something, your bullpen is at worst middle of the pack, even mixing and matching your lineup around you should be able to win 90 games and the AL West. So I wouldn’t go crazy. If it’s possible for me to spend the year below the tax threshold and still win the division, I’m doing it, so I can reset that number. I don’t know what 2026 holds, but 2025 can literally be just minus Bregman, 10 games from Kikuchi, and a bad season from JV, which means this team can still compete even if they do very little. They can probably bring back the same team, and put Dezenzo at 3B, and still win. They could use some good luck for once in the pitching and health department. And they could use Chas McCormick playing baseball like his career depends on it. I would love to see Kendall Graveman give the Astros his 1 year, prove it deal coming back from injury.
LikeLike
The Astros were 39-39 last year in games that Kyle Tucker played. That meant they were 49-34 in games he did not play. At the time of the injury we were saying he was on pace to get votes and possibly win MVP. Of course, Aaron Judge put up some gaudy stats and accumulated a lot of WAR while not really changing the results of Yankees games and is going to win. Looking back, I’m not sure Tucker could continue his pace. His BaBIP in May fell to .152 while he hit 11 HR that month. I don’t expect him to sign an extension this offseason. If we pencil him in at $20M for the year…I do think a competent GM (hopefully Brown is?) could move him to another team for prospects and use that same $20M to fill in multiple players who are less flawed than the guys we have. That’s all on paper, though. In reality, if Brown moves a fan favorite he is going to get roasted in H-town.
I do seriously wonder about Chas. We don’t beat the Phillies in 2022 without him. Was he injured during the 2021 WS? He only got 4 AB against Atlanta. Regardless, unless there is something in his personality that makes it a bad idea I’m offering arbitration and telling him to come to spring training healthy and ready to win a starting OF job. I think he’s closer to the guy who posted .766, .738, and .842 OPS than the guy who had a .576 last year. I am concerned about him against velocity up in the zone though… The point is if you were to lose Tucker, well, we filled that hole (poorly) half of last year. A bounce back from Chas coupled with some improvements in other places can offset the loss.
LikeLike
I would have to sit and weigh the reasons for the 39-39 when he played and the much better record when he didn’t. He was healthy at the start of the year when we didn’t have pitchers getting outs; we were ready to move on from Hunter Brown in the rotation after a 2/3rd inning start where he got shelled. The team just started coincidently pitching at the same time he went out. I lean towards the thought they would have been even better if he was healthy.
The fun part of this though – it kind of proves you probably don’t need many 20M+ hitters in your lineup, because the thing that always decides your season is you can you get outs. Thats why the Mariners were abysmal as a team offensively and still rode our tails to the end. Yes Mariners fans were frustrated with every 2-1 loss, but really in the end every winning streak and every losing streak have an almost direct correlation to quality starts and team ERA. I don’t think trading Tucker means you can’t win. I just worry about, like you said, the signal it sends to the fanbase and to his teammates.
I just don’t know who ends up in the OF if you trade Tucker, especially if they non-tender Jake, which seems a possibility. You almost have to do something like re-sign Heyward because you can’t afford any of the other impact players like Teoscar. And a starting OF consisting of Chas McCormick, Mauricio Dubon, and Jason Heyward is not the direction I would go.
The idea of trading Kyle Tucker to Baltimore for Jordan Westburg and a couple of minor leaguers (Samuel Basallo comes to my head) has crossed my mind, but neither team is wanting to deal with the impending free agency of both players. It doesn’t look like Baltimore is wanting to deal with Santamander, and I don’t blame them, that career year coming in his free agency season would make me stay away too (as well as his K/BB and contact ratios), and Tucker fixes so many of their 2025 issues. And Westburg fixes our 2025 third base issue. But neither move improves 2026 for them and mostly us, unless we get the right add ins from their system.
LikeLike
Thoughts –
LikeLike
Dan, clearly, I’d be in for your experiment of trying the fan blog portion of CF.
LikeLike
Well the LA Dodgers (spit) are the World Series Champions. I thought they’d win in 6 games but did it in five. We just might see them every year with the line up they have. Of course they have spent a bunch of money but the structuring of the Ohanti deal speaks volumes of how it will be going forward. I see they did the same thing for Freddy Freeman, just not as outrageous. He gets 57MM in deferred money over 13 years compared to Ohtani’s 680MM over 10 years. Maybe they’ll go after Soto with the same type deal but I don’t think so. As for the Astros we’ll soon see what our brain trust will come up with to keep us in the hunt.
LikeLike
Thank goodness that’s over!
LikeLike
I really wanted to watch some World Series action, but didn’t want to see either of those teams play. I agree it’s great that it’s over and we can move onto the offseason. I do wonder how much certain players, like Soto and Flaherty, cost themselves. I think Gerrit Cole should have stayed in Houston years ago despite AJ Hinch’s blunder so seeing him not celebrate as fine with me.
Addressing your comment, the highly paid Dodgers did perform across the playoffs, but they wouldn’t have won without contributions from some of their lesser known cast. It’s much like when we beat the Phillies – Chas, Yuli, and Pena were huge for us that postseason.
LikeLike
One other comment. Did anybody remember that Kiki and Teoscar used to play for us many moons ago?
LikeLike