The Astros have made the latest plunge into the free agent market, announcing a big money deal for one of the top available hitters and adding a decent veteran starter to their rotation.
I think everyone is starting to understand that using the term “overpaid” is going to be problematic this winter. There’s always going to be a purist argument that any sportsman is overpaid compared to those of us who have to do “real” work, but ultimately the worth of a baseball player is dictated by the current market. The relatively trouble-free Collective Bargaining Agreement discussions were the ultimate indicator that the sport is swimming in money and I guess we will just have to adjust our brains to cope with the sums being dished out. That doesn’t mean teams like the Cubs and the Astros are correct, sensible or clever to be committing themselves to paying $17-18million a year to guys when they hit their mid thirties, but there’s a least some sort of perverse logic behind it.
Carlos Lee is a very good hitter, yet he doesn’t strike me as being someone you would want to hand a six-year contract to. Some pitchers can gain from carrying some extra timber (Jumbo Wells for one), but it’s not something I would want in an outfielder (especially in the NL where they can’t just shift him to DH in a couple year’s time). Like any deal, if it brings success on the field then the apparent foolishness of it will be easily forgotten. Whether it will or not is quite nicely shown by the different roster charts on MLB.com and ESPN.com.
The MLB.com Astros depth chart looks impressive, particularly that rotation. Plugging Woody Williams on to the back-end of a rotation with Oswalt, Pettite and Clemens makes a quality core of starters to rely on over the season. Add in a battle between Backe, Rodriguez and Hirsh for the fifth spot and it would arguably be the strongest in the majors.
Looking up the Astros on the ESPN Hot stove Index tells a different story though. Currently they haven’t added Williams and Lee to the projected starters list, but they have taken Pettitte and Clemens out of the equation. Both sites also still list Backe in the rotation despite the fact that he will likely be missing for the whole of 2007 due to Tommy John surgery.
Both Lee and Williams will be positives for the Astros in the near future (the two year deal for Williams looks sensible enough overall), but their 2007 still is very hard to predict. Oswalt, Pettitte, Clemens, Williams and Backe is light-years ahead of Oswalt, Williams, Rodriguez, Hirsh and Buchholz. If both Pettitte and Clemens return to Houston then they will be serious contenders. If they don’t, the Astros need to know soon so that they can spend the money on quality replacements while they are still available (and there’s not much out there anyway in truth). The Astros’ GM Tim Purpura claims that they have just made a “historic commitment to winning”, but it’s going to look pretty hollow unless the current rotation is fixed.
