Of course. This all presupposes the player development staff bangs the table for Gilbert and says he absolutely is ready to play every day at the Major league level. Then- it becomes how do you extract most value out of Jake and/or Chas. And my suggestion is that I'd rather have salary relief and fix the problem at 1b (if it's still a problem 2 months from now) then prospects. Dubon is just fine as a 4th OF imo. I say that not as a Dubon guy either.
Chas is not getting $20M over his 3 arb years unless he plays a lot more than he has - and graduates to an all star calibur player. He is looking more like about $12-13M Edit: Tyler O'Neill is probably the best comp I could find and he is at $8.35M thru 2 arb seasons.
I think your post is as much wish fulfillment as rooted in any logic. I have no problems unequivocally saying that if Chas were a FA right now, no one would pay him $70m for 3.5 years. Chas is a solid player but he's just not the type that gets valued highly in FA/trade market. He does a little bit of everything, but nothing great. I actually do agree that Chas is a similar player to Benetendi, but with none of the hype. That type of player tends to not be valued appropriately on the open market. I also do not think a club like the Giants has any incentive to trade a middle of the order power bat for a defense first CF'er, even if the CF'er *may* generate more total WAR over their remaining control than Davis will over his 1.5 years. That doesn't move the needle basically at all for them. Chas or Jake would be desirable to another team, but moreso on a prospects package rather than getting back ML talent that actually improves the current year club.
Sorry. You lost me. Where does the $65M contract for 3 years cpme from? I'm just saying no way Chas' arb years add up to $20M.
The scenario I talked about Chas wasn't for any talent coming back, it was literally for payroll relief. Maybe Meyers isn't worth someone with a little club control that could hit middle of the order but if this keeps up into the trade deadline he well could be. Hype isn't getting Benetendi the money- the baseball world is more rational than that now. He got the money b/c that's what an above average FA OF that isn't old as **** is worth. Chas will make more than 65M in his career, barring injury, were he on the free market today.
If the deal was Chas and Jose Abreu for nothing at the trade deadline. Abreu gets reclamation treatment and cut by the new team if that doesn't work out. You owe him 48M or so remaining on his contract. You owe Chas like 300k for the rest of the year. Then you owe him 3 years at arbitration. Essentially what that means if you pay him 18M in arbitration and you have to pay Abreu's 48M and you gave up no talent to get them that you've done the functional equivalent of paying Chas 3.5 years for 66M since no talent went out and the price of the Abreu contract was the price of getting Chas for free. My bet is that one of the teams I mentioned above would be willing to give Chas a 3.5/65M deal were he on the open market. He projects, as a full time player- to have 12 or 14 WAR over the rest of his life as a club controlled player.
Ok. I wasn't looking at the rest of the complex post. Abreu will be on the Astros for the rest of this year and all of next year. Period. If he remains terrible then maybe they release him sometime around the end of May 2025 and eat his salary. Just like some teams are doing with other veterans who can no longer play at an acceptable level. There is no fantasy scenario that changes this. There is zero chance he is traded regardless of the terms or return.
Guys get traded all the time on underwater contracts. Sometimes the teams eat some of the remaining money. Sometimes they eat the underwater nature of the contract by adding prospects. Sometimes they take back your bad contract as an offset. In very rare situations a productive major leaguer is traded cheaply that is thought to have good value and a shitty contract is thrown on top of that (think- David Price duck taped to Mookie Betts in that deal). It's very unlikely that any of this will happen in exactly the way anyone throws it out but that doesn't mean the idea is stupid or fantasy land. If you picked any one player or prospect and said- this guy is getting traded, you are probably wrong so what's the point of any of it? The overarching point is that Gilbert becoming a very good to star player opens up all sorts of avenues for the Astros to get lots better. Furthermore, it will be really fascinating to see how aggressive Dana Brown is with prospects. ATL was very aggressive. Brown talks like he's going to be aggressive here. This is a case study that's going to set the tone for how the Astros are likely going to operate throughout the rest of the decade and I'm excited to see what that looks like- if Gilbert is as good as many on here think he's going to be. Also- it feels like he was underdrafted and right now is undervalued. I don't know why. Either the industry is wrong or its me. Me and lots of people on here.
That's not premier free agent money- that's second tier free agent money. I think Chas would absolutely get paid like Benitendi (or should) as he's better than him. Chas is good. People act like he isn't. Good players that are shy of 30 get 15M a year in Free Agency. That's only worth 1.5 War. Chas, if he plays the whole year, is going to put up a 3 or 4 WAR season. This is the wrong thread for this tangent. It's about the minors and how Gilbert hitting as a prospect changes the dynamics of this organization. I'm moving the Chas valuation stuff over to the trade thread.
The problem with Chas is he will be a FA at age 32. He might get an Adam Duvall type deal. One years 7 million. Duvall has made close to 25 million in his career this far. Might be able to get close to 40 for his career if he keeps producing. That seems like a reasonable outcome if Chas keeps producing and doesn't get hurt.
I think Chas has a chance to get 2nd tier FA money, but first he needs to have at least 1 500+ PA season with his current very good defense and slightly above average bat. But he also needs to bring his splits vs RH very close or equal to MLB average. It would be better if LHP was his weaker side.
Free agent money has nothing to do with how much a player is worth. The free agent market is where GMs go when they have had something blow up in their faces. An unforeseeable circumstance or someone just flat screwed the pooch. Players who were not worth enough to get their team to spend what it would take to keep them out of that purely sellers market are vastly overpriced there.Thus the price for those players can be far in excess of their value. Chas is a better than average starter in center field who is trending upward. He is very inexpensive and has real value now that is looking like it could be even better in the future. You don't find that in the free agent market. Sounds pretty good huh. A fair trade should bring us back an equally valuable player in an area where we need that value. Houston is in a rare situation. They also have a younger cheaper better center fielder coming up. Not just better than average, a potential All Star. This rarest of prospects affords us a unique opportunity. Trading value for value can help both teams to rectify their respective weaknesses.
The glut of OF who have all star potential in High A and AA is big fuel driving this. But the fact that Jake and Chas are very similar players and Yordan and Tucker are here limiting opportunities really makes it obvious that the best thing for the team is to trade one while his value is high. But if the team is to win in 2023 they may both be needed
He was under drafted. I posted about it leading up to the draft. Scouts dwelled on his short size (closer to 5’7” than 5’9”) and believed his frame was already maximized and as a result his upsize was limited. They questioned whether he would have success with a wooden bat and believed his power would evaporate. They failed to consider that plenty of players roughly the same size did well, including Mookie Betts. They dismissed the fact his EV in college was 99%, that he had elite bat speed and walked as often as he struck out. They didn’t consider that he had a cannon for an arm, got great jumps, stole bases and took quality angles on balls in centerfield. I haven’t seen enough to say just how good he will be. What I can say is he may be short, but he had just about every physical and skill attribute needed to be very good - and they were overlooked because of his size and age.
