Those trades gutted the system, though. They dealt 14 players from their system for Huff, Jennings, Wiggington, Tejada and Valverde, with Huff and Jennings FAs-to-be. Neither resigned with the team. That created a giant hole.
If by a giant hole you mean they lost a lot of mediocre talent, I'll agree. Minor league depth is meaningful only if it yields quality major-league talent.
This whole thread, ive been trying to get a handle on exactly how we went from a strong farm to a terrible one. At first, it looked like we traded them away. But if the guys we traded didnt amount to much, then somewhere down the line, we just began not drafting as well as we once did on top of trading them away. Do I have it right now
From my point of view it isn't that we traded away the talent, mediocre or not, it was who we acquired for that talent. Jason Jennings was the big blow IMHO. They guy was at best a solid #3 and was injured, we gave up Willy T who in reality wasn't a good leadoff hitter but had value and Jason Hirsch who certainly had value as a young cheap arm. Whether they turned into anything is irrelevant but what they got you in return hurt a lot.
What our traded players do isnt relevant to the status of the Astros. But its rather relevant when looking at the status of the farm. If all/most of the guys we were trading were having stellar careers on their new teams, one could surmise that we must be drafting pretty well. If the guys we traded all/most turned into duds, then you might start to question the evaluation skills of the guys who drafted them.
