Peavy Worth It For the Astros?

Trade for Peavy with either of those packages with out much thought… I would like to keep Pence… but after watching him for 2 seasons… I don’t think he’s going to turn out to be anything more than maybe an above average player(and probably not much above average).

Concerning the graph(which is pretty I might add), it makes no sense to me… what do the columns stand for? Did I miss it in the text??

and unloading our guys instead.

Of course, the Padres probably wouldn’t accept the first package for Peavy. I would suggest that the odds are 50% or better that none of the players in the first package will be playing in the major leagues in five years. Wandy is 30 years old. Bourn will have to improve dramatically in order to stick around for more than two years. The odds of Paulino and Johnson even making it as major leaguers are probably less than 50-50.

Given the weakness of the first package, I think Pence would be required for the trade. I tend to agree with Stros Bro that Pence is likely to be a good, but not great, outfielder over his career. I think it is easier to replace Pence’s production than it is to find a pitcher of Peavy’s caliber.

I wouldn’t write off Pence yet; Biggio was a sucker for the slider away, too, and he’s going to the Hall of Fame.

But if I can trade him and get Jake Peavy, done deal, Good Luck Hunter.

But can we keep Wandy? Give ’em Sampson instead?

I think of the 2001 D-Backs and the ’05 Astros: A duo (or trio) of pitchers, along with one guy having a career home run year, propel an average (or mediocre) offensive team to the top of the heap.

With Carlos Lee and Lance Berkman and just one reasonably middle-of-the-road starter (which I’d argue Wandy is), the Peavy/Oswalt combo looks awfully formidable.

What I like about Peavy (beyond his career 121 ERA+) is that he’s averaged over 30 starts a year since 2002, when he first made the Pads out of Spring Training. If we got him, we wouldn’t be mumbling under our breath about how we hope he can stay healthy.

It’s why I get excited when I hear the name Peavy, and yawn when I hear the name Sheets.

But I bet this is all just dreamland chatter and that Wade will simply try to tell us that Randy Wolf will be just as good as Peavy would have been, and that hey! we get to keep Hunter!

From here. "I would say our preference is pitching. Probably next, it would be middle of the infield. Pitching more than anything. If we moved Jake, we’d look for controllable pitchers, preferably starters in a significant enough package to where some are major league ready and some are close to being major league ready. It’s got to be something we’re excited about short term and longer term that makes us better, and I’d say pitching is our primary focus." – GM Kevin Towers

And later Towers says that the Astros don’t match up well because they aren’t deep in high quality inexpensive pitching although those words are the reporter’s.

Just read the Peavy article on ESPN— we’re one of five teams he’ll consider, whoo!

Funny, reading about it here, it all seems hypothetical; reading about it on ESPN, and it’s like, whoa, THIS CAN HAPPEN! :-)

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about your argument—and mine. Mine essentially boils down to “whoa, dude, if we had co-aces, no-one could stop us.” Not necessarily the paragon of logical reasoning, but not necessarily untrue, either.

Certainly, your argument seems logical. But at the root of it, it remains questionable to me whether adding up WARP scores can have any predictive value. It’s a logical approach, I’ll hand you that, but what makes you think it works?

I’d like to go back to the 2004 and 2005 teams anchored by Clemens Pettitte and Oswalt Remember it is my contention that this beyond-critical mass collection of pitchers, if you can manage to assemble one, is by all means the most important factor in putting together a championship team.

The 2004 team, following a disappointing start, ended up advancing to the NLCS after a season where they had a Pythagorean record of 91 – 71.

Then, after that Game 7 loss, the Astros got rid of Carlos Beltrán and Jeff Kent.

In 2005, without those dynamic offensive players, the team ended up WINNING the NLCS after a regular season in which they had a Pythagorean record of 91 – 71.

In trying to compare the two seasons, I wouldn’t go so far as to say that 2005 was really any better than 2004. The playoffs are a crap shoot; in 2004 we didn’t get the breaks, and in 2005 we did (at least until the WS). But I WOULD say that the seasons were equal.

There was no drop off despite the departure of key offensive talent, with nobody incoming to replace them.

I went ahead and got exhaustive with it, and tracked every player who left after 2004, and every player who came in for 2005.

I have summed WARP (1) scores lost for 2004 and summed WARP scores gained for 2005. There is a difference between what you did and what I’m doing in that I’m not using then-current PECOTA predictions, but if those are still available, it’d take a better data-miner than me to find them.

But, really, the only PECOTA score that was likely to be any different would be Beltrán’s, simply because the prediction would be for a full season—which would just make my argument even more convincing.

In essence, this is a trade that goes Carlos Beltrán and Jeff Kent and 2 has-beens and 9 scrubs for . . . . five scrubs and 2 prospects who would have very little immediate impact.

Of course, no-one would argue for such a trade, but do you see my point?

The predictive method you suggest predicts a net loss of 2 – 3 games (or more if you want to figure a full season for Beltrán), and there was none such.

While I certainly applaud the rigor with which you attacked the problem, and admit that such rigor was greater than that which I had originally applied in my counter argument, even a brief look at the Astros recent history shows that such a method probably has no predictive value, or at the very least breaks down when astounding pitching talent tips the scales.

I have no idea whether we could pay the price required by the Pads for Peavy, but I still believe—and strongly, too—that it is something that should at the very least be pursued.

Knowing our luck, front office will drum up a Peavy trade in order to drop the price on a Sheets signing.

If I were thinking like a criminal, or Scott Boras, that’s what I’d do.