The most recent onslaught of craziness came just last week, when the Astros handed a three year deal - three years! - to Brandon Lyon worth a whopping $15 million, then turned around and brought in Pedro Feliz on a one-year deal for $4.5 million.
Neither of those moves makes even the slightest bit of sense.
But even if you look at it from the perspective of a win now club, these moves don't make much sense. Brandon Lyon is not a good reliever. I'm sorry, but he's just not. I'm sure he's a lovely person and probably one hell of a dancer, but as for the pitching? Not so much. Sure, he put up a sweet looking ERA of 2.86 in 2009, but it was as illusory as sub-3.00 ERAs get. He was aided by an unsustainably low BABIP of .229 and an unsustainably high strand rate of 80.1%. Normalize those, and the picture gets a whole lot thornier, closer to the 4.06 FIP Lyon posted. Add in the fact he'll be moving from one of the most pitcher-friendly parks in all of baseball in Detroit to the Minute Maid Bandbox of Doom, and things could get mighty ugly for Houston's new reliever.
The weird thing is that the Lyon acquisition comes on the heels of a pretty good idea, that of letting Jose Valverde walk. When I saw the Astros pretty much gave Valverde his walking papers, I was actually glad. Finally, I thought, the 'Stros are figuring out they need to start over and not keep spending year after year trying to keep something going. They followed that up by acquiring Matt Lindstrom who is young and cheap and somewhat decent (not great, but young and cheap at least), and I felt like it was clear they were heading in the right direction. Then, of course, they go hand Brandon F. Lyon three years and fifteen mil, and I start to feel like the world is going all topsy-turvy again.
And as for Feliz, oy. Now, don't think I'm going to tell you Feliz has no value, because that just isn't true. He absolutely does have value. He was worth exactly 1.3 wins above replacement level last year. Now, let me tell you why that makes him such a bad idea.
All of Feliz' value last year came from his glove. He was worth 4.9 runs above the average third baseman, while being 15.5 runs worse than average. Add in the replacement value for his position of 20.8 runs, and voila! You have a player worth 12.7 runs above replacement, or 1.3 wins. Unfortunately, Feliz will also turn 35 at the end of April next season, and rare indeed is the player who manages not to lose a step or two in his mid-thirties. Now, maybe moving to Houston will give him a bump offensively, as he is a dead-pull hitter who will be playing with the Crawford boxes barely a football field away, but it isn't as if he was playing in Petco Park last season. The Phillies' stadium is one of the most hitter friendly in all of baseball. Somehow I doubt he's going to get a huge bump offensively.
So what we have is a player who will likely be worth, at the most, a win and a half of value. Last season, the Astros got approximately one win out of their third-base combo of Jeff Keppinger and Geoff Blum. That's a net gain of one-half of a win.
