He hit .262 coming off an injury (right at his debut) and a year of down time in Cuba. If you got to see him swing, you know that he has the goods.
Injury accounts for lack of production. Decade of top-level production at WBC and international play. No need to doubt.
Wouldn't be the first to see his stats not translate, especially in his 30s. He looks good, but far from a sure thing.
1B is a bit of a ?? But I think because we have had some guys have first year success in the big leagues, a large portion of the fan base kind of writes off prospects when they struggle in their first go around too much...I still think A.J. Reed has a good shot at being a very good offensive 1B. Having his potential with Gurriel as the other option, leaves us in the best 1B shape we had for quite a while
Gurriel?? 104 of his 130 at bats came in the month of September, when he hit .250 with a .269 on base I think he is gonna be good, but no he didn't hit over .300 in the final month or two, he made his debut August 21st, so he didn't even play two months in the bigs
On the flipside, what could the Astros have gotten if they traded away Tim Redding or Carlos Hernandez before they flamed out?
Carlos Hernández got hurt sliding into 2nd base. Had the Astros traded him, he might have had a healthy career and been an elite pitcher. He was really good when he first got called up. Darn that slide☹️️
They could have gotten Mark Mulder or Mark Buehrle, how would you have known which one would have a career?
Dealing Miller after his first breakout year would have actually been one of those amazing foresight moves. In fact, weren't there several in the organization who were convinced it was only a matter of time before he blew his arm/shoulder out due to those crappy mechanics? To me, not trading Daryle Ward when he had some real value (and still had Bagwell and Berkman potentially blocking him) was the real missed opportunity. An AL team looking for a DH/1B would have likely given up something decent. Instead, we got to watch Ward attempt to play the OF.
The back and forth here about trading away or not trading away prospects is funny to me. None of us have a crystal ball, so how can you guys be so adamant and so passionate about things that will happen in the future? None of us know how ANY player will do next year and beyond. Hell, as consistent as Quintana has been, none of us can be 100% certain. Now, you definitely can point to his resume, and that should help mitigate some risk there, but for kids like Martes, Kyle Tucker, and even a relative unknown in Musgrove (he hasn't even pitched a full season yet, let's pump the brakes just a tad on calling him a solid #2 - although it is quite possible, which is part of my point). And for the record, I am quite high on Martes, so I am not even thrilled to trade him away. I guess my overall point is that there are valid reasons to trade our prospects for an immediate upgrade to our contending core, and there are also valid reasons to hold onto all of our prospects, and hope that one or two of them hits their ceiling, and then we can add them to our contending core. I guess the whole idea to proclaim one idea as dumb is funny to me. Both ways can work out great for us, and at the same time, both ways can crash and burn terribly for us. Let's at least respect each other's hypotheticals here, just a tad. I don't know, I didn't really add any value there, I guess I just needed to vent. I'll blame the slow news, hahaha!
Agreed that there are positives and negatives to either argument. What it comes down to mostly is value--Luhnow and co. obviously feel that the trade offers to help us upgrade SP have been far too skewed to pull the trigger. If the value match isn't right it won't happen.
Baseball is fickle. There is nothing wrong with being wrong 40% of the time based on actual results. On decision making, you can't consistently make moves that odds are you are going to lose a lot of wins long term. As long as front office doesn't suck at estimating future wins, making good decisions, even if a few go bad due to randomness, is to be valued. This isn't to say I'm against all future for present trades...just ones that expected wins aren't even close (about 20% is my limit and seems to fit most actual trades).
