I don't see that as Brown's style. He doesn't want to trade for someone else's superstar. He wants to find and create the next superstar then keep him on his original team for 15 years.
Not sure I totally agree. When Brown was with the Braves they traded for Matt Olson and Sean Murphy. I don’t think Brown is opposed to trading for stars from other teams, especially if he thinks he can extend them. (Obviously that’s not to say Houston will be in any mix for Trout or Ohtani, although I would hope if either of those guys is available at the deadline that Houston at least makes an offer.)
Young stars yes. Both of them were still in arbitration which makes them more affordable with a chance they still haven't peaked. Taking on Trout and/or Ohtani would make the payroll skyrocket with little to no upside. The best deals have a chance to overperform or underperform with the likely result in the middle. With those 2, they could perform up to it or significantly below it with zero chance of out performing it. Hard pass - to the point that I may stop bring a fan (temporarily) after 45 years.
I wouldn’t go after Trout as he starts to break down. Ohtani is the only player in baseball I would consider paying 50M for 10 years. For the next 3-5 years he is like having an all-star hitter and a cy young pitcher for 25m each. At some point, he might play on one side of the ball, but will still be great and the way salaries are going a perennial MVP candidate is going to be worth close to that anyway.
I don’t expect the Astros to be involved in Ohtani’s free agency, as I expect 2-3 teams to go to crippling lengths to sign him. But I would think Houston would at least be on the periphery of trade discussions for him at the deadline. He is the kind of player who can decide the World Series.
Dang, as someone that likes following the minor leagues (though not to the degree of some on this message board), it HURTS me to imagine the kind of trade package someone like Ohtani would require. Though you are right, he would tip the scales moreso than probably anyone else you could acquire.
The appealing aspect of him being a rental is that it keeps the cost in range for any team that wants to go for it. Ohtani is making $30M this season and will have $10M-$15M left at the deadline. How much can any team possible value 1/2 a season of any player, even one with the potential impact of Ohtani? $50M? $75M? A hundred million dollars, for a rental??? Of course, Houston has a fairly lowly rated farm, so unless they have multiple major breakouts, they’d likely be looking at trading from their major league roster.
How much would a contender pay to increase their odds by 20-25 percent or so. I'm not so sure it would help us as much this year as it would the Mets or Yankees who have great teams but some gaps in pitching and hitting to fill, assuming our pitching staff does what it is capable of and if Brantley and Alvarez are healthy who would be our DH.
I was going to say that. Only chance it raises a team's chances by 5% is if it is a close race between the two perceived best teams in the same division (say Mets and Braves). Even then, I'd expect it to be in the 2-3 range.
And 5% is huge. With so many playoff teams and a system that makes WC teams actual championship contenders, no team should ever be over 25% until all star break and maybe 35% at start of playoffs. Last year as playoffs started baseball reference and fangraphs had following odds to win World Series: Dodgers 29.2%br / 15.0% fg Astros 23.6% / 17.6%fg Braves 14.2% / 15.1%fg Yankees 13.1% / 9.3%fg Mets 4.6% / 10.8%fg Blue Jays 2.9% / 6.1%fg Rays 2.8% / 4.1%fg Mariners 2.6% / 4 2%fg Cards 2.3% / 3.3%fg Guardians 1.9% / 2 1%fg Padres 1.5% / 6.7%fg Phillies 1.3% / 5.7%fg Right now Fangraphs has the Braves with the best chance to win at 14.6% I don't know if any 1 player ( though you can argue that Ohtani is 2 players) can increase odds 5%+ but if so it's huge.
In a best of 7 series, he will replace your 4th starter as a pitcher. So he literally could flip the odds of a game from being the underdog to being heavily favored and and potentially series by 20 percent. That doesn't even include the potential impact with a bat which is close to Alvarez's impact.
But from what point are you considering? Maybe he increases the chsnces of winning game 4 of a series by 20% But at the all star break he is not changing any team's chances of winning the World Series by 20%
I was talking about increasing their a teams chances from where they were. So if they had a 25 percent chance at the break, they would add 5 percent to that (20 percent of 25 percent), so 30 total. It would have a bigger impact than the Verlander trade for us in 2017.
I understood what you were saying and I think 25% is probably the right number for most teams and low for many teams at the trade deadline. A 500 team might have a 0.5% chance of winning it all and if a Ohtani were to join them that could balloon to something like 2 or 3%, easily. Or a 10% chance could become 12.5%.
According to fangraphs the chances of the Astros winning the World Series went from 15.7% to 16.4% on 8/2/2017 after Verlander was traded for. If Verlander improved the Astros chances 0.7% I don't see Ohtani making a 5% difference. Ohtani is a great and valuable player but you are overvalued the difference ANY 1 player can make.
