I don't get the continued love for Robert Jr? Dude has been downright awful since 23, which was his only true star level season. If he were on the Astros from the beginning of 24 until now and had the same numbers, we would be showing him the same love we showed old man Abreu
Rockies get: Arrighetti, Blueballs, Melton Astros get: Brenton Doyle, Jake Bird Rockies get a high upside arm and another arm that would be one of the top in their organization, and also get a potential replacement for Doyle in Melton Astros get their CF through 2028 and a big upgrade to the lineup
Astros send Spencer Arrighetti, A.J. Blubaugh, and Zach Dezenzo to St.Louis for Brendan Donovan. You gotta give up something to get something. I hate the idea of trading away any of those 3 guys, but it's worth it for Donovan. Donovan 2b Paredes 3b Yordan DH Altuve LF Walker 1b Diaz C Smith RF Pena SS Meyers CF Rotation: Brown, Framber, McCullers, Blanco, Wesneski, Gusto
The way things are shaping right now, it’s going to be tough adding at the deadline. The few obvious sellers don’t have much of anything. If our offense doesn’t turn it around before the deadline, I would just trade Framber. I’m going to assume prices are going to be high and therefore we should get a great haul for him. We ****ed up not offering Polanco more than Seattle. A lefty bat that plays 2B is exactly what we needed. He’s hitting .354 with 7 bombs.
"You gotta give up something to get something"?? And you better d@mn well know what you're giving up or you wind up making a HORRIBLE trade like STL made back in 2017 by sending Zac Gallen and Alcantara to the Marlins for Ozuna. From what we've seen thus far from Arrighetti why in the world would you trade him.
No. He isn't under the radar at all. He is 28 years old, with 2 1/2 yrs of control. He can play all 4 infield positions and the corner OF spots at a good enough level to start at most of them and be the primary backup for the others. He hits left handed and has never had a wRC+ below 115 He has never struck out over 15% of the time. Injuries are the only thing that have prevented him from breaking out before this year but he is healthy now, played over 150 games last year, and is not injury prone. He IS breaking out this year - on pace for 98 runs and 98 rbi with a 165 wRC+ while having positive offending and defensive WAR on a pace for over 7. He is exactly what this team needs and adding him would most likely make this team the best team in the AL on paper. While I hate losing those 3 players: Replacing Dezenzo with Donovan improves this team, rather than hurting it. Neither Arrighetti nor Blubaugh are currently in the rotation and it is going very well. McCullers is now ready to be activated. There are still Gordon and Ullola in AAA if injury replacements are needed. Garcia, Javier, and France are still healing and hopefully will be able to return at some point between now and the end of next year.
3B, SS, RF and CF are the four highest WARs on the team Makes no sense to try and find replacements for those guys. 1B is Walker. Huge contract. No logic in trying to find his replacement DH is Yordan. No replacement there C is Yainer. Anyone think we can find a better option there mid season? LF is Altuve. Do we want to have that conversation? 2B is the position that can be upgraded. The others are either playing above average or are positions where it wouldn't make sense to replace guys. Framber for Jackson Holliday and hope he gets it figured out is my hypothetical.
I don’t pretend to be well versed in trade valuation, but this strikes me as not sufficient value coming to the Astros. Looking under the hood, Donovan’s statcast numbers look solid. But fangraphs projects him as a 2.8 WAR player this year. Your projections of his runs and rbi dramatically exceed what he accomplished last year in a full season and any projection I’ve seen for him. Likewise, a 7 WAR is superstar level - only Ohtani, judge, Soto, Witt jr, Lindor and Henderson accomplished that last year. Sorry, but it is hard to see a 7 WAR season out of Donovan. That would be a superstar level season. He put up 2.6 last year in a full season. If anything, it seems like the regression monster is waiting for him. That’s where my analysis ends bc I don’t know the market for Arighetti, blubaugh and dezenzo. I’m not a prospect hugger, but that strikes me as rich. Maybe it is a fair price for Donovan, but it better be a fair price for 2.6-2.8 WAR, not 4-7 WAR because we cannot pay for 4-7. That ain’t coming out of Donovan. We might have plenty of pitching right now, but Framber is gone next year. Any time you write down LMJ for innings, that is asking for pain.
Giving up players just because you have other players doesn’t mean they don’t have value. Donovan is a 2-4 win player. Crediting him a full season for 2025 he has ~9 wins of value; he’ll probably make ~3 wins worth of money in arbitration, so he roughly has 6 wins of surplus value. Writing off 2025 for all the players going have to St. Louis since they won’t expect to contend if they are deadline sellers: Arrighetti will have 4 seasons of control, where he will project to put up ~6 wins of value (there’s a strong argument that he will put up much more than that, but those are his fg projections coming into the season); he’ll make ~2.5 wins of money thru arbitration at that rate, so his surplus value is ~3-4 wins. Blubaugh comes with 6-7 seasons of control, over which he’s projected to put up 7-10 wins of value (again, a strong argument that’s a low estimate). He will make ~3-4 wins worth of salary during those controlled years, so his surplus value is anywhere from 3-7 wins (with more upside than downside). So just Blubaugh and Arrighetti have more value than Donovan and most would consider it an overpay. To me it would be a fair enough trade in a strong sellers’ market and the Cardinals would be doing really well to get that return. Adding Dezenzo (who projects for 6-9 wins total and 3-6 in surplus value) makes it a pretty significant overpay in my opinion. A casual fan might go the other way because none of Arrighetti, Dezenzo, or Blubaugh have shown up on Top 100 lists or put up huge sustained performances in the big leagues, but I would be really down on the Astros if they made this trade. I’d still probably be ok with it if it had Blubaugh and Arrighetti and some far lesser 3rd piece instead of Dezenzo.
You get it. No way that's a good trade. Especially knowing Framber is gone after this season. You want to win a World Series you better not just have good pitching but elite pitching. Is Arrighetti elite? Well from the little we've seen thus far he may have the stuff to blossom into what we're seeing right now with Brown. Throw in he's young and cheap and they control him for the next 5+ yrs. Go look at some of the games Arrighetti had last season against some of the best lineups in MLB. And you want to trade that away??
With parity in the league at an all time high, it’s impossible to identify sellers right now outside of COL and CWS. By the time the deadline is approaching, we can likely add PIT. And depending how things shake out, WAS, MIA, STL, and MIN. I think that’s gonna be it as far as sellers are concerned, as everyone else is in the wildcard/playoff mix. Maybe it is splitting hairs, but the other teams will want win-now players. Maybe that works well for us because we have a surplus of MLB-capable players (especially arms which is always a hot commodity), at least in contrast with our farm.
Yeah an NL contender who needs SP but has a good 2B they can part with seems like where the fit might end up being. The Reds might make sense. If Dana Brown likes Edwin Arroyo then a package built around him for Arrighetti might be good. Noelvi Marte or Gavin Lux might also be worth looking at.
Here's a few games from Arrighetti last season. @ Philly 7.2 IP 0 r 2 h 11 k @ Balt 6 IP 0 r 3 h 6 k Dodgers 6 IP 3 r 4 h 8 k Rangers 6 IP 1 r 2 h 7 k @ Seattle 6 IP 0 r 2 h 8 k @ Boston 7 IP 2 r 2 h 13 k TB 6 IP 1 r 5 h 12 k And there are people on here who saw this and want to include him in trades??
I hate to say it, but if we can get a playoff hungry team (like CIN) to overpay for Framber, I think we have to strongly consider. Idk the type of return it would take…but it makes sense to cash out now, if the deal is too good to pass up, especially if we aren’t resigning him, and with Hunter becoming a bonafide 1.
It’s all about getting good value. You could easily come up with a list of duds Arrighetti has put up. I don’t think anyone wants to give Arrighetti away, but we see Houston’s strong SP depth and weak farm depth and realize that if Houston is going to meaningfully improve their current roster, at least one good SP is gonna have to go. It ain’t gonna be Hunter Brown. True contenders also don’t normally trade guys like Framber Valdez. McCullers has no trade value. So that leaves Blanco, Arrighetti, Gusto, and Wesneski, along with whatever prospects you think have real value (most of which are pitchers). I just don’t see other teams offering up real value for Gusto, Wesneski, or Blanco.
Depending on how the next couple of months play out, I would agree with you. If Brown and McCullers are in top form, with some combo of Blanco, Arrighetti, Wesneski, Blubaugh, Gusto, and/or Garcia throwing well and looking capable of starting a playoff game, then I’m game to look for an overpay for Framber.
I'm not saying that he will get 7 WAR this year, or ever. I'm just saying that he is having a breakout and his performance so far indicates that he should exceed his projections - he is already half way there after 25 games. As for those projections, they are established before the season, usually before even roles are determined or verified. Ryan Gusto has 0.6 and 6 of his 7 projections on fangraphs are 0.4 or less. As for value unfortunately that's what an all-star level player costs in trade. Both Dezenzo and Blubaugh are considered 45 future value prospects by mlbpipeline. Fanfraphs actually values both of them even less (Dezenzo 40+ and Blubaugh 40). They project to be low end regular or platoon players ( or worse). According to published research, a 45 player is worth approximately $10.5M over his 6 controllable seasons. Arrighetti is more established as he finished his rookie season with 1.6 fWAR, buy none of his Fangraph projections expect him to exceed this amount, and actually have less each year. Let's say he averages 1.5 WAR at a standard $8M per WAR for 4 1/2 years. Dezenzo = $10.5 M Blubaugh = $10.5 M Arrighetti = $54 M = $75 M total trade value. Donovan would need to get approximately 9.4 WAR, or 3.4 per season the rest of his controllable time for the on field value to equal out. (adding money into the equation is very speculative and complicated at this point). I would bet on Donovan averaging 3.5 WAR + Add in the fact that he fills a hole on the Astros roster, and all 3 of the players traded way do mot make a hole when traded away and this trade is a slam dunk.
Those games that I posted were from his FIRST season in the bigs!! "Duds"?? Of course he had quite a few but you don't trade away a young pitcher who's shown this type of dominance against some of the top lineups in MLB (some of them on the road). This team has needed some OF help the past couple of seasons. Could you imagine if they had traded away Brown seeing what he's doing now?
