re: DAT: 2023-2024 Off Season Thread

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I was told to forget his name. I had.

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We'd forgotten his name. Then Crane gave us a Dollar Tree off season budget so Whitley got a ticket out of the Land of Forgotten Toys and he's being auditioned as a reliever now.

To Recap DATers:

Astros are going with:

A starting Rotation with the top guys being a 76 year old Justin Verlander and a 3-month-prediagnosed TommyJohn Framber Valdez.

Relief Pitching group made from overused and should've never been used arms.

A lineup consisting of:

A 49 year old First Baseman with the single mole-hairs from fifty-seven 102 year old chinamen on his chin.

An undersized legend at second base that is entering his 34 year old season.

Not Carlos Correa at SS.

A rehabbed fat-Alex turned skinny-alex turned-fat-guy-waiting-to-get-out Alex at 3B

The best hitter in baseball playing LF and sometimes DH.

Chaz Meyers in CF.

A pissed-off future SF Giants and NL MVP winner in LF.

And a gold-glove winning, have-no-fricking-clue-what-kind-of-hitter-he-truly-is Utility man.

And we get all of this for the non-low cost of $273 Million.

Hey, I'm not even mad. This is the most excited I've been right before Spring Training since 2018.

Dusty Baker has fricked the frick off.

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You know what's not on your list? An old fat Catcher who can't hit, catch, throw or anything else important.

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For 10 years I’ve read “forget his name” over and over and over.

You know what? I literally forgot his name.

Dollar Tree Jim ain't signing anyone. We're lucky he spent $6mm/year to bring in Caratini instead of paying Moldy a coaches salary to catch. I see our bullpen is penciled in as

Pressly
Abreu
Montero
France
Gage
Bielak
Whitley
Arrighetti

Since we have no one left in the system to trade or a penny to spend at the deadline, McCullers and Garcia will be billed as the "deadline acquisitions"

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If he comes back and throws his original curveball,

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I'm not sure he could if he wanted to.

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Pressly
Abreu
Montero
France
Gage
Bielak
Whitley
Arrighetti

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Sousa, not Gage.
Dylan Coleman may end up a 7th/8th inning option by default.

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Is there ANY chance that the Astros could be absorbed into this in some way?

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Not as part of this agreement. Amazon bought in on a stake of the Bally Networks (formerly the Fox RSNs) as a part of their bankruptcy restructuring. Bally had gone bankrupt because a bunch of carriers had opted not to renew carriage agreements in favor of cost cutting to battle cord cutting. As part of the agreement with Amazon, Prime will serve as the in-market streaming outlet for the Bally Networks, replacing the previous stand alone Bally streaming service.


The Astros are stuck in the past, both to a benefit and detriment. The original TV network CSN Houston was a partnership with Comcast which automatically brought along the Comcast XFinity subscribers. When the network was bought out of bankruptcy by DirecTV and AT&T, the DirecTV and UVerse agreements were added. So we have carriage agreements and subscriber fees running through 2032 with those providers. Idk what the subscriber fee runs but consider a fee paid by every XFINITY, Uverse and DirecTV customer in the Astros regional broadcast area. It's a considerable amount of money.

Consider this setup vs a situation like Ballys networks where their agreements have expired and the carriers have just walked away. Bally had no fees coming in so they couldn't make payments to the teams which is why they went bankrupt. The streaming setup where interested fans buy a specific streaming service vs charging every cable subscriber a RSN fee is a massive difference in money coming in. So the Astros and Rockets have basically taken over operations of the network and maintained the status quo of being tied to TV providers and keeping them happy because its such an advantage to have that guaranteed revenue coming in.


In theory the Astros and Rockets as sole owners of the network could sell independently offer a streaming subscription service or sell the streaming rights to Amazon but right now their money is coming in from TV providers who are currently offered the exclusivity of being the only in market broadcast option for fans. Seems like for now, the teams aren't interested in rocking that boat and risking termination lawsuits etc.

I want an easy straightforward in market streaming option so I was pretty jealous when I saw this Amazon deal today. At the same time, we have a far more stable revenue stream with the outdated TV provider agreements. Blessing and a curse.


I'm curious what Amazon's long term plan is by getting in here. Between the 14 Bally teams plus their stake in YES, they've now got streaming for half of MLB teams.