Does anyone have any insight into this? While I think the trade was OK, we could have really cashed in if we stuck to our guns. I had always heard that we needed 3 top flight prospects in return for Pence---we got two. If you add Trevor May and/or Jesse Biddle in addition to Singleton and Cosart, you've got an awesome deal. Basically, Wade got nervous and caved at the end and what could have been a monumental trade turns out to be a lost opportunity.
Count me in the camp that think Wade folded to early...but wtf do I know (very little). It would seem with Atlanta in mix as well that something would have gotten done no matter what. However, they didn't want to give up even one of their highly touted young SP...so maybe they were playing a better game of hardball and Ed made the right move. It's suspect at best with all these Philly moves, however. Doesn't make Wade look very good, IMO. I'm just glad we're restocking with high-ceiling youth.
I thought we would get one top 50 prospect and another top 100 prospect, so obivously getting two top 45 is fine by me. That said, I am curious why he didn't just drag this into Sunday, just to see if he could squeeze May, Biddle or Rodriguez out of the deal AND really make it a BIG time deal. Either way, pretty happy and ready to move on with JD Martinez.
My previous post was deleted and I was told to tone it down. I apologize and now submit my toned down post Ed Wade is a dirty, stinky, primate's anterior orifice. I hope he consumes a bag of vienna sausages.
Depends if the Phillies were eyeing anyone else. You wait too long, Phillies just make another trade, and now you're SOL.
I went to bed last night thinking what a great upgrade we made to our farm with this trade. Today, im less enthusiastic, but not totally underwhelmed either. Google-ing responses around the net, the reaction is mixed. Many say the trade was even, a good number feel like Philly won this. About a 4.5 on a scale of 10 for Houston. Many bring up a good point that the 2 main guys for Houston Cosart/Singleton while good, seem way short of spectacular. On the other hand, many guys who went on to BE spectacular didnt look any better than these guys at this stage of their careers. I suppose those that wanted more thought we should have gotten ML ready AA or AAA guy(s) that are wowing their respective leagues, rather than high A question marks. But lets keep in mind that we didnt trade away a Jeff Bagwell in his prime. My impression at this point is that the winner here wont be determined for a year or two. That is, until we see what all the players involved do over a period of time.
This is a good trade. We're selling Hunter at about the highest value we can expect him to have. His contract is going to go way up in arbitration here in the near future and he's having a very good year. Singleton is the type of high ceiling prospect you need to rebuild a franchise. Cosart is also a good talent that can be a quality pitcher a few years down the road. The players to be named later are just gravy. Singleton is really the prize and he could definitely develop into being a better player than Pence is right now. I don't get why anyone would be overly critical about this trade. We're not going anywhere right now and Pence is a piece we had to use to get younger talent in our system.
I believe my reaction, and some other peoples, is not so much that trading Pence was a bad move, but that Pence was loved much here and that we didnt get anything close to a proven commodity in return. Having said this, you seldom get a proven commodity for a player like Pence. We got 4 players. Hopefully one of them will rise far enough to make this trade look good in the future. But what many want is something to latch onto now. Something to make losing Pence seem unequivocally worth the while.
Pure spin control by the media. Two weeks ago they were saying we would get one prospect. Then it was floated that the Phillies may give Cosart and Singleton and the media said how it would be a steal for the Astros. Now, they swing the other way... Look, Pence is good but nothing special. He is becoming expensive and is a complementary player than will not make much difference to our team. I do not think that the Astros would get more than the Phillies gave.
This is where I think people mess up - Pence was the best player available, but he's not a superstar. There are about 5 or 6 RF's in the National League alone better than him, and he's not a top 10 outfielder in the NL. He's not Randy Johnson or Carlos Beltran or Roy Halladay or Cliff Lee - a gamechanger that's one of the best players in the game. He's probably the 4th best player in the Phillies' lineup now - there's only so much the Astros are going to get for him.
Why exactly did we get a better deal for Pence than Oswalt. I realize Pence is cheap right now but he'll hit arbitration and his salary will skyrocket. I guess they have guaranteed club control for 2 more years but Roy Oswalt was a #1 starter and they gave some garbage (yes Happ is looking like garbage) for him.
so if we got back domonic brown in the pence deal, and then brown was hitting .220 next year, would you be happy now and singing the same tune next year?
Oswalt was harder to trade. The mistake was FO thinking JA Happ would be anything more than a back-end starter (which many analysts have predicted).
