I agree about a SP2 trade decimating their future ... but ... that is the trade off. At some point, the Astros need to pay the price and develop the AAA/AA prospects, acknowledging that player development is a higher priority than the playoffs. The Astros did that last season intentionally with Cam Smith at the start of the season and with their AAA pitching talent later in the season due to injuries.
But at the same time, there is a non-zero chance that EACH of Smith, Arrighetti, and Matthews over 4-6 seasons are more valuable than 2 seasons of Ryan.
If I were in charge, I would be stacking the big league roster and the A-ball and complex rosters. I would be willing to trade away any prospect in AA/AAA to improve the big league roster. Smith and Matthews would be 2 guys I would be very hesitant to trade, but pretty much everyone else (Sullivan, Dezenzo, all the pitchers) would be available. You can sign AAAA guys to backfill your AAA roster, and if you are prudent in how you build your big league roster, you can buy time to rebuild the middle of the farm system. I think this closely aligns with what Houston is doing, but they just don’t have the resources to fully stack the big league roster. So that may result in a year or two rebuild between when the current big leaguers flame out and the lower level prospects (Neyens, Frey, Alvarez, etc.) arrive. If Brown ends up trading away guys from the lower level this year I will lose a lot of faith in him.
