Always feels like very few people ever talk about the trades that were smart..or turn out to be smart, or at least reasonable. And the haters forget that fluke years can happen, or at least choose to ignore that they might have been wrong in their staunch criticism. Jonathan Villar 2015 (HOU): .285/.339/.414 with a .360 BABIP in 128 PA's. 7 SB. 23% K 2016 (MIL): .285/.360/.457 with a .373(!) BABIP in 679 PA's. 62 SB(!). 26% K 2017 (MIL): .223/.282/.350 with a .306 BABIP in 377 PA's. 21 SB, 31% K. Negative 0.7 WAR He's likely not as bad as he's showing this year. But he's nowhere near the 2016 fluke, either.
I've given Luhnow a lot of hell lately, but selling on guys like Villar, Cosart, and Lyles all turned out to be excellent decisions.
Villar was out of options. Getting a AA JAG (AAA JAG now) that may become an emergency call up (though probably nothing) is better than just cutting him. Granted, nothing to get excited about. Cosart deal is still looking like a great deal for the Astros even with Moran out with Phantom of the Opera Disease.
Haha our system is way deeper than most. He's a triple A-proven, CF-capable outfielder with every day upside. That's a top 5 prospect in most systems.
It is a deep system. And Luhnow is utilizing it with out depleting it like Drayton McClain used to do. McClain seemed like too often want to meddle and over ride his GM's. Sure glad as heck glad Crane leaves Luhnow alone to be the GM.
Drayton did his fair share of meddling... but Hunsicker did trade/promote a lot of youth towards the end of his tenure, and had some not so great drafts (that weren't all simply because Drayton decided to be cheap/meddlesome). As long as this regime continues to draft well, they'll likely never bottom out like the 2000's Astros did.
He was our #8 prospect before all the trades, so it makes sense considering we had more depth edit: lol replied twice
Domingo Santana is having himself a really strong campaign, .277/.372/.491 He's gotten his K rate down to a still high but manageable number this year. He wasn't an awful hitter prior, but he really seems to have figured it out. His career BABIP is very high at .351 because he hits the hell out of the ball when he does put it in play.
He was a guy that you could tell would be a 25+ HR guy with an .800+ OPS once he got enough ABs. The Astros just couldn't afford to wait and see -- -- he may turn out to be the best player in both the Hunter Pence trade (Cosart, Singleton) and the Gomez/Fiers trade (Phillips, Hader). He also may have had the single worst prospect debut of all time -- 0-17 with 14 Ks when he first joined the Astros.
Pretty sure that if teams could see into the future to know exactly how trades would work out, many trades would not be made.
I get that, just still seems like a lot for a guy that has been struggling all year and wasn't used to pitching out of the bullpen. I get that he had good numbers against lefties but still... Not to mention the fact that the Astros ended up paying $3 million more salary this year in the exchange.
