You mean like a 20 year old who hit .340/.432/.587 in rookie ball last year? Or how about a 20 year old switch-hitting catcher who batted .272 with 4 HRs and 23 RBIs in rookie ball? What about a 2011 1st round pick, who is a 6'5" 230 lb 19 year old workhorse with a 96 mph fastball? All of these qualify in my book as "high-upside rookie ball prospects" and have been acquired by Luhnow. We've also managed to get a couple of pretty safe bets to be productive, if unspectacular, major leaguers. 80% of every good team is made up of these guys, and now we actually have some. Don't take that for granted. We were never going to get superstars for Wandy, Myers, Lyon, Happ, etc. Just because they are the "best" players on our team does not mean that value correlates elsewhere. Wandy is a 3/4 on most teams, and pretty much everyone would be happy with this haul for a middle of the rotation pitcher. Your beef should be with Wade, since he actually had "stars" in Pence, Oswalt, Bourn, and Berkman and was really only able to acquire potential studs in one of those deals.
Wade was hamstrung by Berkman's down year, and his not wanting to leave, and ended up with an 11th hour deal and still brought us Mark Melancon, who was flipped by Luhnow for Jed Lowrie, and Jimmy Paredes, who is one of the teams better prospects. Oswalt brought back Jonathan Villar who is a Top 100 capable prospect with huge potential. He also got Anthony Gose who is a stud prospect, but flipped him for a guy who was a stud prospect in Brett Wallace. Pence deal was rape. Bourn deal sucked. I never like it, though I like Clemens even if his season has gone down the toilet. In hindsight, the best move was probably to hold onto him if the Braves weren't willing to give up Minor/Beachy/Delgado.
I agree with everything you said, and personally am okay with probably every deal but Bourn. I'm just saying xc shouldn't have expected superstar prospects for our above-average, overpaid talent. Those prospects are only possible with "stars" like the ones we traded away the last few years.
I guess we disagree on that then. A 20 y/o hitting that in rookie ball isn't THAT impressive. Especially in the super-inflated Northwest league. 18 y/o? Hell yea. Age makes a huge difference. Toney is also sporting a .242/.326/.325 line in his repeat year in rookie ball. A 20 y/o catcher hitting .272 with 4 hr in rookie ball ain't knocking my socks off either. And I don't know who this is supposed to be because these aren't Carlos Perez's stats. I like him though; he could be a switch-hitting Jason Castro. Musgrove is pretty much the type of player I wanted. High upside (#2 starter potential) but is all the way down in rookie ball.
Superstar? I didn't expect that. Getting above-average starters/borderline all-star level talents is a reasonable expectation though, because that's what Wandy is. I see that with Perez and Musgrove, but not any of the other prospects. Interestingly enough, I think Ed Wade made good trades in large part because he kept going back to the phillies well. That scouting department is renown for drafting/signing high-upside players. Wade was well aware of the talent in that system. Even now when their system is weaker than ever they have quite a few intriguing high-upside players. It's too bad the Phillies are having a down year and we couldn't trade with them.
Man, I was gonna make a birthday thread for you since you're one of my favorite posters here, but it was last week . Happy belated birthday.
Is there a min. payroll for baseball? There's going to be a decent amount of people in the suites making more money than our highest paid player
Well if you say so. I'll immediately go out looking for said clue. Where did you get your clue? Was it expensive? Can you just share some of your clue with me? Moron.
Wandy is an overpaid .500 pitcher. That contract was dumb when they gave it to him 2yrs ago. The Astros are lucky they found someone willing to take that contract with them not having to pick up more of the money than they did.
Wandy isn't special. People give up prospects for major upgrades, which Wandy isn't (not for a good team at least). He had that one year where he was great, but since then he has been just another middle of the rotation guy with decreasing stats and owed a ton of money. Wade should have traded him & Myers instead of giving them deals. Both were at their peak values, and Wade paid players in their 30s having career years. What you also see is teams aren't mortgaging the futures for older players like they used to. They are now snatching up young stars. Also remember that Wandy was nobody until he was 28 and started turning it around. Guys like Owens and Cain could be what Wandy is.
W-L record is a terrible indicator of pitcher quality. The fact is Wandy is a lefty who threw roughly a 3.5 era and 200 ip each of the last three seasons. There's less than 10 of those in the majors each season, maybe less than 5. As I've pointed out before, if they wanted to save money they could have just placed him on waivers. I'm sure some team would have grabbed him. They would have saved about the same amount they're paying to Pittsburgh.
His contract with us wasn't bad. Only problem was it was backloaded, and a club option became a player option if he was traded. If we were contenders, the contract was fair market value, but when you knew we might look to trade him, it was stupid.
This is an excellent point. Ultimately the package is what it is. I'm not terribly excited but it's not a bad package. I give Luhnow credit for cutting the deals he needed to make. I'd put behind the KC/MIA/TOR deals in terms of how impressed I was with the package relative to player. We'll see how they turn out. I'd love to be wrong.
I don't see a problem here. We're pretty much buying prospects at this point, Morey would do this all day if he could This is exciting, both the Rockets and Astros finally are rebuilding together and I'm gonna enjoy every minute of it!
