Astros MUST trade for a top flight closer at the deadline. That moves everyone down a notch, you're back to having the best 8th inning guy in the business in Pressly. That moves Neris, Stanek and Montero to 6th/7th innings where they belong and are best suited. You all of a sudden have a great bullpen. The bullpen as currently constituted is not helping you win a World Series title.
I've seen quite a few top flight closer deals bomb for teams, seems like we're better off trading for the 2nd or 3rd best closer at the deadline. Compare: Giving up Toro, an average major leaguer at best for Graveman last year, vs the White Sox giving up two top 100 prospects for a rental of Kimbrel
Let's look at promoting Hunter Brown and another good relief option from AAA. I think our farm system is going to thin out after the last two drafts and also because of the impact of no longer having Luhnow. We need to hold on to our talent in the minors as a result.
I really want to see Brown working out of the bullpen 3 innings at a time one every 4 or 5 days in Houston starting around August 15 or so.
Ahhh yes...call up the #1 SP prospect and "another good relief option from AAA" I agree. They need that ****ing relief guy up, pronto. It's a brilliant plan, TJ.
What top prospects did we give up last year? The cost we paid for last year's rentals amounts to a total of -0.6 WAR. Giving up AAAA guys isn't a big deal. Even going back, the track record is pretty good for not giving up top talent. 2019: Josh Rojas is the only guy with positive WAR from the Grenkie trade (1.1 over 800 at bats) 2018: Joe Musgrove turned into a damn good pitcher for San Diego, everyone else is already out of the majors or bearly hanging on in the case of Colin Moran. Very good trade in terms of maximizing our window in 2018 and 2019, but I'll admit it would have been nice to keep Joe around in 2021. 2017: Franklin Perez has yet to make it out of AA, while Jake Rodgers and Daz Cameron look to be middling starters at best. The worst instance of giving up a prospect has to be Josh Hader for Carlos Gomez, but it looks like Luhnow and all the staff still from those years learned their lesson from that. Besides, Josh Hader has a scary habit of blowing up in the postseason, he might be the most hated man in town had he stayed.
I’d probably go Odo if he’s still in the rotation as a chance of pace, But I’d be fine with Javier too as two hard throwing young dudes that you are trying to keep innings off of and not likely to go super deed. Or LMJ rounding into shape if that’s when he’s back. Playoffs this is what I hope to see: JV/bullpen Framber/bullpen LMJ/Javier/bullpen Garcia/Brown/bullpen bullpen- Presley, Montero, Norris, Stanek, Abreu and Urquidy or Odo (I’d like to trade Odo at the deadline if we can get any interesting future value but doubt we do). 12 guys.
Offense this would be my ideal: Maldonado, Bell, Altuve, Peña, Bregman, Brantley, Meyers, Tucker, Yordan. 5 Bench- Lee, Y. Diaz (Emergency catcher and PH) Gurriel, Chaz, Siri (PR/defensive replacement). Your PH are Y Diaz, Chaz and Gurriel. Gurriel plays 3B and Bregman SS in an emergency where Peña gets hurt- Aledmys is immediately rostered that evening if that were to happen. Castro is waived. A Diaz is kept on the taxi squad. This assumes they like Lee’s defense as well as they like Castros. Lee’s only purpose is to play defense after you PH for Maldonado if you are down and that makes sense in the 5th inning or later. Y Diaz if you need to pinch hit for Lee later in the game still down in the 8th or 9th. Bell is my ideal 1B trade scenario but it doesn’t have to be him. This all presupposes that: 1) Meyers is back to what he was last year and we don’t need to make a move there 2) 1B gets upgraded 3) they decide not to upgrade C 4) Lee and Brown are actually ready (they’d be my call ups no later than September 1 when you get two to determine that) 5) Y Diaz bat is advanced and he could get through a couple innings if we absolutely needed to and had PH already for both catchers. You kind of view him in the game there as a positive bc it means you came back from being down late, as that’s the only way you’d PH for both guys. Sure it’s not ideal, but it’s better than losing, obviously. 6) health for everyone mentioned above. Which will never happen. I assume these things will take care of themselves- they normally do. the biggest takeaway is though, in cruising to the division title and being locked into the bye we get time to see if Meyers is going to be ok, mess around with a guy like Brown, wait all the way to the deadline to see what rental bat we can get for the cheapest, and rest and rotate guys throughout. We also don’t likely need Odo if Lance is healthy if you don’t see him as part of the playoff team. Because you could call up literally anyone from AAA and ping a starter every 6th day and it wouldn’t matter- we have that kind of lead on an exceedingly mediocre division. And mediocre AL Central for the 2 seed at that.
Sure- you’d end up grinding out your pitchers bc you’d have too many bullpen guys going too many days in a row. As a one or 1.5 month experiment when rosters expand you’ve got a free spot so it doesn’t mess with that dynamic. Playoffs are obviously all bets off. Also- there’s probably very few organizations that have 8 or 9 guys that profile as #4 starters or better to even want to mess with something like that.
So, Seth Martinez is now at 17ip with 0er... Bryan Abreu actually looks halfway competent this year. Any reason we don't see them out there in anything except blowouts?
My call up date for Brown would be Tuesday the 23rd of August. Start of a homestand against the Twins. He could get about 8 appearances and 20 innings to see if you like what he gives you for 2 or 3 innings at a time.
Dusty knows the only way to win is to rely on your closer with awful peripherals and trot out your set up man 3 days in a row and hope for the best. In more seriousness, Martinez has walk problems, and Abreu's WHIP is above 1.200 but we still have a 10+ game lead in the division, no reason to run the BP into the ground. Btw, Abreu has way better peripherals than Pressley this year, and is pitching about as well as Maton.
Patrick Sandoval, Ramon Laureano, Teoscar Hernandez... Stassi, J.D. Davis, Tony Kemp, and Villar weren't really prospects anymore but the Astros took the L on those trades as well so far if you grade them soley based on WAR like you were doing. They did a good job, but not to the degree your narative was trying to spin.
Even then, the only horrendous trade I see after 2016 was Sandoval to the Angels. While you're right and they did give up more decent major leaguers than I thought, most of the depletion of the farm so far came from prospects getting promoted into the majors and flameouts in the minors. Still hard to evaluate Click as his prospects haven't been around for long. But I see already a few guys to look out for (Q. Hamilton, J.C. Correa, Santos regressed but he's still 20, Y. Diaz blasting his way though the minors), tempered by some frustrating results (Tyler Whitaker's only 19, but looks utterly lost in low-A, and some more regression from the 20 year olds).
