All the recent talk about the Astros saying they will tender an extension offer to Kyle Tucker and Alex Bregman has led to discussions about possibly letting Breggy follow the free agent paths of Gerrit Cole, George Springer, Charlie Morton, Carlos Correa and Justin Verlander (with JV bouncing back at the trade deadline).

Since Josh Hader signed his 5-year/ $95 million free agent contract, we have not really heard from the closer emeritus Ryan Pressly.

In one of those self-assignments, your loyal writer spent a bit of time comparing what most of the main Astros did in 2023 vs. what the ZiPS projections on Fangraphs say they will do in 2024.

New Astros manager Joe Espada has a wide and varied background in baseball that leads to doing almost everything but managing teams. He was both a college and a minor league player, spending most of his time in the minors with Oakland, but also playing for St. Louis, Colorado, Florida, Kansas City, Texas and Tampa…

Billy Wagner Billy Wagner falling five votes short of the Hall of Fame was a bummer, but not as big of a bummer as when Craig Biggio fell two votes short in January 2014. Here is a doubleheader column by Brian Todd and me when that happened.