I'm going to be bullish on Clemens, he has a chance to be a good #3 pitcher but his floor should be a good long term closer. Either way he will be an important part of the future. Oberholtzer sounds a lot like Jonathan Sanchez.
This comment says it all: When the Astros called up Jordan Lyles and Jose Altuve, it left their minor league corps nearly empty. But with eight players added during deadline week, all of a sudden they have a system again.
I've been the ultimate pessimist on these deals, but I like everything I hear about Oberholtzer. Pitchers like that are always underrated, while the Wild Thing Vaughns of the world are always overrated.
I'm hoping the Stros will be relevant again in about 3-4 years...takes time to rebuild. (Thank you captain obvious!!)
Why would anyone feel bad in the first place? Singleton and Cosart are excellent prospects with HUGE upside, and the overall haul for Pence + Bourn combined was very solid.
The haul for Pence was great, the haul for Bourn was meh. IMO. I'm really excited about Cosart and Singleton. Hopefully they fulfill their potential.
Scahfer could be an x factor, especially since most people are evaluating the deal without considering him at all. Granted, my expectations are low, but if he's able to play average CF for us, that's a good young guy to have under club control (for cheap) for the next few years.
The combined haul for both players was, as I said, very solid. Individually, I thought we won the Pence trade but lost the Bourn trade. However, I'm higher on the Bourn trade now than when I first heard that we weren't getting any of their top pitchers. Schafer has had a rough couple of years with injury and such, and Oberholtzer and Clemens were buried in a pitching-rich Braves system, and perhaps a bit underrated.
I think people will be surprised how well Schafer plays center at MMP. Bourn was a gold glove CF so it would be unfair to compare but Schafer will cover lots of ground, has good instincts and better arm then Bourn. Now that the pressure is off Jordan, I can see him hitting around .260-.270 with a decent OBP. That said, Schafer strikes out to much so he needs to cut those down and become a slap hitter...poor man's Bourn.
Yeah, that's right. I didnt even think about Schafer. He's talented and maybe he can finally put it all together.
Or at the very least, have more upside than our current options of bourgeois, bogusevic, and Durango.
I think the Astros have to know that they won't be relevant until at least 2013 and maybe later.... Bourn and Pence will both be FAs in 2013; Bourn with Boras as an agent. I think they have to take what they can get while the division races are close. If Philly dominates, you can't put people in a bidding war next year assuming that would be the case. At any rate, I'm glad to know that the minor league teams are not dead last in MLB anymore.
I would have preferred to keep Bourn and trade him in the offseason. Sure, maybe we get less, but we didn't get much anyways.
Except they still pretty much are. Minor League records don't mean much. The best minor league teams are typically stacked with not-quite-good-enough-for-the-show players. Oklahoma City is 1 game ahead of the Iowa Cubs for 15th (of 16) in the PCL, Tri-City is 11th (of 13) in the NY-Penn League, and Greenville is 9th (of 10) in the Appy League. Every other affliate is in dead last in their respective league. Again, you can't take much from minor league team records, except that when all of the records are this bad, you can bet that the system is horrible.
Sanchez has great stuff but can't locate his pitches. He averaged 11.8 K/9 for his minor league career and was a top 100 BA prospect. I don't think Oberholtzer is in that league. The name I keep seeing with Oberholtzer is Randy Wolf.
Yeah the Sanchez comparison doesn't make much sense. I was thinking Oberholtzer could be a Paul Maholm type. Maholm has a career 4.32 ERA and has pitched over 177 innings every year since 2006.
Grading prospects right after a trade is like grading draft picks right out of the draft. It's really a pointless exercise. I thought we literally stole Randy Johnson when we retained all our top prospects at the time. IIRC Hidalgo, Elarton, and Ward. They were premium AAA prospects that were surefire ML caliber with star potential. Instead we gave them Freddy Garcia, Carlos Guillén, and John Halama. So I'm neither too high on Pence's haul nor too low on Bourn's haul. In the end, the Astros got more useful players for the future and they saved some money. The former I'm skeptical because of Ed Wade's track record. The latter may or may not be important depending on how Jim Crane spends it, or doesn't spend it. There's not much to do but hope they succeed.
