Not expecting Astros to add a bat, but Ozuna is now a Cardinal. He likely would have been one of the easier, but good bats to acquire.
More or less been an okay reliever with a funky delivery until last year. He decided to go from 2-seamers to induce weak contact to 4-seamers to get strikeouts. He had a great year doing this. He is a soft tossing RH reliever with a side arm delivery. Astros are betting the 4-seam continues to work with the funky side arm. If it does, he's better than Gregersen. If he regresses to what he was, it is a downgrade.
Its a shame what they're doing down there. These are core players that they should have been able to build around. Now, in 5-7 years, they're going to hope to have another generation of players about as good as this one... and then what? I'm not buying the market disparity either. They do actually have some passionate baseball fans... they're now closer to the city... they have a new stadium/new facilities... and miami is a somewhat attractive place to live. Boras, despite being an ass-hat most of the time, does have some credibility that MLB should have a better say over future ownership group plans. The Marlins aren't as bare as the Astros were in 2011, and there's no guarantee that this tear-down will make them any better than they are right now.
Not a big fan of Joe Smith. Hopefully he will be the 3rd or 4th best player the Astros add this offseason.
I don't trust side arm deliveries to provide consistent performance year to year. He could be trash. He could be better than Neshek. Provided it is a cheap cost, I don't mind the rolling the dice for a potential elite reliever.
Boras is just complaining because his market for JD Martinez is drying up. Yankees are out after getting Stanton and Cards are out after getting Ozuna. Now the Marlins are looking to dump Yelich which will take another team looking for an OF off the board. He will probably be left with Giants and Red Sox which won't get him the huge bidding war he was hoping to get.
It really is and I don't know if it gets near enough national publicity. Sorry for a quick derail -- the team should have NEVER been sold to the Jeter's group and MLB should have NEVER approved it. This was all pushed through because of Jeter. The ownership group does not have the capital to run the team -- they are begging for more investors while trading their franchise players for nothing to save a buck. It's horrible and the Marlins fans deserve much better, even if they don't always show up. That organization has multiple WS titles over the last few decades, yet each time it's had an owner incapable of having the money to keep the teams together. That has resulted in them trading their best player in franchise history (Miggy) during/right before his prime, and now trading the second best player in franchise history during his prime. Shame on MLB, Manfred, and Jeter. Back on topic: I have no idea who Joe Smith is, but I hope he doesn't cost us a few first-rounders.
The Marlins and their fans deserve each other. No team that has won 2 WS should be so consistently poorly supported. And no team that is constantly dumping players should expect support.
Marlins were $400 million dollars in debt (about 1/3 the value of their selling price) due to the crappy previous owner. Marlins tear down is not about making them better in the future. It is about them getting the books right after years of bad fiscal management. Marlins will need to be incredibly lucky to be good in the next 5-7 years.
