After which, he’ll throw 127mph
The Astros are in a bit of a weird situation - their top prospect, Alex Bregman, was just named the #1 prospect in baseball (by Keith Law) and has been absolutely destroying AA and AAA pitching - but he’s a shortstop and the Astros already have Carlos Correa at short (and Correa’s several months younger than Bregman) and MVP candidate Jose Altuve at second; even Luis Valbuena has been having a very good year at third base. On the other hand, they’ve been getting crappy production out of the first base/DH slots after several people had been tried out in those slots. They could just play Bregman at first, which would be weird; they could move Valbuena to first and play Bregman at third; they could run some sort of weird DH/SS/2B “platoon” between Bregman, Correa, and Altuve and shuttle Bregman between second and short. (It’s pretty hard to picture getting enough value back to make a trade a reasonable idea.) Not a terrible problem to have.
Well, and that’s the thing.
Go back and take every 18-year-old kid who people spoke of the way they do Epinoza (it’s a rhetorical question, I am not literally asking you to do this) and add up
- How many are in the majors for a significant amount of time, if at all, and
- What their median career WAR is.
I’d bet the answer to #1 is less than 25%, and the answer to #2 is probably not 10.
The number of kids like Espinoza who are traded away to the wailing and gnashing of teeth, and who vanish in a few years never to be heard from again, is huge. Yuge, even. Of course it could bite you in the ass - see Noah Syndergaard - but Espinoza is not a can’t-miss guy like Steven Strasburg. He’s not even Noah Syndergaard. It is rational at some point for a team to trade prospects to address current needs in an effort to make the playoffs, and you could not possibly identify a more obvious time to do it; a three-way race where the team has an extremely glaring weakness that, if plugged, could add 2-3 wins over the rest of the season, and a team that is not old, has many good young players in the majors, and a substantial reserve of good prospects. 2-3 wins could means the difference between winning the division or not, or winning a wild card or not, or, hell, winning the division and not being in the playoffs at all. It’s a very tight league.
Building for the future is really super and all, but an endless parade of 86-76 seasons isn’t fun, either. Espinoza is not the cornerstone of the Red Sox organization; he is not their own best prospect. The farm system is not empty. They can afford this.
Tom Scud: Alex Bregman is wasting his time in the minor leagues. The Astros should bring him up at once. Let him play first. Let him DH. Play Rasmus in center and stick him in left, whatever. Bregman is a major league hitter.
Shelby Miller demoted to the minors
I vaguely remember an article a year or two back about someone who actually did this. Might see if I can find it later tonight, because I’m kind of curious now too. I agree with most of the rest of your logic (particularly re: their place on the win curve), and I’m not against trading Espinoza or prospects in general. I just don’t love the price they paid for the value they received (in no small part because I price a lot of risk into Pomeranz for the remainder of the season).
(That’s actually probably the biggest difference between Dombrowski and the prior two management regimes, as far as trades go: Theo and Cherington were more likely to fail to make a move because they weren’t willing to pay above value, while Dombrowski is much more likely to take an overall value loss to get a trade done if it’s a positive for the current team. Which method is your thing ends up being personal preference as much as anything.)
Add me to the “get Bregman up” chorus as well. Valbuena (slight negative defender at 3rd) to 1st probably makes the most sense, but however you do it, get him up.
And hey, we get baseball back tonight!
“Value” has more than one definition. Stats per salary dollar is one way. Getting the talent you need to win the World Series is another. This was a trade for value, no question. Teams that are not really salary limited, like Boston, prefer the second, as do their fans.
Farm system talent is just a unit of currency, and has time value just like money does. Don’t get worked up about trading possible future, high-risk talent for other talent that has worth today. Just remember to scout and draft and develop it, like you’d take care of a financial investment.
As for this kid being “highly rated”, I wonder how much peer pressure is in all those ratings. How many people who put out these ratings have ever even seen him, or would know what they were talking about if they did? They do know that other People In The Know have him rated high, so they’d look dumb if they didn’t do the same. But overrating your own prospects is one of the most common pitfalls.
Astros also apparently just signed Cuban 3B Yulieski Gourriel. No idea how good he’s supposed to be.
Fantastic is what he is. Or at least was, a few years ago. One of the stars of modern Cuban baseball. Anyway, a super fun player.
Chris Taylor of the Dodgers usually rides the bench. In 3 years in the majors he only has 97 games total, and only 11 as a Dodger. How did he do as an emergency fill-in at 2nd last night? Try a double, a triple, a Grand Slam home run and 6 RBIs. He’s the first LA Dodger to ever hit his first Major League homerun as a Grand Slam. It’s only been done 5 times in franchise history.
He needs to work on his bunting skills, however. If he’d gotten that bunt down properly he would have had the cycle.
I consider myself an avid baseball fan but I had no idea Matt Bush had actually made it back into baseball after his DUI jail term. He’s now pitching for the Rangers.
I’m pretty sure he was involved in the kerfuffle with the Blue Jays this year. Wasn’t he the one who beaned Bautista?
Yep. Which really was a crappy thing for the Rangers to do to him. I think it happened in his second appearance of the season.
The Padres beat the Giants on a walk-off balk in extra innings. Pitcher Santiago Casilla gets his cleat stuck in the ground during his delivery, leading to Derek Norris being awarded home plate as the winning run.
Well, the Padres were going to win anyway…Casilla had given up 3 singles, allowing the tying run to score and putting the winning run in third with nobody out. If you’re going to blow a save, do it in a really spectacular fashion.
As a Cub fan who has suffered through Mitch Williams, Rod Beck, Carlos Marmol, and Rick Aguilera, I understand completely.
Come on, Dodgers! You can’t even take a series from the Douche-backs? Turner can’t do it all by himself, you know.
At least you’re not losing any ground. The Giants – and their #1-#3 starters – are getting swept by the Puds.
The Cubs just took 2 out of 3 from the Rangers.
Yu Darvish struck out the first 5 batters he faced in yesterday’s game. Today, Cole Hamels started off the game by striking out the first 6 he faced.
Man, Giants get swept by San Diego!
Of course not he’s got Seager too: 6 doubles in 3 games.
We managed to pick up one game on the Giants over the series and we’re that much closers to our pile of injured starters coming back. Heck Iverson watched 60 games in the first half and there were two batters tonight I’ve never heard of that that doesn’t count Chris Taylor (the near cycle guy). We’re starting mostly a quad A team and still scored the most runs in the series. Over all I’m not depressed by losing the series we just need to get our starters on the field and to keep Cory and Justin hot.