Houston Astros News: Three things Michael Brantley adds to the team
By T.A. Mock
The Houston Astros made their first splash of the offseason on Monday night when they inked Michael Brantley to a two-year $32 million deal, here’s what he adds to the team.
The Houston Astros have now been in full offseason mode for about six weeks. There’s been endless speculation on what the team would do to fill the void of the likes of Dallas Keuchel, Charlie Morton, Brian McCann, Marwin Gonzalez, and many others.
Would the team aim for the big fish, maybe even star fish? Would they scour the free agent market? Perhaps they would look to the trade block to fill needs. Or, maybe, they like the pieces that are in place and have faith prospects will step up in bigger, more featured roles.
For a while, it appeared the latter was true. The team was endlessly linked to countless players by fans and media alike but nothing was coming anywhere close to fruition. To be fair, it took a long, long time for any dominoes to start to fall so the Astros haven’t been the only cautious team.
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However, Monday night changed that for the Houston Astros. Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic broke the news that the Astros and free agent outfielder, Michael Brantley were verging on a deal that would bring him to Houston. Brantley was one of the names that had been consistently linked with the team so this is no surprise but it is an exciting prospect nonetheless.
Brantley was formerly one of the top, up-and-coming stars in this league as recently as 2014. He seemed to be a perennial 20-20 type of player that was going to wreak havoc on the rest of the league for a long time. A shoulder injury and a pair of subsequent surgeries derailed this a little bit but 2018 saw the beginning of a return to form for Brantley.
Still only a little over a year removed from his full return to baseball, Brantley has some rust to still shake off after missing a huge chunk of time. However, he still offers a lot to the Houston Astros so, let’s take a look at three of the main things he brings to this team.