If you trade Alvarez its a hard rebuild and you might as well trade every player who has value and has already reached arbitration.
Walker is easily worth as much as Mike Yastrzemski, who just got $23M/2yrs guaranteed. My guess is Walker would fetch something like $27M/2yrs, so he’s $10M-$15M underwater. I think Walker makes a lot of sense for the Mets. Hunter Brown and Yordan Alvarez are the 2 guys that can’t be traded unless there’s a full rebuild, which means everybody but Altuve and Correa would be gone. Pena and Paredes are the two valuable trade chips they have that can move the needle in a “soft” rebuild. Smith is the closest thing they have to an elite prospect who can be moved. All their other assets are just reallocating resources and won’t likely impact the overall competitive window much.
Disagree. We were not in the playoffs due to a tiebreaker and historic injuries. Alvarez barely played. It’s not a hard re-build in my opinion, although it would hurt. Moving Alvarez would free up money for an SP2, strengthen our farm system and open up DH for Altuve and 2b for Paredes. He’ll be traded in 27 or 28 anyway depending on the lock-out. We would still have a formidable line-up if Cole or Smith come thru (big if). I don’t think this organization ever does another hard re-build.
Re-read what I wrote. A year ago, all of these things were true, and he was a year younger, had an extra year or control, and was not coming off a major injury. With all of that, he was the "complimentary MLBer" that helped the Cubs get Tucker. Whatever you think of Paredes, he was more valuable a year ago than today. And a year ago, he wasn't anything close to enough to get Tucker or even Tucker-lite.
My point is that Alvarez is a generational producer. You don't trade THAT guy with 3 years of control left if you are planning to compete. The fanbase is discouraged, the remaining players are discouraged, and you are worse than you were before the trade in at least one position. And 9 times out of 10 in star for prospect trades the team getting the star wins. Let's also point out that Yordan counts as $19.167M towards the CBT payroll for the Astros but will count $26M for any other team, so he doesn't have as much excess value as we all would like. He's more valuable to the Astros than other teams which always makes finding a good value in areas trade difficult.
Sure, looking at that narrow window "does Paredes have the same value as last year. What did they trade look like last year" makes your point reasonable. But there is no world, where my projected return is not also reasonable. Paredes still has plenty of value.
I think you need to factor in availability and our ability to have enough money for a Framber replacement. I love Alvarez and think he is our most important player, but it is a team game. I like the Luhow model which was being competitive every year. He will garner a ton of prospects. A lot might not pan out, but prospects are also valuable to trade for other needs. Losing Alvarez will hurt tremendously, but it will not make us uncompetitive. It didn’t last year even without most of our pitching staff.
You are a scholar and a gentleman. Always enjoy your opinions and insights. I hope the Astros forum will be continue to be able to have debate without the constant trolling that goes on in basketball and football. Never feed the trolls, is my new motto.
Also, I'm not sure why you'd consider trading Yordan at what is pretty much the lowest trade-value point of his career.
That isn’t something I considered and it is a factor, but you could always just say no if the price isn’t right. There are a bunch of factors in play here. The current state of the major league club, our owner’s budgetary constraints, the state of our minor league club. This is the first time in a while, we have missed the playoffs (and not by much). How does that factor into the thinking of both the FO and the fans? I think we can have it all. A competitive major league team, a re-stocking of the farm system, and another decade of playoff contention. Our FO will have to be masterful, but they have been ever since the appearance of Luhow. I don’t ever want another full on re-build and probably wouldn’t be around for the recovery if we did. If we can do all those things and retain Alvarez, I’m cool with it.
