96 hours is so much more exciting than 4 days. I think fans generally tend to overvalue what we know/have. If we had landed Cole Ragans in the Tucker package instead of cam smith, everybody would be saying it is insane to even consider dealing a TOR arm for an unproven rookie that tanked in the second half.
Right. Ragans has more value now than Tucker had this time last season (with 3 seasons of control vs 2 and a locked in low salary for 2 of them, while projecting for similar production). So building even an equivalent package would mean something like Smith, Arrighetti (as a Wesneski proxy), and Meyers (as a Paredes proxy), and I still don’t think that’d be enough.
Fair point, but I still cannot imagine that Astros fans would be clamoring to deal Ragans for Cam Smith, Jake Meyers and a prospect given the current state of the team and need for high end SP. We got candidates to fill in behind Jake and we can sign OF help. All the high end SP come with QOs.
He pitched 130+ ip in 2022 and 120+ ip in 2023 then 180+ ip in 2024. Last season is the only one in the last 5 where he missed the bulk of a season due to injury. He got called up in August of 2022; he didn’t go on the injured list until May of 2025 (outside of a 3 day stint in Oct of 2022). This year he missed 2 weeks with a groin strain and 12 weeks with a rotator cuff strain. So he’s had all of ONE significant injury in 5 MLB seasons.
