I haven’t looked at many of the other trades that occurred but who did the Rays get for Arrozarena? Dana didn’t have to even trade for an all star level player, simply anyone that could outperform the current black hole that is the bottom of our lineup. It’s just impossible for me to see a team trotting out 7-9 that is as bad as ours winning it all. They’re that bad and save for Chas briefly little in the way of pedigree or history to say otherwise. To consider yourself a title contender but not address 1B or OF after the disasters that were Abreu and Tucker’s injury / Chas forgetting how to play baseball is a tough pill to swallow.
The asking price was fairly high for all potentially difference making players. The Astros chose not to pay those prices for meh hitters. this is how these deadlines are now. At least they’ve won more games than most other buyers since the deadline. best time to improve the team is in the offseason, not the trade deadline. They’ll also need to not have guys completely fall off a cliff.
The price for canha was next to nothing. The price for winner wasn’t high. Oth of those guys would have been, at minimum, excellent platoon options that could have solidified 1B and LF for very little.
Perhaps… until the Astros call and theres the Astros markup and everybody’s favorite “can’t trade him” prospect is traded. (Like Whitcomb, lol). We don’t know who they kicked around and had discussions with. Ultimately they either didn’t get a target or they didn’t feel any target was worth the asking price. Better to have surplus pitching regardless.
The idea that you would have had to pay a kings ransom to upgrade a spot from unplayable to league average for a rental player simply wasn’t true. There’s no Astros tax. Someone else’s 23rd prospect might be equivalent to our 13th but that’s not a tax, that’s just fair value.
Maybe. Not possible for anybody here to really say that with any sort of exactness. I’m also not going to presume the front office sat on their ass and had zero discussions about possible hitting acquisitions (even the “less” costly ones). Hell, everybody now would take Will Wagner on the Astros over every other recently promoted prospect… despite him being well behind all of them on the “rankings”. Everybody was also saying Chas just needed more AB’s.
Brown tried to get a bat, and was hopeful they would add one or more of the Rays bats - but the market never materialized and the cost was too high. If you want to criticize Brown and Crane, criticize them for not filing the holes in the winter and assuming they could at the deadline… but then you have to criticize the Yankees, Orioles, Braves, Cardinals and SF for counting on the deadline.
The Rays wanted Brown and didn’t really deviate from that… and there really wasn’t more out there. The only one that I lifted an eyebrow at was not get Canha at the deadline.
