Wednesday Morning Hot Links

The biggest news of the night was the news that Evan Gattis had hernia surgery and is out for 4-6 weeks. Drellich says in the article that the "injury is not considered severe," which is exactly what they said about Carlos Gomez at the end of August.

So, 4-6 weeks. It's February 10, so if it's the minimum four weeks then he misses the first two-ish weeks of Spring Training. If it's six weeks he misses, he'll return about two weeks before Opening Day. Though Gattis texted McTaggart that he's optimistic he'll be ready for Opening Day "or shortly thereafter," that's not a lot of time to get ready for the season, and it's going to take some time to build up his strength. This should make Jon Singleton and A.J. Reed feel a little more confident heading into Spring Training.

More immediately, Gattis has an arbitration case in six days. It's unclear whether the recent surgery will be considered in determining his value for 2016.

*The Astros won their arbitration case against Jason Castro, meaning he'll make $5,000,000 in 2016 instead of $5,250,000. In baseball economics that seems like a petty number to argue over. But no one has ever told me that I'm worth a quarter of a million dollars less than I thought, so who am I to judge?

Here are your non-league-minimum salaries for 2016:
Rasmus: $15.8m
Gomez: $9m
Feldman: $8m
Keuchel: $7.25m
Fister: $7m
Neshek: $6.5m
Gregerson: $6.25m
Valbuena: $6.125m
Sipp: $6m
Castro: $5m
Altuve: $3.5m
Singleton: $2m
Marwin: $2m
Fields: $900,000

*Hardball Times on the science behind the crack of the bat.

*I've been sort of bored with this offseason - maybe call it a cautious excitement - but we've posted some history stuff about the Astros. Yesterday it was about Bob Watson and the one millionth run scored. Friday it was about the robbery in 2000 Spring Training. I have a couple of more posts in the works, but if there's a weird/random piece of Astros history you want explored, you can email it to astroscounty at gmail dot com or leave it in the comments. (Note: I've gone back and tagged as many pieces like these with the History Lesson tag. Feel free to peruse.)

Max Stassi hitting again

Recently-acquired Max Stassi, who had surgery to repair a sports hernia last month, tweeted out this evening that he resumed hitting. And with a #Success hashtag, we can presume that it went well.

Meat Wagon updates

Brian Bogusevic had that surgery on his right foot, and Tim Byrdak is scheduled to have surgery to deal with the sports hernia today in Massachusetts.

Both are, of course, expected to be ready for Spring Training.

Most likely Astros off-season destination? The OR

Brian McTaggart is reporting that two Astros already have surgeries scheduled:

Jeff Fulchino, tomorrow - elbow surgery
Tim Byrdak, October 14 - sports hernia surgery