Houston Astros: Five value free agents who can elevate the team in 2019
By T.A. Mock
Justin Wilson, LHP
A year and a half ago, Justin Wilson was the creme de la creme of the trade deadline. He broke out in a big way for the Tigers in 2017 taking the closer role for his own and just completely dominating hitters on a daily basis. There were several people who thought the Houston Astros should have gone after him then but the Cubs won out on that.
The last 2+ months of the season with the Cubs in 2017, Wilson’s production fell off a cliff in a major way. He had a 2.68 ERA and a 0.94 WHIP with the Tigers. After the trade, he had a 5.02 ERA and a 2.09 WHIP. Just a complete reversal of fortunes for the lefty reliever.
Wilson quickly became an afterthought for a lot of Major League Baseball and it’s fans. He was completely forgotten about this year and not talked about at all. However, he pieced together a pretty solid season, not on the pre-trade 2017 level, but solid nonetheless.
Wilson pitched in 71 games for the Cubs and managed a 3.46 ERA to pair with a 1.43 WHIP. Neither of those are great but the ERA is good enough thought he WHIP is a little high. This would be one of the areas the Astros would need to make sure they could improve on as his walk numbers were pretty high.
Wilson also had 16 holds on the season and managed to keep up his terrific strikeout numbers from 2017. He struck out 69 batters in 54.2 innings, that’s good for 11.4 strikeouts per nine innings. That’ll play on any team, especially one as strikeout savvy as the Astros.
Wilson leans heavily on his fastball, a lot more than a lot of other pitchers. He threw it 75.4% of the time in 2018 which is up a lot from 67.4% usage rate in 2017. He leaned less on his slider and cutter in 2018 than he did in 2017. If the Astros helped him reverse those trends he could return to dominance quickly.
Wilson could probably be had for about $6 to $7 million a year for a few years. The Astros should jump at the opportunity to add Wilson this offseason, especially at that price tag.