Even though Quintana was having a bad season, he was one of the few SP that was on the market that is under team control for a few more years. The other 3 guys that come up a lot are Chris Archer, Gerrit Cole, and Sonny Gray. The Rays are in the hunt for a AL wild card spot, so I highly doubt they would move Archer at this point. Gerrit Cole will probably cost more than want the Cubs gave up for Quintana. So I think Sonny Gray is a good option. He's not having a good year either, but he's going to be on arbitration for the next 2 seasons. Astros could also go after Padres' Brad Hand, left-handed reliever. He was an all-star this year and would be a huge upgrade over Tony Sipp.
Scott Kazmir, Carlos Gomez, Mike Fiers, Ken Giles, Brian McCann. Not sure why you have the impression that Luhnow has been hoarding prospects and isn't willing to trade them away to improve the team.
Amazing haul for the White Sox. Especially considering that; 1) Quintana has been pretty mediocre this year, and 2) He could legitimately be considered the Cubs' 4th best starter right now.
I have the opposite reaction. Now that the Cubs have traded Eloy, the chances of competing with a team offering a Top 25 hitter has decreased.
True in some sense, but also sets a pretty high precedent for teams' asking price for a player of Quintana's calibre. AKA - won't be cheap.
How many relievers can the club carry on the roster? Maybe we just forget about SP and get 5 relievers and have like a 13 arm bullpen the way we've pretty much been doing it all damn year. Sarcasm, but unless it's DeGrom or Stroman, I'm really not interested in trading away Tucker and for the most part Martes. I'd give up the farm for Fulmer, but I don't think Detroit is that desperate or insane, I do not trust Gray staying healthy at all, Cole is meh- 3rd arm in the rotation and not even worth the haul they want at all and he's really not much better than Morton. Cueto, hell no- they guy has been **** this year in the NL not facing a DH and he's a FA next year and Archer isn't going anywhere.
A team also needs a good bullpen behind him as he's just like McCullers, at least this year. Very high pitch counts and rarely pitches 6 innings.
Good starting pitching becomes that much more important in the playoffs. Every team has extra arms in the bullpen... but leverage also goes way up in every inning, which has a way of making previous "elite" bullpen arms slightly less effective. (and on the flip-side, the bullpen arms that are really leverage-proof go up in value 10-fold... Devenski has a chance to be a series MVP if he continues his current trend).
Is there a reason Colin Moran or Tony Kemp couldn't be significant trade chips? I see a lot of suggestions of trading Tucker, Martes, Bregman, but not many with these two. Also I think we dodged a bullet with Quintana. He could have given us depth, but I don't think it would be worth giving up a player like Tucker for 3-4 rotation guy.
Honestly, it feels like an automatic pass with how abysmal this division is. If they don't make it now after this trade, that's a huge failure on their part.
That's not what I was getting at. They can't really be criticized either way at this point. They won it all last year... they could just as easily rest on their success, and hang on to their future elite prospects for another run. Or, they continue to trade all their top prospects that don't guarantee any sort of future success... for another shot to win it all now.
Might not be cheap, but Astros offers with depth probably don't have to worry about a team throwing a Top 25 hitting prospect in deal to give a seller option of quality vs quantity.
Lets go get Stroman or deGrom we should be able to do that with a package built around: Martes, Fisher, Moran, & Kemp and some lesser prospects
