Neither a buyer nor a seller be; For a sale oft loses both player and fan, And buying dulls the edge of husbandry, whatever the heck that is. This above all: to thine own self and team owner be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false in the run-up to the trade deadline.
Luhnowius soliloquoy, from Hamlet, by Mel Gibson
The trade deadline is fast approaching and the rumors are flying. Pundits across the land have begun in earnest their annual attempt to predict which teams will sell and which will buy. Teams that have a shot at the playoffs with needs are termed ‘Buyers'. Teams that have no shot, especially those in need of a rebuild or burdened by age and/or salary, are categorized as ‘Sellers'. The Buyers' needs are matched against the Sellers' haves or ‘gotta gos' and away we go. Buyers acquire major-league talent in exchange for a premium in future prospects.
It's exciting to watch and fun to speculate about. Having kicked things off nicely with this Starting Nine post about possible trade targets, TCB will be ramping up its trade deadline coverage over the next few days.
The Astros have been identified, for at least the fourth year running, as Sellers. There are two good, related reasons for this. First, they've sold aggressively from even before Luhnow's reign, in an attempt to shed salary, get younger and, most importantly, rebuild the farm system. It was official policy. Second, the club still stinks. At one point not really that long ago, the Astros were surging. There was sporadic talk of maybe possibly sort of almost having a shot at the playoffs and maybe they should sort of possibly consider possibly buying at the deadline to fill in some of the club's remaining holes. But those days were erased pretty quickly as the Astros once again plummeted due to injuries and ongoing ineptness. So fans, prognosticators and no doubt at least a few GMs alike are looking to the Astros like one great big bargain bin.
As an illustrative (and amusingly implausible) example, I checked in on Twitter one day recently and saw what appeared to be an infinite number of fan-derived trade scenarios involving Jose Altuve. Yes, Fans of Every Single Baseball Team across Space and Time, your trade scenario in which your team receives Jose Altuve from the Houston Astros is hyper-realistic and moments from fruition. Just keep checking Twitter; I'm sure they're just finalizing the deal.
I've been entertaining and occasionally pushing a theory here and in the writers' thread the last couple weeks that Luhnow may once again take an out-of-the-box approach to the deadline. Rather than just selling in the traditional sense, I expect Luhnow to use the increased traffic to look for bargains, of whatever type. Those bargains might involve selling, they might involve buying. Or they might be just non-zero sum straight trades, with teams trading from positions of excess for positions of need. They might also involve trading prospects that don't quite fit in the Luhnow agenda, who were acquired under the previous owner and front office. Pitchers and batters with suspect K/BB ratios, especially, come to mind. And the final category, which has come up multiple times of late, might be guys who are making waves. Apparently we've got some of those, as well, in case you've been living under the proverbial rock. Do we have guys who are both making waves and have bad K/BB ratios? Don't be surprised to see them traded between now and the deadline.
The initial response is sometimes skeptical, understandably, given how much buyers have to normally give up in terms of total talent and the expense and lack of control involved with many of the guys being 'bought'. But I think it's a little more complex than that, at least in theory, in this situation. The farm system is rebuilt. Sure, there are areas of need, especially with the loss of Aiken and his Band of Bros Before Pros and the graduation of guys like Springer and Singleton, but it has depth and is widely considered a top-five system still. The major league club, with those graduations, has more holes filled in and more guys on the horizon and at least some payroll space to help fill in the gaps. The fire sale is over and the front office is at least talking the talk in regarding the future as now. We could even see the Astros buy, using prospects to fill in roster gaps, not because they are trying to make the playoffs but because they are trying to be a better team. Buying MLB talent now would have the additional benefit of perhaps buying some much needed goodwill from the fans and media.
The report today from Ken Rosenthal, consistent with somewhat similar, less specific stories over the weekend, is that Luhnow is willing to sell a starting pitcher - Keuchel, McHugh and Cosart are specifically named - for a ‘major league bat'. On the surface, this looks like the Astros selling and will no doubt be portrayed as such. But dig down a little and you see the Astros trading from a position of excess for a position of need. The Astros need a major league bat now and going forward, especially if he plays left field. That part of the trade - assuming that the guy is actually more than a placeholder - would be buying. While losing any of those three pitchers would hurt - after all, they are in the starting rotation - the Astros have a backlog of MoR and BoR guys, with multiple guys at AAA seemingly ready for their shot. Now, don't get me wrong - the Astros even under this scenario might wind up getting some extra prospects, which would make it more on the ‘sell' side. But the point stands. Don't expect a rerun of the past three years. This is no longer about youthful quantity over current quality, current roster be damned.
Of those three, who would it be: Keuchel, McHugh or Cosart? Who would you want it to be? What might they get in return? What other trades might we see?