Forrest Whitley? At this point a bag of flour might be all you get for him. Isn’t it out again with shoulder inflammation. Sure is looking like he is just a bag of skin with a pulse at this point. Lots of potential that never panned out.
you can scroll up to the first two responses on this very page to know that you've come to the wrong place if it's maturity you seek.
This may have been answered ad nauseum but can we add Soto without trading Tucker? On a deal mostly focused on the farm? I’m assuming if we don’t trade Kyle then we have to add Javier and Garcia…and subtracting from the ML rotation is not something I think we’re super keen on, but who knows, our rotation is deep and we’re getting LMJ back
Juan Soto is younger than Hunter Brown and Pedro Leon, and already has led the league on OBP twice and OPS once... and won a World Series (sadly). I'd give up a lot for him. This would be a game changer type of trade -- similar to when we brought in Verlander. Soto + Tucker + Alvarez would give us an elite offense for many years.
They are not trading Tucker, for anyone. Javier, Garcia, and Brown are their 1st tier tradeable assets and a trade for Soto would almost certainly include 2 of those players. Then they’d probably have to add 3-5 players from their 2nd tier (Leon, Y Diaz, Barber, McCormick, Siri, Abreu, Lee).
First of all, when it comes to odds, you winning that bet 99 times out 100, simply because of how unlikely something that big would be. But lets imagine this scenario that when we talked to Tucker about extending, he was not willing to do the Bregman, Alvarez buy arbitration years with lower AAV contract, and he wants to maximise his next one, not the fair deal but the go nuts for 15 years type. Why would we not even explore the idea? How do both stack up you think? just straight up value, I'm talking stats, age, no emotional "I like homegrown and hate Soto personality and nonsense at the plate" and whatever you think player value could be for both. Because, if Tucker wants the MAX MAX next contract, while Soto because of how the Nats have sucked, puts a little value in going and extending with a contender, then it would make sense for both teams no? (of course depending on the value of the players, in which case I defer to you ) The way I see it, this would make more sense (depending on contract situation as I said) then depleting completely the farm and SP depth across the board for him
If you believe in objective projections and $/WAR calculations based on how teams actually spend, Soto is viewed as worth about 75% more than Tucker. Soto is viewed as Alvarez with the bat, but poor defensive OFs are typically valued more than DHs and part-time bad OFs. Considering that besides for Framber, McCullers (if he comes back this season), and Brown (if he is in Astros organization past the deadline and would definitely not be in Astros system if Soto is) the Astros have a very flyball happy pitching staff, I would value Tucker closer to Soto in value than objective measurements for the Astros. It would take a lot off the MLB roster to get Soto. If Astros trade for Soto, I hope Tucker is in the deal as I would not like to trade that much pitching, Alvarez, or Pena (unless Astros can trade for Correa, too).
I don't see the Astros getting Juan Soto because it doesn't fit the way the Astros operate. The only way I see that happening is if the Astros get him, keep him for a year or two and trade him again and the cost will be prohibitive. The Astros would be better off trading for Josh Bell and seeing if they can resign him. His plate discipline has continued to improve. He very seldom strikes out, he does well against good pitching and puts the ball in play. He would fit well in the middle of the line up or even could hit 6th or 7th.
I do not see the Astros trading away: Tucker, Valdez, Alvarez, or Pena. ( or Verlander) Without 1 ( or 2) of them then any trade for Soto would completely gut the team. So let's just forget Soto is even available. There are all kinds of different ways and sources to value players so this is just an example but here goes: According to baseballtradevalues.com Soto is worth $176.8M in trade value. So in order to give the Nationals equal value ( and to trade him they will want MORE than equal value) the Astros would need to send them: Luis Garcia $50.3 Hunter Briwn $22.7 Chas McCormick $20.5 Christian Javier $17.0 Jake Meyers $15.9 Jose Urquidy $11.1 Yanier Diaz $8.7 Korey Lee $6.5 Pedro Leon $6.5 Alex Bregman $6.2 Jose Siri $4.8 Colin Barber $3.9 Joe Perez $3.0 The other option is: Kyle Tucker $106.2 Luis Garcia $50.3 Yanier Diaz $8.7 Pedro Leon $6.5 Joe Perez $3.0 J.J. Matijevic 2.1 So before you tell me this is ridiculous just remember THAT is exactly my point. The Astros simply don't have the tradable assets to make a deal without completely gutting the team. And they should definitely not do that.
Soto rejected $450M and is a Boras client so the notion of him taking any kind of discount for any reason is ridiculous. If Houston trades for Soto, it’s for 2.5 seasons. Tucker is a 5 win player with 3.5 seasons of control (call it 18 wins total). Soto is an 8 win player with 2.5 seasons of control (call it 20 wins total). Soto’s already expensive and will be increasingly more expensive; he will likely make $50M-$60M over the next 2.5 seasons. Tucker will probably make a little more than that, call it $60M-70M. Now that math would tell you Soto is worth more than Tucker by about $20M, which would mean a fair trade would be something like Tucker and a pretty good prospect for Soto. However, I think a deeper dive would tell us Tucker has more value by himself because of the risk involved. Soto has a lot of downside and not much upside as a bat-only elite player, whereas it wouldn’t shock anyone if Tucker put up a 7-8 win season a la Christian Yelich 2018-2019, making him a very high upside player with minimal downside because he has defensive value. On top of that, spreading the value over 4 postseasons instead of 3 mitigates the risk. So Tucker is worth more than Soto, even ignoring factors like clubhouse chemistry.
Looking at current projections for Tucker and Soto on FanGraphs, they have gotten much closer than they were at the beginning of the season which heavily favored Soto. Without doing a WAR to $ conversion, I'd expect Tucker to be within $20-30M of Soto's value. baseballtradevalues.com still shows the difference in value at about 70% (or $70M) for which I based my earlier statement, but I would trust the FanGraphs numbers more.
I don’t really know enough about Soto to have an opinion on this. One thing that bears noting to me is the elimination of the shift. Both Tucker and Alvarez will benefit greatly by this. In fact, Alvarez will probably be in contention for a triple crown every year.
Same situation as Gerrit Cole... just a higher price tag... If McCullers looking healthy i would go: Garcia Brown Urquidy Meyers Leon Still leaves: Verlander Valdez Mccullers Javier Odorizzi Not trading anyone starting a playoff game ideally... Can try to swap for a stop gap center fielder to replace Meyers... They would get a comp pick for Soto when he walks... Let Brantley walk end of the year...
