Looking like a lost season and Houston is looking increasingly likely to be deadline sellers. Either way, always fun to speculate at which trades might happen. If Houston is out of contention, Bregman, Verlander, and Pressly are all likely gone. Obviously Abreu has no trade value but will likely also be gone. Depending on the market, I would guess any guys with <2 years of control would also be shopped; that includes Tucker, Caratini, Montero, Valdez, and Urquidy. I think if Houston could get multiple elite prospects in return for Tucker and Valdez, they’d be in position to return to contention in 2025 with ample payroll flexibility and a good farm system. Here is one hypothetical trade for each player I think could be moved (with prospect’s org ranking in current mlb.com list): Cubs get: 3B Alex Bregman Astros get: OF Kevin Alcantara (5) IF James Triantos (6) Mets get: SP Justin Verlander Astros get: RHP Blade Tidwell (10) 1B Ryan Clifford (4) Diamondbacks get: C Victor Caratini Astros get: RHP Grayson Hitt (22) RHP Landon Sims (24) Phillies get: OF Kyle Tucker Astros get: RHP Mick Abel (2) OF Justin Crawford (4) IF Aidan Miller (3) IF Robert Moore (26) Orioles get: SP Framber Valdez Astros get: 3B/OF Coby Mayo (3) IF Connor Norby (7) IF Max Wagner (14) IF Mac Horvath (11) Yankees get: RP Ryan Pressly RP Rafael Montero 1B Jose Abreu RHP Jose Urquidy $10M (2024) Astros get: PTBNL
2025 is next year. You think they are going to trade away many of their best players and they will be in contention? Contention for what?
They’d still have Altuve, Yordan, Diaz, Pena, McCormick, Meyers, and Dubon back on offense. They’d have Javier, Blanco, Garcia, McCullers, Brown, Hader, Abreu, and Martinez back on the pitching staff. They’d have a boatload of ready or near ready top prospects they added via these trades along with all the prospects they already have, and they’d have about $100M in freed up payroll. 2B Altuve DH Alvarez C Diaz RF Conforto (free agent) 3B Mayo SS Pena LF McCormick 1B Loperfido CF Meyers Bench: Dubon, Salazar, Norby, Leon Rotation: Abel, Javier, Blanco, McCullers, Garcia Bullpen: Hader, Abreu, Brown, Martinez, Scott, Dubin, Whitley, Arrighetti
More like this! Much admire your knowledge! You sure know a lot about lots of players! Keep up the good work.
Love the Yankees trade. Would do the Orioles and Phillies trade in a heartbeat- I don’t think we’d actually get back anywhere near that much for those guys, but if we did I’d make that trade in contention or not. Until to see how Bregman- at 30M and in a walk year- is worth much of anything but that failure can be in my imagination not the real world. I would not trade Verlander. his option should vest which gives us an ace adjacent pitcher at 12M next year, and I think he’s comfortable here and I want the last human being to ever win 300 games to do it in an astros jersey. I think he can be a functional MLB caliber player for the next 4 years (this year and next being a sober average- the 2 years after that he hangs on as a MoR/BoR guy to get to 300.
I know quite a bit has been going wrong thus far, but I guess I'm old school, and being only 5.5 games out of first place with FIVE more months left in the season is far from a "lost season".
I'd consider this the thread for those that are admittedly rooting for a rebuild... or just prefer the prospect development/minor league aspect of the game moreso. Which is fine. This place was still a lot of fun from 2012-2014 when there was no MLB success and everybody was excited with prospect development.
It was but I'm not ready for them to be in such a state that old Cosby Show reruns got better ratings than their games...which really happened a lot back then.
Its not going to be like that... although I would always have loved to see what Luhnow's approach to this team would be if he ever got to oversee another rebuild. On the one hand, tearing it down to the studs did have eventual overwhelming success. On the other hand, the damage that did to the bottom line and the total insult to the fans actually going to those games (paying MLB prices for minor league product/experimentation) was a very ballsy move that can only be truly executed in soft/non-existent media markets.... which Houston was at the time, but now they have big bad Chandler Rome ready to hurl insults L/R like a modern day Evan Drellich tried to do way back then.
The Orioles/Phillies hypotheticals only have one truly elite prospect each, as Mayo and Abel are the only consensus top 100 guys. You may have to take out Norby or Wagner but it only looks like a good trade for Houston because of how stacked the Orioles farm is. Not sure how the Phillies trade looks lopsided toward them; Tucker is a fringe MVP candidate and outside of Abel those other prospects carry significant risk. I agree Bregman would need to start playing better to warrant the return I pegged him for, but if they can’t get that much then they might be better off just taking the QO (or trying to sign him to a short term extension to rebuild his value).
There’s reason for hope, but at this point the odds are against Houston making the playoffs, hence my characterization that it is “looking like a lost season”.
They'll go as far as the starting pitching can take them. There is optimism on that front as of right now... but that will turn sour if Framber/Urquidy can't come back (and stay back) or any of the other projected starters has a set back. Abreu/Espada lapses are the easy target right now for 3/4th's of the threads here.... but we all know that if the starters pitch well consistently, this team will win a lot of games regardless.
The good news is that Houston is in a dramatically different situation now, and so a total tear down would not only not be needed, it would be really stupid. The 2012 roster Luhnow inherited didn’t have a single good player on it; Lowrie, Castro, Wandy, and Norris were playable, but not stars. Altuve, Martinez, Marwin, and Keuchel were breaking in but no one knew how good they’d be. This roster features a big group of controllable star level players: Diaz, Altuve, Pena, Alvarez, and McCormick are all under control thru at least 2026 and project of be worth >2.5 fwar/season. Meyers, Dubon, Javier, Brown, Blanco, Hader, Abreu, McCullers, and Garcia are all players who clearly have a place on a major league roster and they’re also all controlled thru at least 2026. So rather than starting an organization from scratch, they really just need to supplement their offensive core to deepen their lineup, deepen their 40 man roster, and replenish the top of their rotation. Valdez and Tucker would likely be the 2 best players available at the deadline. By themselves they can take the farm system from the bottom of the league to the top 12 in the league. Bregman, Pressly, and Verlander all could potentially bring back meaningful pieces. If Houston made all the trades I listed in the first post, their farm would easily be ranked in the top 5 in the league, with a top 5 draft pick in route next season. And they’d have a pared down payroll to give them plenty of money to spend this coming offseason. If Brown is truly gifted at scouting and Crane is willing to continue to max out the payroll, there’s no reason Houston can’t use this opportunity of a non-competitive season to reopen the window for another long run of contention. That doesn’t address the potential issue of coaching. But they can fix their resource problem this season if they handle it right.
