2022 Trade Targets

Good. I hope he starts every single playoff game. He can’t hit good pitching at all.

 

What specific players did you want them to get (I don’t mean that snarky either). If I have any criticism it would be they felt they would get Bell because they were willing to meet an asking price, but they didn’t consider him going in a Soto deal.

 

I wouldn’t assume that.

 

You know why.

 

The CF market was pretty much crap (the one thing I was hoping for after the Mancini/Vazquez trades), an unfortunate year for that to happen, but the CF situation all around MLB is weak right now.

 

Bell getting combo'd into the Soto deal was something the Stros couldn't do anything about, and was pretty shocking to me.

 

They literally looked into everyone that can play CF. They didn’t think he was an improvement over what they have. He is toast against high leverage pitching.

 

I suppose someone could say the Astros should have prepared for every possibility but I agree with you. There was nothing they could do once Bell was rolled into the Soto deal. The Astros also have Mancini is Yuli isn’t good enough.

I get the frustration but this isn’t a normal trade deadline with the increased playoffs and everything waiting on Soto to be moved.

I have heard some fans say “what if Yuli doesn’t hit and Brantley is hurt and Bregman sucks.” …. Well If all that happens, we aren’t winning anyway.

I will say this - the Giants warned teams they were likely to hold onto their guys and that is fine. The Cubs on the other hand told everyone they were open for business and they never had a remotely reasonable demand for their players. A number of teams waited on them and nothing ever happened. Some bad blood there.

 

Really glad we didn’t get Lowe. Lol.

 

I am not a huge Click fan. I don’t hate him, I just haven’t decided how I feel about him.

Having said that Merrifield has a 290 OBP this year and has been a below average fielder. So unless he magically starts playing like he did a few years ago (it does happen), he isn’t going to help.

As for Bader, he is a good 4th outfielder but he is basically a lesser version of Marisnick. He has a really nice glove, but he really struggles against good pitching. He doesn’t really move the needle. They can like call up Leon and get as good a glove and similar offensive production.

They wanted guys that were better than their internal options but there were few options.

 

It's kind of shocking how slow Mancini is for a guy who looks like he should be a decent athlete. If you saw him and Meyers or McCormick, how would you know one of them was eons slower than the other two? Good thing Mancini is pretty good at everything else.

 

Will the Astros call up Leon to see if he's better than Meyers? Or why not give Lewis Brinson a shot. Yeah his MLB numbers aren't great but seems decent in the minors this year. Maybe the Astros minor league coaches fixed him. Any idea how his defense is?

 

Yeah, I don't get what either of those teams were doing, and they ended up not doing much of anything.

You can't make people trade with you, unless you start making outlandish offers.

 

You watch them play?

 

I haven’t seen enough to have a strong opinion.

I give him high marks for sticking with guys like Valdez, Javier, Garcia when there was a lot of pressure to trade them for more established players. Under his watch, a very high percentage of prospects have had some degree of success.

I also give him credit for rebuilding the pen last year.

I like that he doesn’t panic and so far it has worked out.

What I don’t know is how good he is at the draft. He got rid of some very good people because he didn’t like their work ethic in the player evaluation side of the operations and I don’t know if he was right.

I don’t know if he has what it takes to not fear taking risks on big trades. Does he know when to go for it?

He is more cautious than Luhnow… and for his style to work, he really needs his farm system to produce and that remains to be seen.

 

Just out of curiosity, and I know why the O's would have to have been floored with an offer...was Mullins ever available? He was basically the only difference-making CF (Reynolds would have been a lesser version of him, but I haven't looked at contracts or anything) I could think of that *might* be available.

 

Yeah he was available but they were asking for the type of haul you would expect for a prime star player.

From what I was told, it came down to how much do you give up for a guy that has an OPS that hovers around 700-725. Yeah his glove is good but how much of an improvement is he really offensively? They couldn’t rationalize losing players like Brown and Garcia and Barber for a player like Mullins. That was a version of the package they wanted.

I suppose some fans would say they should have done it, but Mullins doesn’t make an appreciable difference offensively.

 

This was his first year with a full draft, so I guess we'll see in about 2 years (would be much longer if they weren't all college guys, then there's the international guys who will take 4ish years to show).

I don't have any reason to love or hate him so far: he fixed the bullpen brilliantly last season (given the situation I like what he did this deadline too), and if this and another draft or 2 go as planned can get in on the bigtime trades. He and Crane seem to have a plan, so I'm with it until they **** it up.

 

Pretty much what I assumed regarding the cost (too much), though you and I may disagree on the difference he would make in CF.