Firesale

But the Marlins are the ONLY example of how a firesale helps... and the reason they had one was more out of fiscal reasons, rather than simply trying to load up on prospects.

Meanwhile, there are SEVERAL bargain basement teams who have had fire sales and come up with nothing. The Pirates sold Aramis Ramirez and Kenny Lofton to the Cubs in 2003... nothing. The Mariners got nothing of significance for Ken Griffey Jr in his prime (certainly nothing to build off of). The Tigers were sellers for years... before they decided to open the budget (it wasn't necessarily just their "prospects"... and even then, they still drafted key guys like Verlander).

And, looking how mostly ALL the contenders are built now in the NL (Cubs, Cardinals, Brewers, Phillies)... its all a mix of home grown talent, some stars (who get paid like stars), and the occasional key free agent.

 

Tejada would have good value to a team like the Dodgers...maybe we can get one or more of their half dozen top pitching prospects.

The only player who's untouchable is Puma. Everyoen else is fair game.

 

Not gonna happen...Front office has never believed in the "R" word. They have always felt like they are in the hunt. They're haunted by the teams that recently came back from "the grave" to reach unparalleled franchise honors. Uncle Drayton cares too much about putting butts in the seats to sell off his assets.

 

I generally like your thinking, although I doubt the 'Stros would go through with it. I think Valverde is our best trade asset in that he has value as a closer but I don't think we'd miss him too much. Oswalt and Berkman, on the other hand, have value, but losing them will send this team into the gutter for years. Lee and Tejada would be great to trade, but Lee has a NTC that he doesn't seem intent on waiving and Tejada doesn't look like he'd garner much (aging infielder with limited range and diminishing power). I think minor deals involving some of the relievers (i.e. Brocail) and reserve vets (Blum, Loretta, Erstad) could bring in some depth to our minor-league system and maybe one of those guys could pan out (like Bagwell, who was not considered an elite prospect when we traded him for Anderson). Although I like Wade's willingness to deal, I'm becoming more skeptical of the talent that he is choosing in return. We should have gotten a lot more for Lidge than some guys Wade liked in whilke he was at Philly. The bottom line is that not only is this season lost, but there's little reason to think that we're gonna come back to the leader pack in the next few years unless we make some moves.

 

I believe both the Indians and White Sox blew up their teams to various extents several years back and rebuilt. The Indians got pretty good, and the White Sox won a World Series. The White Sox were even in a pennant race when they blew their team up midseason and just said "screw it, we aren't going to win anything with this team".

There are various degrees of firesales. The idea behind it is not just to get prospects, but also to clear cap room. If you're able to trade Carlos Lee for a LF prospect that turns into something, you now have a new Carlos Lee *and* $17MM/year to fill another hole.

That said, a firesale isn't always the only option. The "reload" option, however, requires even more guts. It requires you to trade your top players at their peaks and get max value out of them. That's the Oakland strategy, for example - trading Mulder, Haren, Hudson, and now Harden when they are damn good and when your team is pretty good. That's the example of trading Roy O. It hurts, and it probably won't be popular with fans, but if you truly want to use the "reload, don't rebuild" strategy, that's the way to do it.

What the Astros have done - trade youth for one last hurrah - is what leads you into a mess. Lots of salary and no farm system. It's exactly what the Rockets did in the late 90's trying to win one last championship with Hakeem/etc. The result is great if you win it all - but if you don't, you have serious structural problems going forward.

Sure - and that's the ultimate goal. And that's what the Astros were several years ago. But you can only sustain it so long if you're not willing to trade top-tier guys. The Astros did it extraordinarily well for a decade. They even mixed in a little of the Oakland strategy (trading Hampton and Wagner in their primes, for example) with varying success. Eventually, all those teams at the top now will run into the same problems the Astros are facing unless they go the Oakland route. The question is what to do after you peak and start the downhill descent.

Certainly, you have to improve the quality of your farm system and drafting, but unless you know of a way to improve the major league club in the very short term, why NOT trade the Lees, Oswalts, Valverde, etc? Getting prospects gives you more options in the minors and also more payroll flexibility (and more money to spend on the farm system). The only reason to keep those guys is if you believe we can be good within 2 years - but then we return to the question of HOW to do that without any prospects to trade or talent in the minors? The team doesn't have the budget to add tons of high-priced free agents, so what's the strategy for getting good in the next year or two?

 

Starting pitching is the main ingredient to compete for World Series Championships. For a team to be competitive and to remain competitive, they have to have a system in place that allows them to draft quality starting pitchers and to develop those starting pitchers in an efficient manner. You can never, ever have enough starting pitching.

If you notice in Oakland's system, they primarily develop starting pitchers and the starting pitchers are their trading pawns to acquire multiple layers of talent. They do develop really good position players but look what they do with their starting pitchers. I believe Oakland and Billy Beane should be who we model our club after.

You draft pitchers, develop them, then after you get several years of major league use out of them and they are ready to break the bank, send them to a contender for a whole bunch of prospects, draft picks. If you do this several times, and you know how to spot talent, even more specifically, pitching talent, and you know how to develop that talent, then your farm system will be running over with assets ready to play at the Major League level and push established major leaguers to the trade bin for more prospects.

There really are only 1 to 3 possible untouchables on our current roster. That being Berkman, Pence, and Oswalt. Everybody else is a commodity. And really, I'm not for sure that even Pence and Oswalt are untouchables. I kinda feel like Berkman is. I look at him as the new Bagwell, the face of the organization. Pence is extremely talented, but if I were the GM and I was looking at our roster, our record, and our minor league system, I'd move him for the right deal. The same thing with Roy O. What good is Roy O on a below mediocre team? What difference does he make, keeping a team above 90 losses? It's unfortunate but it's just the facts. The odds are against Roy O remaining productive. The odds are high that he will, at some point in the future that is moving ever closer, suffer a major injury. Then you are paying megabucks for a guy not contribute at all and his trade value goes in the dumper.

This team simply needs to invest into scouting, and coaching, and then make trades to acquire more draft picks and minor league talent that they can develop. And their primary focus should be spent on scouting, drafting, and developing starting pitchers.

 

Agreed... they're severely lacking in strategy as a whole... although they only essentially got Dotel for a Cy-young calibur pitcher in Hampton, and they ended up with nothing of value for Billy Wagner (and now Michael Bourne for Brad Lidge)... so I'm not sure if selling high is their best strong suit. I guess Carl Everett did get them Adam Everett... one of the few deals to go our way in that respect.

And when they "knew what they were doing"... they were having at least 1-2 callups every year of home-grown players (Elarton, Hidalgo, Berkman, Miller, Oswalt, Lidge... hell, I'll even throw in Meluskey) who were able to not only contribute, but excel at some level in the big leagues.


If they had a grasp on what they were doing... they would have never signed Carlos Lee at $17 million dollars a year in the first place. That may have been the most irresponsible signing in Astros history.

You clear his salary off the books from three years ago, and you invest some of that money into scouting, some of it into signing all the draft picks we "couldn't sign" over the last 3 years, and the rest into giving some veterans a shot at redeeming themselves (kinda like the Cardinals have done)... and you potentially avoid having to completely sell off anybody, with some quality prospects in the minors who possibly make their name in the next 2-3 years.

Now, they're stuck with Lee... and his big contract... and they're even further away now than they were when they decided he'd be a good signing.

 

Solid post, Jared. I posted your post on *************** "Time to Rebuild" thread and sited you. Hopefully you'll get a few quality replies there as well. Great read, great post.

 

cited, not sited.

not trying to be a prick, just saying...

 

I understand. Thanks, miss type all the time unfortunately.

 

valverde was traded six months ago for an above-average MR and a never-was MI; what has he done since to suddenly be worth a "stud" prospect?

so does every other GM in baseball (including, likely, ed wade). unless the astros are willing to swallow a large chunk of his remaining deal, lee is virtually unmovable.

IF you're going to blow this up – IF – it has to start with roy oswalt – he’s your best and maybe only commodity. holding on to him would be silly in a "fire sale."

they're nice, complimentary players worth absolutely noting on the open market because none are difference makers. you'd be lucky to get minor league never-weres for them.

tejada may actually have less trade value than carlos lee. as with valverde, he was just dealt six months ago for, more or less, flotsam (anyone miss the guys we gave up for him, from a quality standpoint)?

he's since been named in the mitchell report, come under federal investigation, aged two years, and is still owed nearly $40M. on top of all that, he's well on his way to proving that last year's decline was not an aberration.

who would be willing to take him on at this point? he has virtually no trade value.

berkman's likely to still be productive 2, 3, maybe even 4 years down the road. IF i was going to blow this thing up, he'd be the one guy i'd want to keep.

btw, not for nothing, but you've now traded or actively shopped eight regular contributors. how do you expect to field a team on august 1?

LOL.

yeah because, lord knows, we've seen such positive results from throwing bourn and towles to the fire - let's ruin some more promising youngsters!

look, it's likely not as bad as we think. other than lee (who's at least productive), the astros aren't really trapped under a slew of bad contracts. so over the next 1-2 years, they'll be able to start clearing out some of the wreckage from these past several years. as much as we dump on ed wade, he cleared out a lot of useless junk when he got here – let’s give him some time to jettison the rest of it.

and i'd wager few of us really have a handle on what, exactly, the farm has to offer anyway. remember when we all went ballistic after they dealt mike hampton and some skinny no-name - oswald or something - made the rotation the following spring?

the astros' likely best course of action right now is to let the ML team play out its string as is - hope they get healthy, maybe another arm is purchased or emerges, the kids grow up a bit, get more consistent, etc. - while they repair the farm, which is going to take a couple of years.

it's a transitional time; they sold the farm to build a team around bagwell and biggio and now they have to cash those checks. it's gonna hurt for awhile, especially with berkman, lee and oswalt still productive - but hey, at least we get to watch them perform nightly; beats watching a bunch of no-names and kids getting their asses handed to 'em, if you ask me.

 

sorry; that should read, "nearly $20M."

 

I agree with most of what you said... but there are a few clarifications, beginning with this. Hampton was traded in the off-season after 1999, and Oswalt (and Miller) came up in 2001, not 2000. And, Roy didn't make the rotation to start the season (Wade did)... he was called up around late may, early June. Also, he wasn't a "no-name"... he was the number one prospect in the farm system, and regarded around baseball as possibly the "next greg maddux", given his almost surreal year in 2000 at AA (129 IP, 1.94 ERA).

Also, it should be worth noting that Hunsicker had to be convinced by Nolan Ryan to promote him so soon, after Nolan saw him at AA and wondered "Why the hell is he still here?... the guy has some of the best stuff I've ever seen." (obviously, it was bittersweet for Nolan, the owner of the express, as Roy was already a fan favorite).

The farm system doesn't have, and hasn't had since he came up, anything close to that... and if anything, we'd have a better handle on what the farm has to offer now, rather than 2001, given the increased coverage of the minor leagues via the internet.

I don't know about "selling the farm". The only guys they gave up that ever really amounted to anything was Freddy Garcia and Ozzie Guillen...
and even then, that was to get Randy Johnson. I guess John Buck would have to be the second best prospect they let go... and that was to get Carlos Beltran.

They still largely built around Bagwell/Biggio with player development, key trades (Alou for two nobodys), and only towards the end... a slew of big-name signings (Kent, Pettite, Clemens).

Being able to promote Hidalgo, Berkman, Wade Miller, Roy Oswalt, Carlos Hernandez, Adam Everett (i'll mention Ensberg as well), and Brad Lidge within the system in successive years was obviously a "golden era", predicated on smart scouting/drafting/and development. Whatever they did to put themselves in the position to get these players (which only involved one trade... Everett for Everett)... they need to do so soon (unless they've already put it in motion with this year's recent draft).

I think its the frustration of what has been essentially a drought since 2003 (save for Hunter Pence) of player development that has people clamoring for a firesale to get something, if anything, of value back down there. I agree with you that the only players that have ANY substantial value are Berkman/Oswalt... and Lee to some extent (if anybody is dumb enough to even try and take on the contract... as its doubtful the Astros would trade him otherwise).

 

when they dealt hampton, oswalt was a largely unheralded, 23rd-round single A pitcher who, in 1999 (the year they traded hampton), posted a 4.46 ERA and a 1.3 WHIP in 22 starts.

apologies for mangling the dates, but my point was that you never know how some of these young arms are going to grow and mature. not that we have another roy oswalt buried down there; that's not what i meant. at the same time, we shouldn't just assume that all we have are a bunch of tim reddings.

but a player failing elsewhere doesn't automatically mean they would have failed in our system, too, which was (as you cited) one of baseball's best at the time, churning out good-to-great ML'ers on a pretty regular basis.

and i really didn't mean selling the farm literally, anyway, because they were also giving away draft picks during that era so they could sign the kents and pettittes (as well as the caminitis, lees and williams). they also lost out on additional picks by not offering arbitration to some of those same players. and let’s not forget they protected derek bell over bobby abreu in the 1998 ('97?) expansion draft because of their “win-now” approach. plus, as a successful team (not that this is their fault), they were routinely drafting lower in rounds…

it’s ALL caught up to them.

as major has often argued (which i agree with): you can't discount quantity and depth when building a team - any team (as the texans found out). when you deal prospects, sign veteran free agents, approach an expansion draft looking just at today and not tomorrow, etc., over and over again during a 10-year period, it greatly reduces your margin for error.

 

I agree with most of what you have to say, but i'm not sure I see this point. Oswalt was arguably the most heralded prospect the astros have had in the last decade or so. By 2000 and 2001 he was on just about every scouting service's top ten national prospects list. He was unheralded when drafted as a draft and follow, but he did so well in junior college the following season that he would have likely been a first or second round draft pick if he reentered the draft. And the astros gave him that type of bonus to sign.

Looking past the ERA his 99 season was very good. He averaged almost a K per IP and had almost a 3-1 K-W ratio. I would expect he was viewed in scouting circles as a good prospect. The minors now is pretty barren, especially at A ball and above. There is certainly no one there now that was both as well regarded as Oswalt when signed and who has produced as season as good as Oswalt's 99.

 

They didn't trade Hampton because they knew what they had in Oswalt.... they traded Hampton because they chose to go with the more fan-favorite, and supposedly "just as good" Jose Lima.

Sure. If somebody shocks their arm on a car battery, and turns out as good as Oswalt, then we're set. Chances are, that's not going to happen again.

Hell, I'll take Tim Redding right now over Wandy, Moehler, Sampson, and Backe. I always felt Redding was slighted simply because he wasn't as good as Miller and Oswalt (and then Hernandez) were right when they were called up. Also, he needed far more "guidance" once he got to the big leagues that the pitching coaches weren't all that keen on giving him. It's no suprise that his best year (2003) was when Jimy Williams nurtured and took him under his belt, personally, and coddled him (obviously, the pressure of being a pitcher in a staff full of HOF'ers in 2004 got to him).

Who? John Halamma? The guys we traded for Alou? Really... we didn't give up that much from 1998-2005. We hung on to Hidalgo, Berkman, Elarton, Miller, Oswalt, Ensberg, Everett, Lidge.

The point is that we didn't simply give up prospects left and right.

We protected HIDALGO over Abreu. They were both just as unproven at the MLB level... and thanks to Hidalgo's 2000 likely roided up year, we were apparently making the right choice (his 2000 year eclipses any best year that Abreu had). The draft picks and arbitration picks have only been since 2003... when they signed Kent. They still had plenty of other picks that didn't or haven't panned out yet.

it’s ALL caught up to them.

Again... they've only been doing this for 5 years... since 2003 when they signed Kent. Since then, its been Pettite/Clemens in 2004. Trading for Beltran in 2005. Re-signing Clemens at mid-season in 2006. And signing Lee in 2007. Throughout that time, only Brad Lidge came up and made a name for himself... and to some degree Pence, Wandy, and Sampson.

There is no doubt that they have to get back to re-building the farm system... but, as they proved judging by the players they brought in from 1994-2001... you don't have to trade away every good player you have to come to that.

It still comes down to scouting, signing your high draft picks, and making a commitment to player development at ALL levels.

 

nick, let's just drop it; we're not on the same page here. i know why they traded Hampton and i never said it was because of oswalt. and i also never said there's somebody as good as oswalt currently in our system, just that we don’t know what’s going on down there at some of the lower levels.

off the top of my head, since 1998: 3 guys for alou; 3 guys for unit; 1 guy for astacio; 1 guy for williams; 2 guys for beltran; 2 guys for huff; 3 guys for jennings. we signed caminiti, kent, pettitte, lee and williams - all costing us draft choices. plus, we let abreu go and showed a lack of patience with lugo.

is it any wonder the farm system eventually dried up?

this is the EXACT (wrong) kind of thinking the astros used - why did it have to be hidalgo or abreu? why couldn't they keep both and let the overpaid, very average derek bell go on the list? many of us argued the value of doing just that at the time but the astros were in “win now” mode.

and i'm not complaining about ANY of this (except bell over abreu – that one still hacks me off). i enjoyed their run and appreciated their efforts to maximize potential. but now we're having to pay for that success. no big deal.

we didn’t drain the system overnight and, getting back to my point (to jared’s initial post), we’re not going to rebuild it by july 31.