Houston Astros: Team Inks Dallas Keuchel; Two Others To Deals

We’re in mid-January and for Houston Astros’ fans, it’s that time of the year where we see how much our favorite players mean to the franchise.

We’re in mid-January and for Houston Astros‘ fans, it’s that time of the year where we see how much our favorite players mean to the franchise.

As each team does their due diligence as those important arbitration dates near, it seems all the dominoes seem to fall in place just ahead of Spring Training.

We know at least three members of the Houston Astros that were up for negotiations have now signed deals with the Astros.

The Chron’s Jake Kaplan on Dallas Keuchel signing for $9.5 millon:

Kaplan on George Springer‘s signing for $3.9 million:

MLB Insider Jon Heyman on Jake Marisnick‘s signing of $1.1 million:

So that’s three players the Astros have signed to one-year deals, staving off arbitration for some key pieces of the team.

We already know we’re going to get tremendous production out of Springer as well as a stellar defensive performance from Marisnick but Keuchel remains a mystery.

He certainly will have to case to make as he put up a 9-12 record, 4.55 ERA through 26 starts in 2016.

To be fair, his shoulder injury was something he was battling through the whole season to which he was shut down in the waning weeks of last season.

But what if we as fans have to worry about this long term?

We all hope that this is a lingering issue and that he reverts back to his All-Star form of 2015, the Dallas Keuchel that we know.

Springer was also an interesting wrinkle — it’s fortunate to hear that he was able to agree on terms with the club, considering he is one of our most valuable players.

The three-year slugger batted .261, popping 82 ribbies, 29 homers coupled with a stellar .815 OPS that deservedly got him a nice deal in just his first year of arbitration.

And as for Marisnick, he was ranked 8th in the AL in terms of defensive WAR (2.0) so I’d expect the same performance out of Jake and we can only hope he’s been working on his hitting — he batted .209 in 2016 — this off season.

With three contacts settled, the Astros have four more that can be negotiated before next month when all hearings take place.

The guys still up for talks are:  Mike Fiers, Marwin Gonzalez, Will Harris and Collin McHugh.

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We’ll be finding about these guys soon as I’d like to have them ALL back as they address many of our needs.

But nonetheless, the Astros are signaling that nobody’s getting a long-term deal unless they’ve checked all the boxes on their personal list to get one.

But I’d suspect that Springer is a lot closer to obtain one than any of the other guys in this bunch at the moment.

This is a move that I support because emanates low-risk, high-reward but it’s only going to be a matter of the time some of these players are going to negotiate something the Astros don’t want to fork over.

Until then — go Astros.