Not sure if he will be a reliever or a starter, but his secondary pitches looked better than average to below average to me in a short stint. I'm not sure how this will play out over a full season. I'm not sure if he can keep his velocity. Last year was weird in a very good way for James. So far, James gave up 1 hit on a slider. He left it up in the zone and it got sent to the moon. So far James has given up three ground ball singles on change ups. The vast majority of his change ups end up as swinging strikes, fouls, called strikes, and ground outs.
No, that goes both ways. If none of the prospects Houston gave up for Gomez would have panned out, then it wouldn’t be a bad trade regardless of how Gomez performed. Unfortunately Hader became arguably the best reliever in baseball and a $100M commodity, so even if Gomez had played well, the trade would have been bad for Houston.
I had read about James' slider and obviously his fastball before his promotion, but I had no idea his changeup was that good. His command issues are obviously a concern, but I do see him as having a good shot to hang in there as a starter.
That trade definitely sucked, but I doubt many people at the time thought Hader could become an elite reliever. He had big K% but his numbers overall weren't that impressive. His stuff also isn't that special (his K ability seems to come from his funky delivery), which I imagine made it easier to deal him as it's more difficult to appreciate/project someone who generates whiffs via deception/delivery.
Unless it helped Houston win a World Series, which may or may not have happened without the trade. In that case, it was a good trade regardless. There's no real way to quantify the value of the 2015 playoff experience for the players as well as for the front office and how it may have accelerated their timetable to try to be great. And it's hard to say if the Astros make the playoffs without the trade or not.
I’m understand the “flags fly forever” mentality but I don’t 100% agree with it. We can’t quantify the Gomez trade’s contribution to the WS any more than we can know if they would have won more had they kept Hader, Phillips, Santana, and Houser.
Don't forget the contribution that Fiers made during the 2017 regular season. For two months or so he was their most reliable starter and helped save a stressed bullpen even more work.
In the 10 years I have closely followed the Astros farm system, there are only 3 prospects I have thought had the potential to be true “ace” pitchers: Josh Hader, Michael Feliz (back when he was in the low minors), and Forrest Whitley. I was pissed when they traded Hader.
Maybe we traded him because our PR department actually saw the tweets? Think Osuna was bad, that would have been a nightmare.
I didn't see him being an elite reliever because I thought he'd be starting... I saw him as a Chris Sale ceiling and a quality LH specialist floor. He's become the middle version of that (Andrew Miller). Definitely the one guy in that deal I thought very highly of.
Good Carlos Gomez catches that bloop hit by Zobrist in the 8th with ease. Instead... Ugh... Then the double play ball off Sipp and whiffed by Correa and Ugh... Need to go back to 2017 memories...
What about Hader at the time that made it seem plausible that he could become an elite MLB pitcher? He looked like he had the ability to potentially become an above average pitcher, but none of his pitches were that amazing and neither were his results. For instance, his best K%-BB% above low A before being dealt was only 17.6%, and he never got above 30% K% once graduating from low A prior to the trade. He held his own as a relatively young player but he didn't dominate in the Astros system. As for his pitches, he's very reliant on his fastball which he throws mid 90s with solid spin but nothing to indicate that the pitch would be capable of generating as many whiffs as it does. On paper his fastball is really nothing special for major league relievers. It all appears to be in his delivery.
Stearns knew what he was getting in Hader. I didn't like trading Hader and said so at the time. Sometimes you lose in trades, but Luhnow needed to make a trade to make the playoffs. They were just a Harris blowup away from making the WS. So Luhnow did what he needed to do under the circumstances.
The confluence of a lot of factors: he was very young to be putting up such good results in High A (a very fresh 20), his FB was very very good and especially rare for a lefty, he had the body type to be able to up his ceiling as he matured, and the reports from scouts and folks inside the Astros were very positive.
