Well number one i dont fully know what was offered for pence... maybe a few of the pitching prospects were offered and Wade wanted a 3rd. Anyways i think that Bourn is more valuable than pence. Call me crazy but he is a better fit for the braves as they need a leadoff hitter/ CF worse than a corner bat. And he has played just as well if not better than pence this year. There was some graph posted a while back showing that he was 6th in the league in WAR... not a conclusive measure by any means but still an indication that he has been borderline elite this year. Also we got 2 top 50 prospects for pence so its not exactly like the braves could have offered alot better than that... Personally i wouldnt have dealt pence to the braves unless they really overwhelmed us. The phillies were so committed to pence that you could squeeze a lot out of them. And you also have another piece that you know the braves are interested in .. better to deal both than just deal pence and have no ( or only one) suitors left for bourn ( philly wouldnt want him ).. you have to look at it like a game of chess.
Where's our power bats Ed? Are we supposed to single teams to death? Wallace was supposed to have power but apparently we got the Pedro Cerrano post-Jobu version of a power hitter. #nomarbles
Word on the street: Braves don't want another lefty if they can help it. ADDED: Not sure why that would be, they're not super stacked with lefties. But nearly every Braves follower over at MLBTR has been saying this.
I think Bourn is probably the better all-around player but perception is that Pence is probably more valuable. That said, Bourn should be the premier CF available and should cost the Braves two top 20 prospects but doubt they give up two of their big four. Braves are so loaded that they don't have to and it would still be a great deal for the Stros.
This. I think it was Pence for them or nothing(from the Astros). Might look elsewhere(Quentin, Ludwick, etc)
Yes... he would possible be good... and the Astros would be paying him 11-14 million a year. Prospects are always a gamble, but the Astros got 2 prospects that are better than any in their own system. If you want to rip the Astros or Wade, rip him for the Oswalt trade... that was and is one of the worst trades I have seen... the Astros are still paying part of Oswalt's contract.
Bourn is actually 5th in WAR now with a wide gap over Tulowitzki and he's closing in on Reyes. I think it's hard to argue that Bourn hasn't been elite or better than Pence this season. If you think about the game beyond slugging, it's pretty obvious actually. Amazingly, Bourn hasn't even been as good as usual defensively but he is far and away the best defensive CFer in the NL Over the last few seasons. Throw in his baserunning and his improvements as a hitter and it's not that hard to see. Having said all that, Bourn being a better player than Pence doesn't correlate to demand in the trade market for obvious reasons: team needs, contract status, the nature of the market, etc...
But in this case it just so happends that the braves DO need a player like bourn... so that is why i would expect a big return
@DieHard Rocket First off, nobody knows when the Astros will be "good" again. By good, I assume you mean legitimately contending for the playoffs. That certainly won't be happening next season and probably not the season after that or the season after that. We drafted well in terms of volume for a few drafts now and we were still in the pits of organizational rankings (before today's deal and whatever else goes down before Sunday). You have to look at the Astros overall situation relative to the rest of the NL landscape. We are the worst team in the league and we still have among the weaker farm systems. The latter is changing slowly and surely but we aren't even close to thinking about playoff contention. We're really just entering the rebuilding phase. It's gonna take time, luck and more time. There are multiple NL teams that are going to be contending for the next few years and most (not all) of those teams currently in contention also have better pipelines of talent. That's a bad situation to be in but it's reality. More or less every move made should be with about a 5-year window of rebuilding in mind. Any overachieving that happens before then, great. With regards to Pence, he's at the typical peak age for hitters and he was never all that good to begin with. The chances of him being "good" by the time we are fighting for a playoff spot are slim... and he's going to cost more than he's worth to us in the meantime and when we get there. And we would've sacrificed trading him for players that might help us when we are relevant again. Even if none of the players we got for him end up panning out, we made the right move trading him today. Let's just hope that at least one player ends up directly or indirectly improving the 2016 Astros.
I will say this...after we trade Bourn and maybe Wandy the Astros should find themselves in the top 15 among best MLB farm systems. Better days are ahead.
After several thorough drafts, the Astros jumped "all the way" from dead last to 27th in Keith Law's org rankings for 2011. Baseball America had us at 26th. It's hard to move up a lot quickly. It's possible that we could slide up to around 20 or the high teens if Wade swings a couple of additional good deals but I would be hesitant to assume we'll move up at least 11 or 12 slots, even including the last draft and round of signings. Most other teams are also drafting and signing prospects at the same time. And some teams are making trades for the future just like us. It's hard to really gauge unless you evaluate the entire landscape like BA and other groups do. Those rankings are obviously superficial to an extent and as hard as it is to evaluate young players for professional scouts, it must be that much harder for the guys that do these rankings. Having said that, they don't just put those lists together on a whim while taking a dump. There is thought and analysis and an awareness of the prospect pool involved so I would tend to place some value in them.
Regardless of that point, yes, better days are ahead and days like today will help get us there faster.
There is a VERY real possibility our top 10 prospect list will look completely different on Aug 16th. Cosart, Singleton, Springer, Houser and possibly Jack Armstrong will be added for sure but consider the prospects we could get for Bourn and Wandy and it could shift dramatically. Now, think about the fact we will have the #1 pick next draft too.
There is no question that it will. You still can't gauge the relativity of our situation without having a real knowledge of all 15 other NL organizations - what they have done and what they will do. None of us possess that information but we do know that it's hard to move up the rankings rapidly based on history. Is it possible that when all the dust settles and the next rankings come out, we're in the middle of the pack? Sure, but I'd temper expectations. I think it was actually you a year or two ago that was absolutely convinced that our first 2 or 3 drafts under Wade had put us in the middle of the pack or near the top 10 (can't remember what you said exactly). And we've had at least another draft since you made that post and the last rankings came out. Well, lo and behold, we jumped 3 and 4 spots, depending on which list you look at, which is exactly what I said would likely happen.
With the #1 pick do you draft the rocket arm McCullers or the local 5 tool talent Nick Williams? This should be interesting.
