His salary was $14M but he required an assignment bonus to make up for the difference in taxes between being in Illinois vs Texas. I hadn’t looked it up until just now, but Illinois state income tax is only 5%. So his assignment bonus was probably <$1M. So my $16M estimate was likely too high and his new CBT # is probably somewhere between $14.5M and $15M. There’s also subjectivity in what his actual market value was. He’s probably worth more than Aroldis Chapman, who got $11M, but less than Tanner Scott, who got $17M. Houston was compromised as they were VERY limited in which teams they could deal with. So while his market value as a free agent may well have been in the $13M-$15M range, his trade market value was probably quite a bit lower; if they’d not asked for any prospect return, they may have gotten the Cubs to take on $11M-$12M. So by my latest estimate, Houston essentially paid $3M-$4M for Bello (and of course for the flexibility of spending $8.5M elsewhere). Admittedly there’s a lot of very questionable assumptions on my part but for me the fairly certain takeaways are that Houston really liked Bello and was really desperate to get rid of Pressly.
Here are my assumptions relative to the CBT: They were ~$4M under before the Pressly trade. The Pressly trade freed up $8.5M, putting them ~$12M under. They have 2 significant salaries they can trade without making a dramatic impact on expected wins: Montero ($11M) and Caratini ($6M). So they have the potential to free up $17M. $17M+$12M=$29M. If they’d trade all of Montero and Caratini’s salary, and sign Bregman for <$29M AAV, and don’t make any other moves, they can get under the CBT for opening day. All that said, I don’t think it’s realistic for them to expect them to sign Bregman and stay under. But they could do it, and by the deadline McCullers could be known dead money, making his contract tradeable in a salary dump if they need to add at the deadline and still don’t want to go over. And of course at the deadline they could always include enough prospects to ensure they didn’t have to take on any salary.
further to this overall point, we improved the system by getting cam smith. And now Bello, albeit to a much lesser degree. If we need to spend prospect capital to do some of what you mention above, hopefully we still have a net gain in the overall system, while improving the MLB squad, especially the depth of the lineup.
CBS projecting summer 2025 to get called up?? Wow that seems extremely aggressive. Summer 2026 seems more realistic with the best case scenario being making the team out of spring training 2026. Maybe a September 2025 call up?
I agree, with the caveat that Dana Brown has been very aggressive with his prospects. When he likes a guy, he gets them up. Matthews was in AAA 3/4 of the way thru his first full season, so it’s totally reasonable that he could be in the majors by July. Under a similar timeline, Smith could be in AAA by June 1st and in the majors by August.
Perhaps. It's worth noting Matthews is a year older than Smith and only got 48 plate appearances after getting called up to AAA late in 2024. The Puerto Rico winter league was good experience for him but he will need more seasoning in Sugar Land. Hoping he can start hot there to accelerate his development. Smith, on the other hand, will probably start in AA and could get promoted to AAA a month later if he starts off hot. Looking forward to seeing how he does.
I agree and if I was betting, I would say we don’t see Smith until mid-2026. But it’s possible he comes up this season if he kicks ass.
I don't think it's likely, but the Astros could trade Javier to a team like Milwaukee that makes outside of the box moves and looks for high upside risks and value. The problem is they likely don't want to add salary. There may be another team out there. Javier has a much more promising prognosis than McCullers. Miami to rehab him, pitch him until 2026 trade deadline then flip him? I don't think anything will come of it but it could reduce CBT hit by about $12M and add to the talent in the system.
The Astros coveted Juan Bello. They tried to get him in the Tucker trade but the Cubs wouldn’t do Smith and Paredes and Bello. The Astros paid as much of Pressly’s contract as they did because they wanted this pitcher. He isn’t a top tier prospect like Smith, but he is someone the Astros pitching duo and Brown like more than most teams. I don’t know how good Bello will prove to be, but Murphy/Miller are right more often than not.
The hard part with those kind of guys is we never know how teams actually value them. Baseball has done a great job in recent years of elevating prospects by giving us a number of lists to get a general idea, but how many impact players have we had in recent years that the general public never saw coming? These trades are sometimes what puts these guys on top prospect lists as they look at them closer and realize that a team coveted this player for a reason.
The position player evaluation has gotten much better, and the vast majority of position player stars were highly drafted and/or ranked highly on prospect lists prior to being called up. But pitching is just too hard to gauge. Between injuries and how much pitchers change as they develop, it’s a total crap shoot.
I took a look at the top 50 position players in fwar over the last 3 seasons. Here are the guys who were never on the fangraphs top 100 list: Freddie Freeman (2nd rd pick) Mookie Betts Jose Ramirez Jose Altuve Marcus Semien Manny Machado William Contreras Nolan Arenado (2nd rd pick) Ketel Marte Brandon Nimmo (1st rd pick) Matt Chapman Matt Olson (2nd rd pick) Eugenio Suarez Paul Goldschmidt Yandy Diaz Christian Walker Isaac Paredes Most of those guys (Goldschmidt, Suarez, Chapman, Arenado, Machado, Semien, Altuve, Ramirez, Betts, Freeman) came up before the prospect lists improved. Walker, Marte, Diaz, and Paredes were guys who bloomed after they reached the majors. From that list, William Contreras is the main guy the prospect lists missed. On the pitching side, Cease, Skubal, Burnes, Kirby, Gilbert, Fried, Keller, Greene, Glasnow, and Luzardo are the only guys who were on fangraphs top 100 lists since they started publishing. A ton of really really good SP were never considered elite prospects.
3 year old Grand Daughter got a bat and ball today. Consistently hitting line shots up the middle off a Tee. Big fun.
Main thing I think with him is he has a plus curve that’s potentially plus plus and that combined with his youth and current velo means he has potential to get his FB into the mid/upper 90s at peak. Thats enough to make him really interesting. A guy with an elite CB who throws a FB 95-96 with movement and another average pitch, all of which fill the zone, is a ToR SP.
Texted someone about him to find out more. Astros tried hard to get him in the Paredes trade but Cubs said no. He throws four pitches. His fastball is around 90-92 mph right now and his other pitches are inconsistent. Really split opinions on his curve ball. The Astros think it potentially can be a dynamic pitch at big league level with refinement. A lot of scouts don’t like his curveball but Astros don’t agree. They project 3-6 mph possible on his fastball when he gets stronger and after fixing his mechanics. They are going to work oh his mechanics and arm slot. Lots of projection involved but the name brought up was Christian Javier when it comes to the arm.
Keith Law ranked Houston’s farm system 29th (2nd from the bottom). It’s far too low but Law has had an anti-Astros lean for over a decade. Here’s what he had to say: “The Astros didn’t have a top-100 prospect until they picked up Cam Smith from the Cubs in the Kyle Tucker trade, which is the result of a lot of years of, frankly, not very good drafts. The 2019 draft gave them Hunter Brown; he’s the last Astros draft pick to generate 1 WAR of major-league value. They’ve drafted a lot of position players who project as platoon or extra guys, and a lot of pitchers who project as fifth starters — often guys with command but not stuff — or middle relievers. And they’ve traded some solid prospects, including Jake Bloss, Joey Loperfido, Chayce McDermott, and Drew Gilbert, further depleting the system.”
Keith Law was offered the job of Farm Director by Luhnow - I always wonder how that would have worked out had he taken it. I like Keith personally - he is a very humble person and his internet persona is his alter ego. Having said that --- Law has lost his fastball. There was a time when he was actually relevant and had some good insight. Now he is just really dated and frankly isn't any more accurate than most fans when it comes to evaluations. First - concerning the Astros system, it takes longer for players to emerge with the Astros system, so his arbitrary use of 2019 is interesting. Also - the Astros were docked top draft picks for using a trash can. Having said that--- in 2024 the Astros system produced Spencer Arrighetti, Shay Whitcomb, Loperfido In 2023 the Astros system produced JP France, Yainer Diaz In 2022 the Astros system produced Hunter Brown and Jeremy Pena In 2021 the Astros system produced Luis Garcia, Chas McCormick, Jake Meyers In 2020 the Astros system produced Christian Javier In 2019 the Astros system produced Bryan Abreu, Myles Straw So while the Astros system hasn't produced a huge number of players, they have produced impact players every single season and this year there are options as well.
