My wife often will talk about how our brain is like a giant file cabinet with an almost infinite number of folders and drawers. She will have some very bizarre dream that combines people who have passed away, celebrities, homes we used to live in, and some crazy thing she has to accomplish, but can’t because that is how dreams usually end.
And she says it is like random file drawers are being opened, and the brain is sampling from all these folders, past and present. It makes no sense, but perhaps it is what the mind needs to do to dust off the neurons.
Today, this post is going to be kind of a random dump of baseball-related items that are coming from one of my miscellaneous brain file drawers.
All Star Home Run Derby Improvements
Like the slam dunk contest at the NBA All Star weekend, the Home Run Derby as it stands has run its course. No longer are the best home run hitters participating, which means no longer are as many eyes watching it as it occurs.
So here is a quick multiple choice of ideas that could possibly spice up the tired old contest…..
- We let the everyman into the contest as you have the best MLB home run hitters face off with the best Slo-Pitch Softball home run hitters. They put an internal fence into whatever is “standard” slo-pitch home run distances and see if Joe Schmo can take down the top MLB tater hitters.
- Have real fun with it – let’s see who wins a wiffle ball home run hitting contest. Have those fake internal fences like they used in celebrity baseball games or the Bad News Bears in Breaking Training and see what happens.
- Get the very best hitters back in the contest – offer a $100 million prize that goes half to the winner and half to some worthy charity. But the catch is that there will only be a $100 million prize if all of the eight very top names agree to play.
- Really spice up the contest by having Mike Burrows pitch to the home run derby participants. He can even try to prevent them from hitting home runs. It won’t work. The numbers will never be bigger than with Mike grooving them.
Trade Deadline Two Weeks Out – Random Q&A
Q: Do we really want to see AJ Blubaugh be sent away to pick up a left-handed hitting OF?
Each team’s biggest trade chip as Deadline nears
A: I don’t, and part of the reason for that is in the next question and answer. But basically, Blubaugh after a slow start when he was being pushed to pitch probably too many innings has settled into an excellent groove. In the last 3 months since April 16th – he has been very good in 29 appearances – 2-0 with a 2.55 ERA. He has pitched 60 innings out of the pen, 13 more than any other reliever and more than starter Tatsuya Imai. I don’t want to lose this pitcher who just turned 26 and is just reaching the best seasons of his career.
Q: Do you trust Dana Brown to get a quality left handed outfielder?
A: No, I don’t. He tried to do this last year at the deadline and we ended up with Jesus Sanchez who was a sub-Mendoza hitter, who couldn’t field his way out of a wet paper bag. He’s tried to fill this LH OF spot with Taylor Trammell, Joey Loperfido, Dustin Harris, Daniel Johnson and finally LaMonte Wade Jr., who has been better than the others in a very small sample.
Q: Aren’t you being hard on Dana who has been handcuffed by some of the economic restraints in chasing assistance?
A: I did not hold a gun to his head and have him throw 3 years and $60 million for the declining years of Christian Walker. I did not tell him to sign Tatsuya Imai for what could cost the team 3 years / $54 million without doing a psychological exam on him. (By the way if Imai goes bat guano crazy and burns things up in the second half he will leave and sign elsewhere. If he stinks, he will stay.)
Q: Should the Astros pull the trigger on a big trade for a starting stud pitcher?
A: There aren’t many of those type out there and with the majority of the teams solidly still in the race the few that are available are going to take premium chips to pick up. And frankly I want to see Xavier Nevens and Kevin Alvarez playing for the Astros in a couple years. I don’t want to see some overpaid rental here helping us limp into or just short of the playoffs.
After the Break – What Is Possible
Putting on my optimistic psychic abilities here is the best case scenario:
- Hunter Brown and Spencer Arrighetti recover their best selves and make a strong young duo at the top of the rotation.
- Tatsuya Imai decides he likes American food and also can control his crazy screwball slider and becomes a force to reckon with…..every time out.
- Peter Lambert continues to be the steadiest of the team’s rotation, quietly being the almost anonymous ace.
- Between Cristian Javier, Ronel Blanco and Hayden Wesneski, one of them steps up to be a solid starting pitcher. I’m pulling for Blanco, who was the team’s best starter in 2024.
- Mike Burrows figures things out and becomes the best Burrows he can be.
- Josh Hader (ignoring his last appearance) continues to be the best version of himself and anchors the back of the bullpen.
- Bryan Abreu relaxes now that the closer is back and suddenly finds a couple more mph on his fastball and control.
- Bryan King, Steven Okert, A.J. Blubaugh and Enyel De Los Santos all come back from the All Star break refreshed after being over-used in the first half of the season.
- Bennett Sousa and Kai-Wei Teng return from the IL to give the over-used some help.
- Jose Altuve discovers the fountain of youth and goes on a tear between now and the end of the season.
- Yordan Alvarez continues to treat baseball games as his special version of batting practice and earns an MVP trophy to match Altuve’s.
- Christian Walker (if he is still here) raises that BA to about .260 and adds to that solid HR and RBI total.
- Isaac Paredes continues the run he has been on the last 70 games and leads other players to take pitches and work counts.
- Jeremy Pena first, ignores the talk about him being traded, and second, stays healthy for the rest of the season while continuing a very solid season when he has been in the lineup.
- Cam Smith needs to turn the corner. The talent is there. The potential is there. He has hit a bit better the last 50 games, but this cat should be doing a lot more. (OK – he is only 23 and did not get to work things out in the minors – but it is time).
- Brice Matthews, Zach Dezenzo, Taylor Trammell, LaMonte Wade Jr., somebody named Lucas Spence and Jake Meyers if he ever returns…..somebody here has to be a major league hitter and outfielder. I’ve already said I am giving up on Dana Brown bringing in real help. Somebody, anybody – step up and make a difference.
- Yainer Diaz – since bottoming out in mid-April (and with a month off with injury) in his last 29 games he is slashing .283 BA/ .306 OBP/ .806 OPS. Yeah, I know the OBP is not great, but I will take that BA and OPS, which is more like the 2024 Yainer we were expecting in 2025.
OK – that is enough file drawer dumping today. Your thoughts?
ALL THINGS ASTROS 
22 responses to “Baseball ’26: Emptying the file drawer”
Holy cow Phil Rizzuto, this might take me all the way to the 7th inning stretch.
I don’t want to see Blubaugh sent away. If everything falls into place, maybe we win the West. But we’re not going deep. Blubaugh is one of the few young guys we’ve got that can help this club for several years.
Dana just brought in Lucas Spence. We got our lefty bat for the outfield! Another premature promotion. The Dana Brown kiss of death. Why would you bring in a guy with a .699 OPS in Sugar Land? That includes 5 walks and 22 K’s. Give the kid some time. And no, Dana has not been able to find a quality lefty bat for the outfield throughout his waning career with the Astros. And I don’t trust that he’ll do anything intelligent now, except maybe give A.J. away for some guy we’ll end up cursing from the couch.
No rental for me either. I don’t want to lose guys that can help for the next several years. Play it out with the roster we’ve got. But if we got a heck of a deal for Pena, I’d shrug and say that was the wise thing to do. Jim Crane might also have other ideas though about making a splash. He wants to sell tickets.
I’ll be optimistic about Hunter Brown. But if you look at the Arrighetti stats, he’s had a few pockets of excellence and mostly mediocrity throughout his 50 starts. Too many walks to take him seriously. In fact, I’m ok with Dana trading him for that lefty bat.
I don’t think Imai has the cojones for his job in MLB.
Peter Lambert is my favorite player of the season excepting Yordan. As I responded to Steven earlier, extend him for three years.
Impossible for me to have an opinion on those three guys returning from big injury. Our track record in this regard is not very good though.
I too am thinking Hader might be what the doctor ordered for Abreu.
I think we’ll be using several different guys in the pen going forward. I don’t know how De Los Santos holds up. Santa might play a bigger role. And Javier might be best suited for the pen as the other guys try to come back as starters.
I’d forgotten about Sousa. Teng gave us his best.
I hope Yordan’s career year helps us overlook Jose’s reality.
Does anyone have a starter that Walker can help us get? Maybe, but again, the fear is what other guy(s) Dana gives up.
Steady Isaac. Stay healthy.
Don’t know what to say about Cam. Will wait mostly patiently. I’d hate to see him settle into being an under-performer.
I still have some hope for Zach D., but he might not ever see enough playing time in Houston to really get going. All those other guys are interchangeable for different situations but won’t ever be worthy of an everyday starting role.
Yainer remains one of my favorite Astros. I had really high hopes for him. And I still think there is more in there. But he can’t seem to sustain it. Regardless, given good health, he’ll have a long ML career somewhere.
Great effort Dan. I survived the rough inning by Lambert, even as I offered him a three year extension. These O’s are kind of pesky on the bases and we’ve not been very tidy in dealing with them.
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Good morning weekenders.
Pena, Yordan and Issac reached base 10 times at the top of the order.
Unfortunately, our only hit below came from our new outfielder. Congratulations Lucas on your first ML base knock.
We did draw 9 walks though.
Lambert looked like an ace even when he had his bad inning. He did not give in. He got out of it. Can he keep throwing like this for a couple more months? Should he? Never has thrown 92 ML innings before.
Bryan King has given up 7 runs and 4 dingers in his last 3 outings, pitching to 23 batters over 4 innings. I’m not sure the four days off were enough.
Big day for Spencer Arrighetti and the Astros today.
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Thoughts
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Irony… mlb.com had an article naming each team’s critical player for the second half and Brian McT picked…. Brice Matthews.
FYI – Brice was put on the IL with a knee injury….
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I think Brian McTaggart is a very nice guy, but he’s essentially a mouthpiece for the club. Forgetting about the knee bruise, Matthews might be that one guy if any of us thought he could raise his OPS to .800 or even .750.
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Great! Not! Both Pena and Walker left today’s game with apparent injuries. Pena with a leg injury and Walker with an apparent oblique injury.
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I keep complaining that Pena is too bulked up. He should not be experiencing chronic leg problems at his age.
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Seeing the “highlights,” when Baltimore scored on that squeeze I was saying, “why is that left handed guy at first base?” Walker might have prevented that run. I’m tired of all the injuries. Hope they aren’t serious, but Walker got off to a really slow start after suffering an oblique injury last year in spring training.
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I have to assume Nick, standing on third with nobody out in the tenth, was told to make sure anything hit went through the infield before coming home. But when a ball gets chopped over the third baseman, way high over the third baseman, Nick should have jogged home with the win. He has to think.
And poor Jose. Altuve took forever to make a play to first on the slow hit grounder that would have kept the game tied in the 11th. Diaz was literally strolling to the dugout assuming Altuve would complete what looked like a routine out. Both he and Jose were oblivious to the possibility that someone might score the game winner from second base as the play unfolded in slow motion. Unfortunately, Joe did not have a guy on the bench to put at second for defensive purposes.
And once the Astros finally went down meekly in the bottom half of the 11th, they got a smattering of boo’s from the normally polite home crowd. Well deserved.
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A small laugh bit… when the oriole player hit that ball off the third base bag, that saved a run from scoring at that moment. The laugh… the third base bag has a defensive run saved!!!
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I don’t understand….
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Joe seems to think his guys are playing good ball.
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And as the second half of the season starts we drop 3 in a row to the O’s. I wish the pundits would stop kidding themselves as our chances of making the playoffs are slim and none. We are just not a very good baseball team. Time to face reality and start preparing for the future. An idea for you Dan is what should we do to prepare for the next 2 – 3 years and beyond?
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Right – we need to be realistic. We’re 4 out of division and 4.5 out of wild card spot, but we’re certainly not better than the teams ahead of us right now and right behind us the Blue Jays and Tigers seem like more likely candidates to make a run. If I’m Brown I’m considering anyone not firmly in the plans for next year to be on the block. I’m viewing Matthews running into that wall as an opportunity to give him some rehab starts at AAA and wondering if Cam Smith may have a pulled eyebrow or something to give him a vacation in Sugarland as well.
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Desperate times for Joe and Dana. King gets sent down after getting sent out to the mound too often.
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An unfortunate series. The first two games were the exact kind of baseball games that you need to work at least a split from. Can’t lose both of those or the team starts to feel like it will just find ways to lose and that turns into a self fulfilling prophecy. These are the kind of things that cost managers their jobs.
We followed that up two tough losses with a AAA lineup in game 3 and got treated that way. Thats the kind of thing that costs a general manager his job.
Yes Dave – that smacks of desperation. I don’t think it will end there either. Cam better start hitting a little more or he is going to finish the year in Sugar Land. I’m not sure what they expect from a guy that had a .699 OPS at AAA but it looks like he is clearly the starting CFer for now. You had one guy in the bullpen that could throw 100 and you DFA him. He won’t sit on waivers long. If Bryan Abreu is not going to pitch in a close game they should just trade him to someone desperate for a spark in the bullpen for “cash considerations.” He isn’t going to bring anything back player wise.
Z – it would be easy to start speculating what they should do to start preparing for 2027. But this is a mess. Dana Brown can’t start preparing for 2027 because he won’t be the GM. He has to get to the playoffs. He and Espada both are managing for their professional lives. Sure, both these guys will land on their feet and have jobs in baseball next year, but probably at about 15% of their current salaries, or they can desperately try and get this team over the finish line as a wild card or division winner and get a new contract.
It would be a fun exercise – say you are the GM of the Astros and you don’t have contract issues. What would you do if the mandate from the owner is win now? Do you see any moves out there that could help you do that? What if the mandate was sell for 2026 but lets get back to winning in 2027? What if the mandate was a complete rebuild?
Two offseasons ago I wanted to trade Framber to LA for Dalton Rushing and Emmett Sheehan. We would be sitting much better right now if we had done that – we would have never signed Walker. I also wanted to give Kyle Tucker a 10 year deal, and we would be sitting on a contract for that guy right now.
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I said this last week and I’ll say it again. At this point, I want to make sure Hunter Brown is fully healthy. If so, this is the time for him to get the bugs worked out. His mechanics are a mess. If he can finish the season healthy and pitching the way he wants to, that’s real progress. But if there is any indication whatsoever that he might not be 100% healthy today, then he should be shut down now.
Okert and De Los Santos are gassed. King got sent down for being gassed. I presume Sousa will be back tonight. And if the Astros are looking for a righty reliever, then why is Santa in Sugar Land? He’s done everything he could do in that hitters league. He’s gotten a few big outs in his limited time with the big club. No, he has not been striking guys out, but the 15.1 inning sample is far too small to draw conclusions yet. And what are they saving Ullola for? We got four good innings out of him. I suppose either one of these guys could be part of a trade they are working on. That would not be a shock. But it’s a concern.
And since Spence has been brought in, keeping playing him everyday. Maybe he’ll produce as much as any lefty bat Dana might trade for and he is more athletic than most guys Dana will have access to.
I’m just hoping we get through the season with no more damage done. I don’t want more injuries. I don’t want to lose guys that can help next year for a rental or two. Dana has given us four years of mediocrity. He’s not going to change that now. And I’ve finally become convinced that Joe is a hazard. No he has not had much of a roster, but I’ve not seen him figure out a way to make one guy better offensively. And we continue to flat out suck on the bases. And his use of the pen is showing up in losses at this point. We’re just not good in any area of this baseball club except for being fortunate enough to have Yordan Alvarez.
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All MILB in the Astro’s outfield tonight!!
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Much better last night as the offense (Yordan and Pena) came through. Kudos for the bottom of the order in the second which allowed us to get to Pena and Yordan. Blanco was good enough to keep us in the game and the bullpen did their job. It could have gone either way. Regardless of where we end up this year I’d like to see us try to keep Pena. There are perhaps a half a dozen players we can still build a team around for the future provided our management doesn’t do anything stupid (enter perplexed emoji). I still think we should be sellers at the trading deadline provided were not closing in on .500 in an optimistic way.
We have got to get younger! Hopefully these some of these draft choices down in the minors will be ready by ’28. I expect mediocrity for next year too given the current roster so we don’t have to blow it up to get back to the competitiveness we all want to see.
Potential trade candidates are Abreu, Walker, and I guess that’s it. Don’t see us getting a lot in return but Walker is a salary dump and Abreu might bring a decent prospect. Maybe I missed someone but any suggestions is OK by me.
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I don’t see being able to trade Walker. He hit .223 in June and .171 so far in July. He is well on his way to being worse than last year. I don’t even think there is a team that is competing for a spot that would look at him as even a slight upgrade that would be worth it even if we paid the salary.
The problem for the Astros is they can’t move him down the lineup like last year because everything after him is putrid. I’m not completely convinced Wade played yesterday because Walker “couldn’t.” I won’t be surprised to see Wade in there again tonight – at least he is drawing walks. The Astros are facing Tyler Phillips, a converted reliever that is still being treated as an opener. They have a chance to really extend this bullpen tonight and make Wednesdays game more uncomfortable, and Wades ability to see pitches will help in that regard.
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Yordan is special. It feels like any day now he is going to get the full Bonds and not this kinda Bonds treatment he has been getting. Like walked with the bases loaded down by 2 kind of treatment.
If I was able to say one thing to Dana – quit being so damn set on the end of year stuff. Peter Lambert is a competitor. Offer him a 3/25 right now. If he takes it, the 4 spot in your rotation is set for the next few years. If he doesn’t, the Nationals need a pitcher and have a pretty good farm. Don’t wait until the end of the year when we are competing and that 3/25 becomes a 3/45 or 4/60. You won’t even get a draft pick because you are not going to offer the guy a QO. No one is gonna want to pay him 20M.
Be more aggressive. We should not be in this spot with Jeremy Pena, but its clear he has to be traded now. Me, I’m doing it at the deadline because the Rays and Yanks are in a fight and they both need offense and they need a SS. What if you could get the Yanks to give you Lombard and Dominguez? What if you could flip Lambert to Washington for two of their top 10 prospects? I’m not trying to turn into trader Jack here but it hasn’t all been spending years drafting 28th in the draft, its also been an unwillingness to do anything about stars walking out your door that created this injury prone veteran roster surrounded by minimum wage guys. You know, sometimes great things come from minimum wage guys, Jeremy Pena won a playoff game as one, but more often than not, they forget to put the pickles on my cheeseburger.
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Sure, if the right deal is offered for Pena now, take it.
But no rush, as there might be more interest, a stronger offer this winter.
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