Yes, I think it's safe to assume, after four innings, that he's not as good as advertised. (Are we honestly going to overreact to every four innings he throws this year?...)
I can guarantee you that if the Astros traded for him and his first outing he gave up 6 earned runs in the first 4 innings then you'd have a ton of Astros fans overreacting a bit. That said, I just asked the question, I wasn't hinting in any way which direction I was leaning on the issue.
Aww, you had an opportunity to do something other than trolling and you just couldn't manage. I guess that's what you are all about these days. Carry on kiddo.
Just a bad day. April is the toughest month to predict. He'll bounce back. Not insinuating that we shouldn't trade for him, just thought his start was relevant to this thread.
Every start he makes with the White Sox the more his trade value drops, regardless of how good he is. Hahn made a mistake in not dealing him in the offseason.
Could be a myriad of reasons. How was the weather? Was it cold by any chance? If so, it's harder sometimes to get the grip/control that you'd want. No need to make excuses though, it is simply one bad game. No team will raise or lower their valuation of a player due to a two week sample size, let along one very good or one very bad performance. Also, I would think we should be rooting for the White Sox to fail, so they can go ahead and go full rebuild mode, and send us both Quintana and Abreu.
Dude has 800+ innings in 4 years. Perhaps he is not as sharp as he once was... This is exactly why I was not for trading away the farm for him. Musgrove is going to rock
I think we will know within 3-4 starts what can be expected out of Morton and Musgrove. If both of them are dominant then I would expect Houston to stand pat unless there's an injury. If both flounder early Luhnow might try to make a move to get in front of the deadline madness. McHugh and Fiers are more known quantities so I don't think their early performances will be as critical.
Seems like weird logic to me. Even if they pitch well early on I wouldn't feel good about either starting game 2 or 3 of a playoffs series. Neither of them are surrogates for Quintana.
If both Morton and Musgrove come out of the gate and each have 4 dominant starts to begin their season, you have to feel pretty good that as long as everybody stays healthy one of McHugh/Morton/Musgrove will be a good 3rd playoff starter. Not only that, but then you're faced with the problem of having to bump one of them from the rotation if you add Quintana, which is only realistically solved by including Musgrove in the trade, but it doesn't make much sense to trade a young pitcher who is currently performing like a ToR SP in the majors. Again, anyone getting significantly injured or underperforming throws all this out the window and dramatically increases the need to add a frontline starter, but in the scenario I'm talking about it wouldn't make sense to give up top prospects and bump a star pitcher from the rotation in order to add Quintana.
Even if they come out of the gate hot that's no indication that they'll have the durability to throw meaningful innings 6 months later. Particularly for Morton I really doubt he'll be able to throw meaningful innings in October. Musgrove will probably hit an innings limit if he's healthy all year.
Musgrove threw over 150 innings last season. He's not going to be on a limit. Morton can probably only throw 130 under the best case scenario. But if he's pitching that well they can shift him to the pen for 2 months or put him in a tandem with Fiers.
Musgrove will be on a limit. I'm guessing they don't want him going more than 180 in the regular season.
I'd be ecstatic getting 180 IP out of Musgrove (or any #4 starter). That's Musgrove having all-star worthy numbers. Keuchel and McCullers looked outstanding. Morton, Musgrove, McHugh & Fiers have a good track record. Counting on atleast two of them to hold serve and have strong seasons is not crazy. If someone tanks or goes on the DL, I think Luhnow will give a shot too Martes and/or Paulino before he gives up the farm on a Quintana/Archer/etc Right now I think LHRP's are the biggest need. Sipp is probably the weakest link on the team. Peacock is out of options and likely waived when McHugh is off the DL. But they can benefit from having two LHRP in the pen but Feliz, Gustave and Hoyt are making that a tough but good decision
I can see the question marks on Morton. If Musgrove has 4 dominant starts, this board is going to go crazy, and the Astros will likely have to start considering what to do if he continues to pitch well to keep hin as a potential playoff SP.
