Houston Astros biggest loser as wild trade market comes to close

Funny, Jayson Stark says we were amongst the winners:

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=stark_jayson&id=5426919

A few problems with the USA article:

(1) Lance Berkman is our best player? He wasn't even the best hitter on the team this year. Did this guy watch some 2005 footage?

(2) He's basically calling us losers for re-building; Stark basically calling us winners for finally re-building. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

 

Everybody has their opinions.

Skimming over the article, all he did was a very shallow analysis of every team. He probably wrote the article while taking a dump.

 

doesn't that writer understand that his opinions are meaningless?

 

Buster Olney last night said, the Astros were the biggest winners out of the sellers.

 

Let's play Find The Fail:

I got one...

"They needed bullpen help, why not give a shot to former stud Kerry Wood?"

That guy has been nothing short of the AL version of Brad Lidge since he went to the Phillies (excluding 2008 of course), just with a somewhat less horrible contract.

 

It's no more meaningless than the writers cited here that said the Astros were the winners. And apparently meaningful enough to be posted here and commented on.

 

Its almost as if he thought the Astros should have been "buyers", and used the trades to get established MLB players.

If the Astros get ANYBODY to stick as a long-term MLB player out of their deals (Villar, Wallace, Melancon, Paredes), they're better off than they would have been by doing nothing. They'll also have payroll releif to make other moves or sign more expensive draft picks in the future.

 

http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showpost.php?p=5487130&postcount=302

 

He's not saying they are losers because they should have been buyers. He's saying they were losers because they didn't get much value. He specifically said that in the first line:

When you dump your best players, you're supposed to get prospects back, and a whole lot of financial relief.


They traded probably two best players to be traded at the deadline and paid the the majority of their salaries. And if you don't believe in Wallace, then they arguably didn't get a prospect as good as Matt Capps fetched by himself. I don't necessarily agree with him because really don't know what Philly/StLouis/etc were willing to part with, but I can fully see how someone could view the deals as failures when the names of more "wow" players like Singleton and Shelby Miller were being thrown around.

 

Most accomplished? Yes. Highest paid? Yes. But best? I dunno... Cliff Lee was the best player traded this period.

And nobody takes on salary in trades anymore... not even the Yankees. Its almost as if you have to pay to get any sort of prospect in return (let alone a good prospect).

 

Stark is legit.

I listen to him

 

The Astros were hamstrung by the no-trade clauses on both Oswalt and Berkman. When there are only 4 teams that the Astros could have traded Lance to and the other teams know it, they are not very likely to offer the moon. I have no doubt that the Astros would have gotten much more in return for both Lance and Roy had they been able to trade them to whatever team they wanted.

 

He's actually pretty horrible to be honest. Joel Sherman is one of the best writers out there, but I think he's dead wrong in this article.

I don't think the Astros got a ton of value, but I think their options were limited. The economies of baseball have changed. The Yankees weren't willing to take on money to acquire a guy like Lance Berkman, and apparently he used his no trade rights to limit himself to just the Yankees. What are the Astros supposed to do?

I think the Oswalt deal was an ok one, but I really think if the rest of the league had known how much money the Astros were willing to kick in they could have gotten higher ceiling prospects. I think the Astros made a mistake focusing on "major league ready" guys as opposed to legit blue chippers.

 

Just like the NFL draft, when we are talking about prospects it takes a while to even see how these guys turn out and thus who wins and loses. I know I am in the minority but I actually liked the Yankee trade because we got one of their higher ranked prospects and someone with potential. The Philly deal would have been great if Singleton was involved but Wallace will do just fine. Overall, it was a good deadline IMHO but who knows until we see what these guys can do over a long period of time.

 

Wow this guy is a moron.

 

Sorry - I was just referring to the deadline week. Lee is certainly by far the best player to move during the season.

True - but if you give a team Roy Oswalt at something like $10MM for 1.5 years, shouldn't it net something substantially more than what Matt Capps was worth? Maybe, maybe not - as others have mentioned, there were complications due to no-trade clauses. But I don't think it's unreasonable for a writer to think that it would net more than that.

 

You should find a way to email that out to him...and call him a moron so that he knows the truth.

 

for 15 mil I hoped the astros could have got a strausburg, but it is better then keeping them for another year.