What could I say about the future of the Houston Astros that won’t make me sound like a hater?

…

Well…

You can still probably get away with calling Carlos Lee “pudgy” instead of “obese”. Does that count?

The 2008 Houston Astros was the oldest squad in the National League. Out of those who accumulated at least 200 ABs last season, only Michael Bourn and Hunter Pence were younger than 30. Wandy Rodriguez was the only 20-something pitcher who started at least four games – and he was 29. If you’re this old, then you’d better be good. But the Astros weren’t. Sure, they won 86 games but they were outscored by their opponents by 31 runs for the year. This was very much a run-of-the-mill team except for the fact that the vast majority of their roster are on the downsides of their careers. And with their last remaining prospects dealt away in the Miguel Tejada trade, there’s no help in the pipeline. Their short term future is mediocrity, which will be immediately followed by awfulness. Unless, of course, they do what they should have done a year ago and blow up the team.

After a great season, Lance Berkman’s value is not going to be this high ever again. The Big Puma (he looks more like a bear to me… Can we just call him the Bear instead?) turned in one of the best offensive years of his career with a line of .312/.420/.567. That’s not to say that moving him will be easy. Berkman’s contract is guaranteed until 2010 with a team option in 2011. However, he also has a full no-trade clause. Would guaranteeing that 2011 option year plus playing for a contending team be enough to coax Berkman into waiving that no-trade? It’s possible. But whomever takes that deal will pay him $44M over the next three years, so the guy’s not cheap. Furthermore, he’ll be 33 come Opening Day which should give teams pause before pulling the trigger. When it’s all said and done, however, Berkman will be more valuable to another team than he’s going to be in Houston over those three seasons.

A similar case could be made for Ty Wigginton, who unexpectedly had an OPS+ of 128 while primarily playing third base. Unless Chipper Jones becomes a free agent this offseason, Wigginton would probably attract far more interest than any other third baseman on the market.

As for the other big names, taller obstacles would need to be cleared. Ace Roy Oswalt is still among the best in the National League but his contract is long and huge (that’s what she said). The 31 year-old is due $45MM over the next three seasons plus a team option and no-trade. And with his slight frame (listed at 6 feet, 170lbs), there will be questions regarding future durability. Tejada only has one year remaining on his deal, but it’s for $13MM and he hit like an average shortstop as an Astro with subpar defense thrown in. Plus, Carlos Lee is an immovable object, literally and figuratively (although I don’t know which is which). Two years ago, the Astros signed him to an absurd $100MM deal that runs through 2012. Lee is still expected to be an offensive contributor for the near future, but I just cannot fathom someone taking on that contract.

Will this fix everything? Absolutely not. For one, Ed Wade is their GM so I can’t be confident that he’ll be able to get anything worthwhile in return even if he were to wheel and deal. And this is an organization with no young cornerstone players (although Pence has a shot to fill that role) so it’s going to be a long climb back into contention. Perhaps I am being too bullish about the NL Central next season but I just cannot foresee a scenario where the Houston Astros have much of a shot.

If you were to twist my arm, however, and dare me to give this team and their fans a reason to hope in 2009, here’s what must happen.

It would be a given that all of last year’s contributors would have to stay healthy. Ones of the J.R.s – Towles or House – would have to become at least a good option at the catcher’s spot because Brad Ausmus is awful and should not be brought back. Miguel Tejada needs to reverse his decline and prove that his poor season was a fluke. Hunter Pence needs to learn how to take a pitch and raise his OBP above .350 to be considered a good player in my book. And although I’m not a fan of his defense, Pence also ought to be moved back to centerfield. His defense won’t help you much, but his bat will profile better there than at the corner OF spots. Why is the defensive hit worth it? Cuz’ Michael Bourn should never start. Ever. He’s a defensive replacement until he proves otherwise. Or they can go out and sign Jim Edmonds. Although a repeat of his Chicago success is unlikely, the guy’s convinced me that he’s not quite done yet. At the very least, if he can repeat his plate discipline and defense, he’d be an upgrade.

On the mound, the Astros have two above-average pitchers in Oswalt and Wandy. But beyond that, there’s not much. Bringin Randy Wolf back is a possibility, but his past performances indicate that his numbers in Houston last year are simply unrepeatable. Chris Sampson is an underrated arm and he can solidify the back of a rotation. For the other spots, Wade should be looking for pitchers who can keep the ball down against right-handed hitters since the short left field porch at Minute Maid Park is a killer (another reason why Wolf is probably a bad match). Why not take a crack at Brad Penny on a one-year deal? Their division hopes are a roll of the dice anyway. May as well make this one a high-risk pick.

- What They Need Index -

Astros outfielder Hunter Pence is used to crashing into the outfield wall. But scarcely had Spring Training begun before he crashed through a sliding glass door. “I just didn’t see the door and jumped through it,” he said (maybe he needs one of those bird-scare cut-outs). “I have small cuts everywhere.” Pence had headed out to the hot tub when, as so many of us do, he decided to make a quick pit stop first. Unaware that while he was in the bathroom, an unnamed friend had closed the door, Pence attempted to leap through the portal to get to the other side. Instead of thin air, he found solid glass. Bleeding profusely, he was taken to the emergency room. But the 24-year old was lucky—-he cut no tendons or arteries, though he has lacerations all over his body and was wearing a knee brace today. Even so, he’ll only miss about a week of training as a result of the “freak accident,” as he described it. His teammates, however, are sure to keep the incident fresh in his mind.

“The guys have been joking around with me about it, but it’s never fun to miss any part of spring training,” said Pence. “It looks worse than it is.”

“Watch out, there’s a glass door over there,” catcher Brad Ausmus teased Pence.

Hey, at least he wasn’t also carrying a full cup of coffee at the time.

Now that the 2007 season has come to a close, it’s time to parse the 2007 rookie class and separate the wheat from the chaff, the best from the rest, the cookies…from the crumbs.

American League

Cookie: Dustin Pedroia

My picking “Pedro” (as the guys on the team have christened him) should come as no surprise to regular readers of UmpBump. Quite simply, no other rookie has grown up as fast or as completely as the little man with the big swing. After a brutal first month in the majors, Dustin was hitting .182 at the end of April, and the ravening hordes of Red Sox Nation were calling for blood. Worse, veteran players on other teams were audibly laughing at him and his body-wringing swing during his at-bats.

They’re not laughing now. Pedroia finished the season with the best batting average of AL rookies (.317), the best OPS (.822), and the most runs scored (88). Though he only has seven stolen bases, he has the best stolen base percentage (0.88). And he’s one of the hardest batters to strike out in the league (just 42 K’s in 581 plate appearances, for a beautiful walk-to-strikeout rate of 1.12) . Such a rate of contact without a lot of power (just 8 homers on the season) must mean he grounds into a lot of double plays, right? Actually, no—Pedroia has done that just 8 times this season.

Defensively, Pedroia has been solid but not spectacular. This is an area where I believe his diminutive stature has hurt him—many a time I’ve seen him dive after a gapper, his 5′7″ frame fully extended, only to watch the ball sail just an inch past his wee arm. Nevertheless, he plays an acrobatic second base, epitomized by the amazing grab he made to save fellow rookie Clay Buchholz’s no-hitter.

In addition to his maturity on the field, Pedroia has also shown maturity off the field: after a brief hubbub early in the season when Alex Rodriguez through a multimilliondollar elbow at him to try and break up a double play, Pedroia’s mild comment (calling it “cheap” but also “no big deal”) got all kinds of airtime. And young Dustin promptly learned a valuable lesson: zip it.

For being the rookie to play the most like a big-leaguer, Dustin Pedroia deserves to be the American League Rookie of the Year.

Crumbs: Delmon Young, Reggie Willits, Josh Fields, Brian Bannister, Jeremy Guthrie.

Not that I think these guys are crummy players—just that it’s the crumbs they’ll get stuck with when Pedroia gets the cookie. Delmon Young has gotten a lot of attention as a potential ROY for knocking in 93 RBI, no mean feat (it doesn’t hurt that his average, which was .288 overall, jumps to .347 with runners in scoring position). However, the Tampa Bay left fielder has a hideous VORP (just 5.7, compared with Pedroia’s 36.0). And while Young gets props for playing in all 162 games this year, he instantly loses those props for failing to run out a grounder and being benched by his manager with just one game left to play. I know it’s hard to run out every ball when it’s the end of September and you play for the Devil Rays, but this is just the kind of immature incident that has gotten Young in trouble in the past. It’s not big-league. It’s bush-league.

Willits, left-fielder for the Angels, gets an honorable mention for having the best eye of the rookie class. Though it’s hard to strike out Pedroia, it’s hard not to walk Willits: a .391 OBP, 69 walks, and 4.44 pitches per plate appearance. Once he gets on, pitchers had better keep their eye on him, too—he had 27 steals this year. But he has absolutely no power—just 20 doubles and no homers.

Josh Fields should be an interesting guy to watch develop. The White Sox third baseman only played 100 games this year, which hurts his ROY status in my mind, but he’s an interesting combination of above-average defensive ability and power hitting. His average was just .244, yet he hit 23 homers and has a .480 slugging percentage. If he can learn some plate discipline (he had 125 strikeouts in those 100 games—yikes) he could be a real threat for Chicago.

As for the pitchers, Guthrie and Bannister, it’s hard to say what these kids would have done if they’d been on better teams (as opposed to the Orioles and the Royals, respectively). Bannister may not strike out a lot of people, but he doesn’t walk a lot of folks either. He was consistently good all year long, but especially effective June through August. Guthrie was a bit more uneven, but finished the year with comparable numbers. I don’t think either of them is the rookie of the year, but I’d sure like to have them on my team.

National League

Cookie: Troy Tulowitzki

The Rockies shortstop has really turned it on in the past week to help his team get to the playoffs, with a grand slam here, a triple there, a couple of doubles over there. But that’s nothing new for the newbie—he’s been playing well all season long. His .287 average, 24 homers, and 98 RBI make him a great offensive shortstop. Lucky for the Rockies, then, that they sacrifice absolutely nothing on defense: Tulowitzki has been the best defensive shortstop in the league this year.

Crumbs: Ryan Braun, Kevin Kouzmanoff, Hunter Pence, James Loney.

Ryan Braun, third baseman for the Brewers, has a drool-worthy amount of offense: .324 average, .634 slugging percentage, 1.004 OPS, and 34 homers. Those homers look even more amazing when you realize he played in just 113 games. Unfortunately, as I mentioned above, I feel bad about giving awards to guys who don’t play on an everyday basis, or close to it. I also feel bad handing out cookies to guys who are the worst at their positions, defensively. And Braun has been, hands down, the worst third baseman in the league this year. Sorry, Ryan. Even your husky VORP (57.2) isn’t enough to save you.

What about Hunter Pence, you ask? The Astros centerfielder put up some very good numbers—.322 average, 69 RBI, 17 homers, and nine triples in 108 games. He uses his speed well in the outfield, where he’s above average defensively, but I feel obliged to note that he has a harmful .69 stolen base percentage. Nevertheless, If he’d played in more games, he could have given Tulowitzki some real competition.

I also considered Kevin Kouzmanoff, the third baseman for the Padres. Alas, poor Kevin! He loses another heartbreaker to his Colorado foe. His offensive numbers are juuust a touch softer than Troy’s across the board. Plus, he’s right down there with Braun as a craptastic corner glove. Nevertheless, he was the only rookie besides Tulowitzki and Diamondbacks CF Chris “.237″ Young to play in more than 140 games, and that, plus his decent numbers, is enough to earn our consideration.

Finally, I feel obliged to give an honorary crumb to James Loney, the young Dodgers first baseman. Like Pence, if he’d played in more games (as opposed to just 96) he could have given Tulowitzki a run for his money. In three important categories, he achieved some impressive numbers: his .331 average, .381 OBP, and 114 runs scored. As two nice peripherals, his walk-to-strikeout rate was the best in the class at 0.58, as was his average with runners in scoring position—a whopping .419. And not that first base is a defensively demanding position, but it’s worth noting that he can hold his own there.

Loney, Pence, and Braun (move him to first base, somebody!) might not be your NL ROYs, but any of them could very well end up being your NL MVPs a few years hence.

Compared to last year, ranking the rookies for this season is pretty boring, since as Coley points out, most of the best rookies were in the NL, but even in the NL the choice is obvious given Ryan Braun’s utter dominance.

But I have been a bit surprised at some of the names that keep getting mentioned, as well as some of the names who haven’t been mentioned much.

So I decided to rank the top 15 rookies together in one group, including players from both leagues. Here is what I came up with:

1. Ryan Braun (NL)

2. Troy Tulowitzki (NL)

3. Daisuke Matsuzaka (AL)

4. Hunter Pence (NL)

5. Dustin Pedroia (AL)

6. Jeremy Guthrie (AL)

7. James Loney (NL)

8. Brian Bannister (AL)

9. Chris Young (NL)

10. Kyle Kendrick (NL)

11. Yovanni Gallardo (NL)

12. Peter Moylan (NL)

13. Reggie Willits (AL)

14. Joakim Soria (AL)

15. Hideki Okajima (AL)

Sure enough, 8 out of my top 12 rookies hail from the National League. Although I’m not sure if this necessarily means good things for inter-league balance, since the Red Sox and the Yankees are probably just going to sign away all these guys as soon as they hit free agency.

Also, as you can see, I agree with Coley’s contention that at least based on pure numbers, Troy Tulowitzki was really unlucky to have his rookie year in the same season as Ryan Braun. But in actuality I don’t really feel too bad for him, given that he benefitted greatly from playing half his games in Coors Field, posting a ridiculous .942/.720 home/road OPS split.

Hunter Pence had a heck of the year, hitting for both average and power and stealing bases as well, and even with his injury woes he still managed to play in 108 games and log 456 at-bats. He’s not the Rookie of the Year, but he has a heck of a future ahead of him.

After Braun, Dodgers first-baseman James Loney was actually the second-best rookie in the National League this season, and did get into 96 games, but couldn’t make as much of a contribution to his team as Pence or Tulowitzki since was pointlessly blocked for the first two months owing to Ned Colletti’s foolish decision to resign Nomar Garciaparra despite the fact that Loney led all of baseball in batting average at AAA in 2006.

Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone is even considering Delmon Young, and as you can see, I’ve left him off my list. In fact, he wouldn’t even make my top 20. Delmon Young led all rookies in at-bats with 654, yet only hit 13 home runs, walked a mere 26 times, and posted a woeful .723 OPS. 10 other rookies hit more home runs, most of them in far fewer at-bats. Out of the eight rookies who qualified for a batting title, five had a higher OBP than Young, including teammate Akinori Iwamura. The bottom line is, if you get 654 at-bats and OPS .723 as a corner outfielder, you are in fact severely hurting your team, even if you are a veteran. You are certainly not anywhere close to being the Rookie of the Year!

I’m also not sure why Hideki Okajima gets mentioned so much. Sure he had a great year, but Peter Moylan was by far the best rookie relief pitcher this year (although he was in the NL), and even in his own league Joakim Soria of the Royals put up nearly identical numbers while posting 17 saves to Okajima’s 5.

A guy who certainly deserves more consideration is D-Backs centerfielder Chris Young. He’s not the Rookie of the Year because his batting average and on-base percentage were atrocious, but he did contribute greatly at a defensive skill position while playing every day, and chipped in 32 home runs along with 27 stolen bases.

I’ve saved perhaps my most controversial call until last: I’m going to have to go with Daisuke Matsuzaka over Dustin Pedroia as my 2007 AL Rookie of the Year. First of all, I don’t buy the whole argument that Japanese players shouldn’t be eligible for ROY consideration given all their experience in Japan. Having watched a lot of Japanese baseball, I can say firsthand that it is nowhere near the level of the Majors. That’s why Matsuzaka’s ERA was 4.40 this year and not 2.35. Also, Matsuzaka was only 26, which isn’t really that old. If an American player gets lots of experience in the minors and then has a breakout season at 27 or 28, we don’t say he should be ineligible for the award.

But more importantly, Matsuzaka had a better year than Pedroia. Sure, he wasn’t *quite* as good as some of the more delierious Boston fans might have expected, but was still one of the better pitchers in the American League, posting 15 wins, pitching over 200 innings, and striking out 201 batters. Sure, Pedroia had a great season, but was he even the most valuable rookie on his own team? Put another way, would the Red Sox rather have played through this past season without Daisuke Matsuzaka, or without Dustin Pedroia? I think it’s clear that Matsuzaka made a greater contribution as a rookie in the AL.