Continuing the trend of least-surprising news, Mark Berman talked to Chris Snyder's agent, who said that the Astros would rather pay him $500K to not play for them than to pay him $4m to wear a new Astros uniform.
Luhnow says Carlos Corporan will earn a shot at the C2 position.Which is fine. Corporan isn't yet arbitration-eligible, so he gets league-minimum, and in nine September appearances (seven starts), he hit .259/.286/.407. Is 29 PAs enough to make a judgment? Of course not, but the Astros won't be paying Chris Snyder $4m to do a worse job.
This doesn't mean that Snyder is out of the picture. Luhnow went on to say that he was interested in bringing Snyder back (or another catcher on a non-guaranteed deal) to compete for the backup job.
Whomever it is will be a short-term option. The Astros already have Chris Wallace (.724 OPS between OKC and Corpus), Jair Fernandez (.761 OPS at Corpus), and Ben Heath (.770 OPS at Lancaster) at High-A or above. Somebody has to pan out, right?
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
