Astros Trade Chips

Bogusevic has had a lot of injury issues since being drafted. He was so terribly overused in college that the Astros have actually been right in taking it slow with him. This is his first injury free season and he's doing well. I'm sure we'll see him in AA next season.

Einertson was once what Pence is today. Then, he disappeared for a few seasons before finally playing much better this season. I doubt he would be anything other than a PTBNL in any trade.

I don't think the management is looking to trade anyone from our minor league ranks. If anyone is going, it will be someone off the major league roster. It's the wrong move to trade potential prospects when the system is all ready down.

 

The Astros can trade the chubby white dude, but if they get rid of Eric Estrada, I'm disowning them!!

 

if trading patton or towles got us higher upside and more major league ready players at their respective positions, i'd trade them in a heartbeat. For example, if trading Towles and Qualls could get us Saltalamachia, no question I'd do that trade. If trading Patton plus Loretta could get us an Andrew Miller (hypothetically), I'd do that trade as well. Drayton says we're retooling not rebuilding, so Patton and Towles making their debuts next year doesn't help. Playing major league ready prospects now is what we should be doing, e.g. Hunter Pence.

 

Unless Drayton is gonna up our payroll 50 million/year then we're not actually retooling. Only retooling enough to be a possible .500 team at best, not win the division or wild card.

 

This is not an accurate statment. The fact is that with the impending retirement of Biggio and Ausmus, along with the Bagwell deal falling off the books, you just need to allocate that money in different players. You can use that money for FAs. You don't need to have a $150MM payroll in order to compete.

 

Exactly, good teams aren't all made up of $10 million players at each position. Most well run organizations have young, cheap players making contributions. Atlanta is the perfect example. Jeff Francouer and Brian McCann were both 23-24ish when they became full time players. Hunter Pence is one such example on our team. If you add a Saltalamachia or Clay Buchholz who are each making the minimum, that frees up alot of money to get free agents at other positions (3B, CF, SP). That totally makes it worth it to trade a Patton or Towles.

To take the Atlanta model futher would be to reward the young talent with long term contracts before they get to their last years of club arbitration or FA. One example is when Brian McCann got a 4 year/ 40 million contact last year. He's locked up through the rest of his club arb years and his first year of FA so Atlanta never has to pay him the $15mil he could command on the open market.

 

WOW! I never thought of it that way.

So rather than paying talented free agents money, we'll just call up all the big league ready talent in our farm system so we don't have to jack up the payroll to win. Just like the way teams like Detroit, Minnesota, Oakland, Atlanta, Milwaukee, etc. are doing right now. They mix a few high paid veterans with players under club control.

Except the only conundrum we're in is deciding which starting pitchers, catcher, 3B, RF, and hitting SS to choose from to call up. That's right, we don't have any. Therefore we have to fill those holes via the FA market. Another fun fact is the better the player we sign, the more money we have to pay them. Not to mention other teams will be competing for them. Plus we need alot of better players.

Just for fun adding another bat like Berkman or Lee should only cost 12-15 million/year. Another Oswalt calliber pitcher should run around 15 million/year. That's 2 spots right there and it didn't even cost much. But that's only if we want to add a couple immediate type impact players. Or we could add a bunch of 5 million/year players and become a .500 team. 5 million dollars can probably get us a middle aged pitcher with an era of around 4.5-6.0 if we're lucky.

 

I don't think thats the conundrum. It's how to best make use of our prospects and non-keeper players to best "retool" for next season. Loretta is hitting over .300 with a .380 OBP, you don't think some contender out there is willing to give up a decent young player to get him? There's no reason to think players like Lamb, Loretta, Wheeler, Qualls, and Scott couldn't bring back a few middle prospects or as a twofer bring back one great prospect.

Also, your list of holes isn't entirely correct. While we do need more production from the RF spot, it would be better to move Pence from CF to RF and get a good defensive CF who's also a tablesetter. In terms of catchers, few teams have a better catching prospect than J.R. Towles, who made the futures game this month. He's at AA right now, but could see time in the majors sometime by mid-2008. Lastly, if we shore up those other lineup holes, then AE's hitting production becomes a moot point. If Berkman were hitting like he did last season and MoBerg hit like its 2005, then less people would be moaning about his .230 avg. No doubt its horrible, but having Berkman hitting .250ish is way worse.

 

Look at the teams that have won the World Series over the last 10 years and tell me how many had a payroll of $150MM. Remember that Baltimore and LA both had astonishingly high payrolls and not many wins to show for it.

You spend your money WISELY. But Biggio, Ausmus, and Bags being off the books would net you one of your coveted $12M FAs you drool for.

 

did we at least keep salsa?

 

I'm not advocating this is the way to go long term. The recent salary spikes with Zito, Ichiro, Soriano, Clemens, etc. are making teams covet their farm systems more then ever in history. What i have been clearly trying to state, is that if you do not have good players you can bring up from your own farm system or are already good and under club control, then the only thing you can do is go out and buy them if you want to be a legit contender. This is the exact reason the Mets, Yankees, and RedSox have been in their predicament of extremely high payrolls for years. Because they would trade the farm system for immediate big league help

We have no help that will come from the minors for years. There is no Berkman, Lee, Lidge, or Oswalt down there. We are not routinely bringing up Mike Hamptons, Daryl Kiles, Carl Everetts, Lance Berkmans, ect right now to mix in with the players we are already paying high amounts for. After Berkman it took us almost a decade to bring up another good hitter named Hunter Pence. So when people ask what it's going to take to win next year, i am givinging them the honest answer. It's gonna cost us easily an extra 50 million to be a legit contender next year. Starting pitching is extremely expensive. We need a #2 and #3 guy. Even to resign Jennings would probably cost 10 million and he's not even close to an Ace or a #2 pitcher! Another big bat would cost 12-15 million!

This is baseball economics 101. What is so complicated about what I'm saying here? WE DO NOT HAVE GOOD PLAYERS TO BRING UP THAT WILL MAKE AN IMPACT IN THE STANDINGS NEXT YEAR! NOR THE YEAR AFTER!THEREFORE, IF PEOPLE WANT TO WIN THE NEXT FEW YEARS IT'S GONNA BE MORE EXPENSIVE THEN EVER!!! The 2 best players under club control we have are Brad Lidge and Hunter Pence.

I have been stating for months we should either blow up the team and rebuild or Drayton will have to spend more money on this team than he ever has if he really wants to win, not contend for 2nd or 3rd place in the worst division in baseball. I simpley came to this conclusion by looking at our farm system and the amount of money our owner has been willing to spend in the past. We are going to be a sub .500 team for years to come. Many of you guys can dream about all the fake trade scenarios you want of trading Lamb or Everett for an Ace pitching stud and power hitting catcher, but get comfortable seeing us in the standings for X amount of years where Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, and Cincinnati have been for the last decade.

If any of you have a better solution to get a winning team on the field next year that would realistically work, you could and should be the next GM.

Have any of the people that don't understand me ever took any sort of business class that went over supply and demand? How you can determine the right market price using a simple supply and demand model made up of a few lines on a piece of paper? Well the good players that could help our club next year are low in supply but high in demand. So when you draw a diagonal line through your model to see where the pricing of a good FA would go for, it's gonna be expensive. Pitching having the least amount of supply and the most amount of demand will be the most expensive.


Someone else can explain this all again next year when lots of the same people are wondering why we are losing again and we already knew ahead of time our team needed improvement.

 

I think that what we want to avoid is the situation where we grossly overspend and a year or two from now, we have to have a Florida Marlins type firesale which spiralls us into the doldrums for the next decade.

That is what spending that kind of money will eventually force us into. We do not have Yankees type revenue. I think that we could have a payroll of $105MM to $115MM and be ok. With the subtraction of Ausmus, Bidge, and the Bagwell deals, we could sign a big name pitcher and maybe a 3B without increasing the payroll significantly over the $95MM to $100MM it currently is. Then you add another FA somewhere in the lineup. We are much better, and nowhere close to $150MM.

When thinking about the rotation, remember that Backe will be ready next season. That will be a 3rd or 4th starter on a good rotation.