The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Jake Kaplan On Some Possible Free Agent Moves For The Astros This Offseason

Episode Date: October 21, 2020

Jake Kaplan On Some Possible Free Agent Moves For The Astros This Offseason

is the Matt Thomas show. 102 on Sports Talk 790. We have not heard from this stranger in a long period of time. He's busy with his successful column in the athletic. His podcast, which is blowing up. A man about town, diehard Penn State fan, but certainly a man who knows all things aster. Jake Kaplan, long time, no talk.

Sneaky snake, Jake, how are things? Things are okay How are you? I mean, I don't know whose fault it is that I haven't been on here in a while. Oh, I blame myself. Yeah, I was about to say it. But if you're going to say it, yeah. All right.

Real quick, because I don't know, frankly, how much interest there is in a World Series outside of L.A. and Atlanta. Ross brought up something to me off air that was very intriguing. He says, and dodging a bullet would be a strong term. But the Dodgers just kicked the crap out of the rain. raise yesterday. If Clayton Kershaw is doing what he's doing, that offense is moving along, and Mookiee Betts is catching everything near him, how does this series go beyond say the very most five games? I think the raise would have to take advantage of the non-Claighton Kirschol,

Walker-Buehler starts. I don't think the Dodgers pitching is super deep in the rotation, especially. So I think that would be it. But yeah, I mean, you're seeing why the Dodger, I mean, First of all, it's only one game. Right. But you're seeing why the Dodgers had, I mean, they were on historically great pace in the 60 game season, and they're just like a machine. And, you know, they have the combination of the player development and the true trades and spend a lot of money, and that's usually a pretty good recipe.

Yeah, no doubt about that. All right, this is an open-ended question. If you don't have an answer to it, I'm okay with it. If you could go back in time and change one thing about the Astros and how they performed in the ALCS, what would it be? Was there a decision to be made? Something that could, if you were the manager, you would have done. Is there any, in terms of strategy, the Astros could have done in order to win that series in seven? That's a good question.

I actually think they had a Dusty Baker had a good series, all things considered. I don't think there's like a huge decision that really stands out. that backfired. I mean, I think that the Jose Al-Tube throwing errors obviously loomed large in games two and three, and those could have made the difference, but maybe not. You know, ultimately, I think they, in a highly competitive series between two good teams, the better team just edge them out. I mean, you could blame slumps by Bregman or Gerell.

Yeah. Maybe those make the difference. But you wouldn't change. You wouldn't move Bragman out of the lineup to give him a day off. I'm just thinking from a philosophical strategy sense, I don't think there was any serious missteps along the way. Because let's put this honestly, Jake, 2017, A.J. will have to live with I didn't go to Garrett Cole. And that's one of those things that you could do.

I didn't think there was any of those, let's catch Dusty making a mistake in moments in 2020. No, I mean, I think he did pretty well, and the times when I was not sure of his decisions, it worked for him, like leaving Grinke in. But, yeah, I mean, their lineup is their lineup. There wasn't really much to do there outside of the Diaz versus Reddick swaps. You know, you could argue that Maldonado should have started game three, but they were in that game, you know, when Garno exes. did it. So, yeah, I don't think it was a matter of, you know, decision-making. I think it was just performance and playoff baseball.

There's so much randomness, and it depends on who's hot and who's not. The race just, you know, they didn't hit particularly well, but they had enough home runs to just edge out the series. Jay Kaplan writes for the athletic. He's going to be doing a lot of predictions and previews of Astros and Free Agency. and you can find him on Twitter at Jake M. Kaplan, as I've told you before, when we have Aaron on and we have Jake. Get the credit card out, buy a year of the athletic. They're not paying me to say this.

I'm just telling you it's great behind-the-scenes stuff that you just don't get with your daily publications and daily beat. So with that being said, I have been asked five million times, especially after doing the post-game show, Jake, the nine of the Astros losing game seven. What my thoughts were about the return of Michael Brantley and. And George Springer, I put them both at zero. Am I being a little too 100%? Are you opening up a window for either one of them or both to come back? I think there's a bigger, greater than zero chance. I don't think it's a particularly good chance.

And I would peg the chances of Brantley at higher than the chances of Springer because Brantley is likely going to require, you know, likely going to command a shorter-term deal. right? He's probably looking at a two-year deal and Springer's looking at maybe like four or five. And this team traditionally hasn't built its team through free agency. And you don't see deals longer than two or three years very often. You know, I know it's a different GM, but it's still the same front office otherwise. And the GM did come from a team that had a similar model, right? So I think if you look at the fact that their biggest free agent contract in this ownership group is still Josh Reddicks, $52 million.

That doesn't exactly scream. They're going to go on a spending spree to bring everyone back. So I think it's greater than zero, but I think ultimately you're going to have a very different outfield around Kyle Tucker next year. I don't know how much research you have done on this yet. But what does the outfield free agent market look like if you're not going to spend the money on Brantley and Springer? Well, Marcelo Zuna, who had an amazing season for the Braves, is probably right under Springer, probably between those two guys. He's a year younger than Springer, so he's probably going to get, you know, four years, I would guess,

maybe more. So he's another guy I probably wouldn't put on the Astros radar, so to speak. But below that, there's Jackie Bradley Jr., who is Springer's age and is, you know, doesn't hit as well as Springer, but is an elite defensive. of Center fielder. Jake Moriznik's a free agent, if you're interested in a reunion there. Robbie Grossman, another ex-astro,

is a free agent. I've heard about this today, and I'm already blanking on a few of the names, but, you know, it's a decent group out there. It's not super deep, but there's enough names, and there's going to be more names added to that list because of the economics of the pandemic,

there's going to be more players non-tendered than usual as well in early December. So that'll add to the free agents. Somebody sent me a email that's a listener that listens to us, actually in upstate New York. And he brought up to me that the Mets just have an ownership change. The guy apparently is super, super rich. And that wouldn't it be a really interesting way for the Mets to have their new ownership group go out, make a big splash free agent signing? and wouldn't it be awesome that Connecticut's George Spirner could be close to home? Could that be a possible landing spot for him?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know enough about the Mets situation, but I don't see why not. I mean, I think ultimately he's going to have a lot of suitors. I think, you know, especially because Mookie Betts is not on the market, like Springer and J.T. Roamuto are the two top position players. And there's not too many times you have an opportunity to acquire a player of that caliber. yeah, I could see that. You know, I think ultimately there's, like you can look at

the Astros, they're going to bring back there's six really good hitters to slot in atop their lineup, right? And then you add Molbinato in the bottom third and it's basically a matter of figuring out seven and eight or seven and nine in the order. Other teams

are looking at it. Other teams have like two good hitters, three good hitters. There's a lot of teams that have a lot more percent of to spend a lot of money on, to buy offense, really, you know, than the Astros do. The Mets actually had a really good offense this year in the short season, but, you know, if there are new owners willing to spend a lot more money than the last owner, then, yeah, I don't see why that wouldn't be a potential landing spot for them. I just curious, again, I don't really pay attention to the Mets.

I didn't know what that situation was, but apparently, you know, and just like when Drayton bought the team many moons ago, the first two things he did was went after, went and got Greg Swindell and Doug Dribic and pay them a lot of money. How'd that work out? It was average at best, to be honest with you. But that was 25 years ago. Let's get to one other thing. Who's the closer for the Astros in 2021?

We were kind of thinking that if Osuna is out for next year because of injury and there is some hesitancy about Ryan Presser doing it, does Anoli Perretti's in your mind have closer stuff? Um, yeah, I think he does. Um, but I, I would say the closer for next year is probably not on the roster right now. I think, I think Osuna is an obvious non-tender candidate, number one, um, if he's hurt. And, uh, he's going to, he's due in for another, you know, he's, he was, he made the pro rate at 10 million this year. So he's going to make at least that next year in salary if they go through the arbitration process with him again.

Um, Presley. I agree he's probably better served as like the versatile high leverage guy before the closer before the 9th. I think Paredes has closer stuff. He definitely has the fastball, but, you know, I don't know if you want to trust a rookie or a second year guy that quickly after one short season. So, you know, it's actually a really deep, I was looking at it today, a really deep reliever for agent class.

There's a lot of guys out there, including Liam Hendricks. from the A's and Alex Colomé from the White Sox. And there's really like 20 guys who maybe aren't closers, but are like good veteran relievers. And so I think you'll see the Astros upgrade in that position group. Last question. I got a minute left. When the George Springer decision comes,

and let's assume he moves elsewhere, in your gut, do you think we'll find out that the Astros were super close or at the end of the day that they just kind of knew that the market was going to bear out that, they just weren't going to be able to put together a competitive offer? Yeah, I don't know. It's hard to predict because we don't really know how the new GM, James Click, is going to operate relative to Jeff Luno.

You know, the Astros might try to spin it as a competitive offer, whether they made one or not, right? You know, we've seen that in the past. So it's hard to predict. I don't know how they'll approach that. They might simply just wish him well. Yeah, I guess let's touch base on that when it happened, see what they say.

Well, that gives me an excuse to call you again to be on the show. You always have an excuse to call me. This is true. Jake M. Caputon on Twitter, Athletic, and the name of your highly successful podcast is called What? The Crawford Talks. Subscribe on Apple and Spotify and wherever you listen to your podcast. Good gracious.

Man, we're just publicizing you all over the place then. I appreciate it. All right, buddy. Talk to you soon. That's Jake Kaplan, from the Athletic and the Crawford Talks, and all that good stuff that you can find. find on Spreeker and Apple and whatever else you do to your podcasting. I got to get the Plykos and Powerbombs on about 50 different avenues.

So I can have the only game show pro wrestling podcast in America explode like Jake's is.