As you might have seen, I was out of pocket this weekend. On one of the biggest three-day stretches in franchise history, I was in the mountains of Colorado, without cell reception of any kind and one of the slowest internet connections I have ever seen. When you talk about being off the grid, I was just a little more connected than that. Barely.
I had fun and, more importantly, didn't have to wrestle any bears, but there was a lot going on here at TCB. I thought we'd cap the weekend off with a quick rundown of what happened.
- Roy Oswalt traded to Phillies for J.A. Happ, Anthony Gose and Jonathan Villar.
- Gose traded to Toronto for Brett Wallace
- Lance Berkman traded to New York Yankees for Mark Melancon and Jimmy Paredes
- Felipe Paulino placed on 60-day disabled list
- Wallace promoted to major leagues and installed as starter at first base
- Brett Myers signs two-year extension
If that wasn't enough, our great staff of writers here helped me out tremendously. I can't say enough nice things about the writers we have contributing on a daily basis. I know we've added quite a few new faces as the season rolled on, but the hope is they've just increased TCB's coverage and provide more voices to talk about our favorite ball club. With that in mind, here's a rundown of their excellent coverage from this weekend.
- Stephen wonders if Roy should approve a trade to Philadelphia
- timmy looks at the Astros history of deadline deals
- Stephen talks about life, the future and Roy Oswalt
- Stephen goes on the radio to discuss Roy Boy
- Orem looks at the rest of the Astros trade chips, post-Roy
- Stephen talks about whether a Myers trade makes sense
- Orem posted multiple prospect pieces on what the Astros received in the trades (linked above)
- allphilla writes about how video games can imitate Ed Wade's garage sale (I totally do the same thing, BTW)
- Stephen wonders how Myers fits into the Astros future, post extension
- timmy has a fitting tribute to his own journey with Roy Oswalt
As for the rest of the blogosphere, opinions were mixed. While many media types slammed both the Oswalt and Berkman deals. Here is a mix of those reactions from The Good Phight, Pinstripe Alley, Bluebird Banter, two from Drunk Jays Fan (one of my favorite posts, too, since it includes The Wire...WHERE WALLACE, STRING?), a very nice goodbye from Brian McTaggart and Alyson Footer, this note from HardBallTalk which calls the Astros a loser of the trade deadline, this analysis from FanGraphs on the Astros' newest prospects, this note from John Sickels about the Astros haul, this Hardball Times article wondering if Brett Wallace is still a prospect, and this feature from Zachary Levine on the Astros future. Astros County had some good analysis of the deals as well.
It's quite the mixed bag. I noted that HBT called the Astros a loser, and that's largely the sense I got from most of their posts this weekend. However, there were enough very positive statements, like this one from Beyond the Box Score, that I'm inclined to be in favor of the Astros haul. It seemed like the Phillies from the SB Nation blog were pretty happy with the deal and didn't think they gave up much in value. Crashburn Alley went so far as to say the Astros were "100 percent swindled." That's largely due to how they view J.A. Happ, which I don't agree with, but I'll get into that later.
In all, most of the analysts were underwhelmed by the Astros acquisitions, but glad the team started heading in the right direction finally. I'll have more thoughts on this later this afternoon, but for now, enjoy all the excellent coverage.