Houston Astros: Four things that need to sit atop the offseason priority list
By T.A. Mock
Arbitration, extensions, and re-signings, oh my!
The Houston Astros have a lot of problems to solve this offseason. Some of them good, easy problems to solve, others that will prove to be more difficult to solve. As this team gets better and better, Jim Crane will have to open up his pocketbook more and more to for Luhnow to acquire and retain guys.
The Astros have seven free agents to make decisions on this offseason plus a team option to either exercise or decline. Those guys would be Dallas Keuchel, Charlie Morton, Tony Sipp, Evan Gattis, Martin Maldonado, Marwin Gonzalez, and Darin Downs with Brian McCann being the man with the option.
I’ve discussed before who the team should and shouldn’t keep in free agency. That was an early look that didn’t include what happened in the playoffs. The playoffs shouldn’t completely change every decision but it does help inform them further.
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The Astros won’t, and maybe shouldn’t, keep all eight of these guys. Some likely won’t be their choice and others will be their choice. One of the guys I figured the team would keep was Maldonado, however, after he struggled with blocking pitches in the playoffs I’m not sure it’s a guarantee.
Aside from these potential re-signings, the Astros also need to decide if they’ll let Gerrit Cole play through his final year of arbitration, which will be a huge payday, or if they’ll legitimately offer him an extension to be an Astro for a long time. To me, he proved enough this past year and the team needs to extend him for a long time instead of giving him the option to hit the open market next year.
They also have a lot of arbitration battles to settle. More than likely, a lot these will go to an arbitrator because the team will like try to save some money on some of these players. So, it’ll be interesting to see how the team treats these guys that are arbitration eligible as it can dictate how things are going to go in the future when the player is eligible for free agency.