Is it time to have a fire sale?. Has the Astro's management team failed? Will the Astros improve? Or decline further?
I’m not going to disrespect Hall of Famer Jeff Bagwell like that but you do you. I don’t think he’s above criticism but he’s no where near the absolute s***show that was the snake oil salesman of Easterbunny…a man who never played the sport he was charged with player personnel decisions. I’d trust Bagwell 1,000,000 times over on baseball decisions before I’d trust Jack fu**ing Easterby on anything other than bible verses.
Who knows. My guess is that if you proposed that over on a Dodgers site they’d laugh; Rushing and Ryan are the top 2 prospects in one of the 3 best farm systems in baseball.
^^^ ^^^ Tongue-in-cheek post Still my favorite player and I doubt he has tremendous pull in organizational decisions. It was said Click mentioned interest in Abreu prior to his dismissal. Astros are about to turn the corner and win ~95 games. AL Pennant favorites .
Yea, they ain't selling Tucker BUT if they did, especially with two years control, the package would be WAY higher than that
If it were mid season next year that is the type of package you could get for Tucker. Dodger fans may be really high on those guys, but generally speaking Rushing is a back end top 100 guys and Ryan/George aren't even top 100 guys. They may be good solid prospects, but for two years of Tucker you at minimum get a top 10 type and another top 50 type in the deal
Ryan is Fangraphs current #20 prospect in all of MLB. Rushing is #60. Teams don’t trade MLB top 10 prospects. Ryan is about as highly ranked of a headliner as Houston could reasonably ask for.
Yea I guess that shows how much view on prospects can differ Cause most places don't have him nearly that high. For Dana Brown I guess it depends on what he thinks those two guys absolute ceiling is, cause he certainly looks more at ceiling that floor. I won't pretend to know a lot about Ryan other than he is a guy with velo but command issues, but a large majority of prospect people don't have him as a top 100. Rushing is the type of high upside high risk guy Brown would probably be intrigued by. He definitely has power but as he has moved up his hit took seems suspect. He has also struggled with velo and in today's game that is a bit scary for a guy when you think about the majors. You don't see top 10 guys moved often because you don't see guys like Tucker moved when they have two years of control. I'm pretty sure CJ Abrams was seen as a legit top 10 guy when he was in the deal for Soto a few years back.
Abrams was a top prospect. I think he was fangraphs #11 overall and Gore was #77. So taken together those 2 are roughly what I would expect to get for Tucker although like I said the better prospect will probably be ranked closer to 30th than 10th. But Soto is a hall of fame caliber player; Tucker is a perennial fringe MVP candidate. Theres a pretty big difference in value/scarcity between those two types of players. And an even bigger factor is that Soto had an additional year of control compared to Tucker. (Granted, the Padres also tossed in 3 other prospects, but they also got back Bell to go with Soto.)
Pretty sure there won’t be a sell off of a dynastic roster this season even if this slow start continues. Tucker and even Bregman in a contract year being traded does not seem like moves I expect this franchise to make no matter what happens the next couple of months
I agree, trading Bregman and Tucker does not seem like something Crane would approve. I also don’t expect the team to be out of contention. But if they were out of contention then trading all their players with <2 years of control is probably the right move. They can replace those guys in free agency and still have a top 10 farm system. Here’s a hypothetical 2025 roster: 2B Altuve DH Alvarez C Diaz 3B Matt Chapman (free agent signing) SS Pena LF McCormick 1B Rushing (acquired from LAD for Tucker) RF Loperfido CF Meyers Bench: Dubon, Omar Narvaez (free agent signing), Kessinger, Leon Rotation: Scherzer (free agent signing), Ryan (acquired from LAD for Tucker), Javier, Garcia, Blanco, France Bullpen: Hader, Abreu, Brown, McCullers, Martinez, Scott, Dubin, Whitley Traded: J Abreu, Bregman, Caratini, Tucker, Verlander, Valdez, Montero, Pressly, Urquidy Their farm would be one of the best in the league, and they’d have Arrighetti, Blubaugh and others as excellent pitching depth or trade bait. They’d have added 6-8 other good prospects outside of Ryan and Rushing plus another handful of lesser lotto prospects. They’d also have a lot of payroll flexibility even after signing Chapman and Scherzer. They’d be in a LOT better long term situation.
I think it’s really interesting that comment Chandler made recently about Reggie Jackson’s podcast appearance as it seems to imply that Chandler subscribes to this so called “Easterbags” thesis. In the podcast Reggie is b****ing about the Yankees and about how he had to leave bc they wouldn’t treat him like a glorified AGM. He doesn’t say exactly what he does for the Astros, but that seems to imply he gets to have such input in Houston.