Honestly, this market makes our trade chips that much more valuable. Cost-effective pitching seems more necessary than ever, and having a slew of good pitching prospects is a good place to be. Devinski, Musgrove, Feliz, Paulino, Martes, Whitley, Abreu, Ferrell, Rodgers...not all will pan out obviously, but I'd say we have more chips to deal with than a majority of other teams.
This is a great point, and I honestly wouldn't necessarily preclude any of the guys from our MLB rotation either. For example, maybe we'll need to include McCullers, McHugh, or Musgrove in order to trade for Sale or Archer. If the front office is really worried about McCullers blowing out his arm (sooner rather than later), then why not flip him, get great trade value, and add a bonafide ace to the rotation. You then have to ask yourself: is a duo of McCullers and McHugh better than a duo of Sale and Morton? With the injury risk quite high with McCullers, I think I'd end up settling on the Sale and Morton duo. These are all hypotheticals of course, and purely speculation on my part.
So I just spent a week an half in Cuba and went to hotel national in Havana and one of their banners celebrating celebrities had yulieski and his father loudes in it. Was hoping he would walk through the door as I had my Astros cap on.
Cabrera has $220M left on his deal which runs from age 34-40. Verlander has $106M left on his deal which runs from age 34-37. Aging curves and surplus value, how do they work???
They're also both coming off great (Cabrera), greater (Verlander) seasons. I thought your offer above was for Verlander only and was wondering why people were reacting poorly. For both?? No. It's not a firesale as far as I can tell...they'd be ok if they held onto those guys.
Anybody doing the math will see that it simply wouldn't be smart to give up a haul of top prospects take on those players (especially Cabrera) and their entire contracts. And I agree, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for Detroit to trade them unless they are really hurting financially.
They're not trading those guys for one above average prospect, one average prospect, one average pitcher, and one slumping former prospect. They're also not desperate from a financial standpoint.
I think he meant that it may be more important to have groundball pitchers next year, especially with MMP's park factor soon to strongly be favoring hitting for the first time since 2000.
Yes, I understand all that, and would agree with you if either of them were showing any signs of slowing down. As it stands though, Cabrera is coming off a phenomenal season where he was still an anchor in the lineup, and Verlander SHOULD have won the Cy Young. Given those circumstances, I don't think the Astros have any leverage in trade negotiations.
They both have shown sides of slowing down. Verlander showed an uptick in velocity after years of decreasing velocity, and with it came an improvement in performance. Similar to buying Oswalt after his 2010 season, saying there were no signs of slowing down. Cabrera was so just so damn great, that he can decline and still be very good. Of course, when you ask the Tigers to throw in $60M, you are asking them to buy down a lot of the age risk.
You are seriously downplaying the players going to Detroit in that scenario. Quick question: what kind of contract do you think Collin McHugh could get if he were a free agent right now? Martes is one of the top 50 prospects in the game, hardly just "above average". Fisher is on most Top 100 lists. And to write Reed off as a "slumping former prospect" is a little silly given that less than 6 months ago he was the top 1B prospect in baseball and his MLB sample hardly qualifies as career defining. Detroit may not be willing to toss in the $60M to make this a fair deal, but Verlander/Cabrera for $330M just doesn't have much surplus value, and the package going back has a ton.
And you're overrating them. Your main point is that Detroit is desperate to trade these guys due to their salary... and that is not the case. The owner wants to desperately get a World Series title before he dies, and will spare no expense. The front office does want to get younger.... and trading established contract-controlled stars for solid prospects is the best way to do that. They're not going to bend over backwards for a pitcher like McHugh that doesn't make them significantly younger or better now. Reed and Fisher are currently no better than most team's top prospects. And yes, that's the crux/problem when rating (overrating) prospects... that as soon as they get some MLB exposure, even if its 6 months worth, their value can drop just that fast. Martes is the best blue-chip prospect the Astros currently have...but they also have a huge starting pitching need that he probably could fill within the next 1-2 years, so trading him may not be the perfect solution to anything.
