Does anyone else get the impression that there is some serious gripping going on over in the Stros management offices?
What prompted the latest evidence of discontent was the Stros announcement yesterday that they had traded a couple of marginal minor league prospects for Tampa Bay 1B/3B/OF Aubrey Huff and about $1.65 million in cash.
Huff had been on the Devil Rays’ trading block for the past two seasons and it’s reasonably clear that the Rays’ management waited too long to pull the string on a trade. As a result, my sense is that the Stros got the better of this trade. Huff is a 29 year-old, six year player who had a mediocre rookie season in 2001, but then had three solid seasons from 2002-2004 (successive runs created against average [RCAA] of 20, 26, and 28). A lousy third baseman defensively, the left-handed hitting Huff was caught up in a logjam of Tampa Bay outfielders last season (-5 RCAA) and he has been mediocre this season (2 RCAA/.343 OBP/.477 SLG/.819 OPS). Nevertheless, at his age, Huff is a good bet to bounce back with a change of scenery and he certainly has the incentive to do so — he is a free agent at the end of this season. Besides, even at his current level of production this season, he is the fourth most productive hitter on the Stros behind Berkman, Ensberg and Lamb. Huff’s career stat line is 53/.343/.477/.819, which is nicely above the league average of 0/.335/.430/.765 for the time he has been in Major League Baseball.
Despite the good move in acquiring Huff, the thinking of Stros management appears to be increasingly muddled. The Stros made room for Huff on roster by optioning slumping OF Jason Lane (-7/.330/.393/.722) to AAA Round Rock to play centerfield while getting his hitting stroke back. That’s not a bad decision, except that the Stros are still carrying an inferior player to Lane on the major league roster — CF Willy Taveras (-16/.307/.308/.615) — who needs the seasoning in AAA even more than Lane (although maybe this explains the reason the Stros are keeing Taveras around). And Stros management didn’t even mention that the best place for Huff would currently be in leftfield replacing the odious Preston Wilson, who has quietly combined an extraordinarily bad first half of the season (-9/.322/.424/.746; league average is 0/.343/.435/.779) with a stunning propensity to ground into double plays (14 to date!).
Meanwhile, during the press conference announcing Huff’s acquisition yesterday, Stros GM Tim Purpura made the point that Huff would cut into slumping 3B Morgan Ensberg‘s playing time. Now, much has been made of Ensberg’s current slump — his RCAA has been -5 since May 26th and his OBP/SLG/OPS have declined from .403/.627/1.030 to .390/.500/.890 since that date. But let’s not overreact here. Assuming that his bruised shoulder is not preventing him from turning around his slump, Ensberg remains the club’s second-best hitter behind Berkman and replacing him with Huff (who is a poor-fielding third baseman to boot) while keeping less-productive players such as Wilson or Taveras in the lineup makes no sense.
Finally, in yet another questionable move, the Stros canned hitting coach Garry Gaetti yesterday and hired AAA hitting coach Sean Berry to replace him. Now, Gaetti was not the best hitting coach around — he continued a dubious trend among recent Stros hitting coaches of failing to emphasize to Stros hitters selective aggressiveness at the plate and the importance of taking a walk. As a result, the Stros over Gaetti’s two seasons as hitting coach have had a below-league aveage OBP, which is one of the two key statistical components in generating runs (SLG is the other).
Nevertheless, the 2006 Stros club was hitting better at the All-Star break than either the 2004 or the 2005 clubs. Moreover, during his MLB career, Berry was the same type of hitter as Gaetti — a free-swinger who rarely took a walk and thus, had a below-league average OBP. Accordingly, unless Berry has seen the error of his ways, Stros fans will continue to endure a hitting coach who accepts below-league average OBP from regular players such as Ausmus, Wilson, and Everett, which is one of the key reasons that the Stros have struggled to score runs over the past three seasons (the Stros are -12 RCAA as a team as of this All-Star break).
Whether the Stros are going to remain in the race for a playoff spot will likely be determined over the next two weeks. Coming off the All-Star break, the Stros hit the road for their second monster three-city road trip in less than a month as they play four in Florida, three in Chicago against the hapless Cubs and then three in New York against the mighty Mets. If the Stros can at least break even on the road trip, then the probable improvement in pitching during the second half combined (hopefully) with at least league-average hitting should be enough to keep the Stros competitive for the wild-card playoff spot in a National League comprised of mostly mediocre clubs.
Huff’s career statistics are below.
The Huff deal is interesting to me in this respect — I don’t know that a lot of players are going to move by the deadline. You look at so many teams at least in wildcard contention, and that’s a lot of competition for relatively few players available for trade. So in the sense of the Astros making a deal that helps them when many teams may not be able to do so, I think you can count it as a win. Now, whether that’s a PR win or something else, who knows at this point (not me!). As you suggest, the rearranging of the pieces AFTER the trade seems a little peculiar.
And this constant shuffling of players with below-average defensive skills all around the lineup is certain to take its toll on the defense, which partly negates the advantage you expect to have with Oswalt/Clemens/Pettite. Throw in a shaky Brad Lidge…. Well, let’s just hope things turn around in the second half. Thank goodness the NL is not great this year.