Astros Wisely Accept Phillies Offer
The Astros finalized a deal Friday night sending all-star outfielder Hunter Pence to the Phillies, along with $1 million in cash, for RHP Jarred Cosart, 1B/OF Jonathan Singleton, and two players to be named later. One of the PTBNLs turned out to be Josh Zeid, a reliever from Double-A Reading, while the other isn’t considered to be a major prospect per Ken Rosenthal, who broke the story.
The Astros didn’t have to deal Pence right now since he is under team control for two more years. However, his value has never been greater, since he can impact three playoff races. Most available players are half-year rentals or are under contract or control for one more season. Pence was also about to get fairly expensive for the Astros, who, as a rebuilding team did not need to carry a $12-15 mm player that didn’t help accomplish their goals. Pence might have been the face of the Astros franchise, but that was more indicative of the status of the organization than anything specific to his set of skills.
Though he isn’t truly a differencemaker, or an offensive savior for any interested team, the perception of his abilities around the league likely exceeds his actual production. Combine these ideas and the Astros should have been able to extract a great return for a good, not great, player. In getting Cosart and Singleton, they took on some risk (Cosart’s durability, Singleton’s lack of position), but there is a very good chance that they acquired a package equally as good as the return on Roy Halladay.
Marc Hulet wrote earlier in the week that the Phillies original offer that included these two top prospects was too good for Houston to pass up. To quote the maven himself:
The package being offered up for Pence is almost as good as the one that the Toronto Blue Jays received when they traded Roy Halladay to the Phillies.
Prior to the 2011 season, I ranked Singleton and Cosart Nos. 2 and 3, respectively, on the club’s top-10 list behind outfielder Domonic Brown. With pitcher Jordan Lyles graduated to the Majors for Houston, the two Phillies prospects would rank Nos. 1 and 2 on the Astros’ 2012 top-10 list.
The Astros farm cupboard was so bare that Cosart and Singleton vaulted to the top of the prospect list. They now become part of a rebuilding process that seems to be moving in the right direction based on the organization’s drafting over the last couple of seasons, as well as their international scouting. Word even has it that the Astros kept asking the Phillies for more of their top prospects, though that ploy was rebuked. Ed Wade may have made some questionable moves in the past, but it’s hard to argue that he isn’t currently steering the Astros in the right direction.
In Cosart, 21 years old, the Astros now have their top pitching prospect, who will report to Corpus Christi. Though the Phillies had a veritable rotation of ‘baby aces’ in the system, Cosart was always considered to have the highest ceiling. There were also some serious concerns about his durability and maturity, leading some to speculate that he may turn out to be a major league reliever. His stuff is great, with a mid-90s fastball, a potentially knee-buckling curve, and a changeup still in development.
His numbers in the Phillies system weren’t very impressive this year, but that was in part due to fatigue. He has never pitched this many innings before. Though it may seem strange to acquire a player and immediately shut him down for the year, the move might be the most prudent for the Astros.
Singleton, a 19-year old first baseman the Phillies tried in left field, was the best hitting prospect in the system before being dealt. Injuries derailed his development in the outfield and he was moved back to first base permanently this year. The Astros could try their hand at assessing his outfielding prowess, but it might make more sense, long-term, to play him at first base. He has the bat to handle the position, with tremendous patience for such a young hitter. The power is there, and will develop over time, but in looking at his underlying skills it is easy to see why many are bullish on his prospects.
Zeid is a 24-year old reliever from Double-A reading with decent but not awe-inspiring numbers. He was a tenth round pick in 2009, and will be more of a project. However, he has a decent upside the Astros can work with, and is perfectly acceptable as a complementary piece in a trade netting two of the top prospects from another system.
The Pence saga has finally come to an end, and while the Phillies got the player they had targeted for quite some time, the Astros brought back two of the top prospects in the game. With potentially three other players to trade over the next 48 hours, Ed Wade might finish the 2011 season with a very respectable farm system after all.
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I’m just relieved the Phillies didn’t trade Brown. Now hopefully they realize that there best outfield does not consist of Ibanez getting serious playing time.
Unfortunately it seems like Brown will go to AAA to play everyday, thereby decreasing the marginal impact Pence has this yr. My BG writeup, but I wanted to focus more on the Astros side here. It does seem though like it’ll be Pence-Vic-Ibby for 2011 unfortunately.
Yeah, I already read you BG writeup. Just trying to be hopeful…
All good — it’s frustrating when a move like that is lessened in marginal impact because an obvious corresponding move (buh-bye, Raul), isn’t made.
You actuallythink Costart, Singleton, Zeid and a low level reliever is an equal return to Drabek, D’arnaud and Taylor? I really don’t think so, unless you are choosing to selectively use hindsight…which isn’t really fair.
Drabeck was much more of a sure thing back then than Cosart is now.
It should also be mentioned that at 19 Singleton is the youngest player in the FSL, and he’s hitting over .300 / .400 / .500 for the last 2 months after a slow start (that included an injury and failed position switch).
You’re also assuming Pence isn’t going to step his game up now that he’s on a contending team. Playing for the Astros wears on you.
It’s Hunter Pence! His effort level is already at 110% on a daily basis. Safe to say you don’t watch him play very regularly.
But it would probably be difficult to move Howard (and his contract), making it unlikey that Singleton would see the big show for the phillies at any time in the forseeable future.
K, the issue I have with the deal from the Phillies perspective isn’t necessarily trading Cosart and Singleton, but rather that I believe those two could have potentially been included in deals to extract elite talent. For instance, Brown, Cosart, Singleton, 4th player for Matt Kemp. Maybe they weren’t perceived as highly around baseball as on the web, but that’s my main issue. I like Pence, will root for him gladly, but that’s the reason I don’t like the actual deal all that much.
Yeah, this sure feels like we sold low (Singleton’s slow start) and bought high (Pence’s .370 BABIP). That’s not a good long-term trading strategy.
Besides, indications are that Singleton’s outfield experiment was derailed as much by his ankle injury and slow start with the bat than inability to play the outfield.
Yeah I think I mentioned that in the post, how injuries derailed the experiment, and that the Astros may still try to test that out, as well they should.
That goes for any prospect for established player trade. The deal can always theoretically get better if you keep on waiting, until of course they trade the guy somewhere else or one of your top prospects regresses and loses value. Fans almost never consider the substantial possibility that top prospects don’t work out.
Oh absolutely — I’m talking more about this offseason, 3 months from now. Not 2 yrs from now.
I disagree.
If (a somewhat big if) Singleton turns out to be a more productive player than Howard is in two or three years, then the Phillies could eat most of Howard’s contract and trade him. In this scenario the Phillies have a better player at the same price.
The same scenario played out with Thome and Howard (anyone else remember trying to move Howard to the outfield?).
To my understanding, Halladay had 1 year of team control remaining, and Pence has 2.5. If true, I do not think it is fair to compare both trades and the prospects given up without taking this into account.
Big difference is that the Phillies only traded for Halladay after they worked out a 3-yr extension. So the negotiating window was the equivalent of extra control remaining.
Maybe you could explain further your reasoning on that.
How I see it is that the eventual contract extension was not something the Blue Jays gave up. They never controlled Halladay for 3 years/$60 mil, nor would that contract have been offered to them. They only offered the Phils a chance for a negotiating window, but whatever deal was made was irrespective of the prospect package. Were the Phils going to give the Jays a great prospect package if they signed Halladay for 8 years/$50 million, or a crappy one if it was 3 years/$90 million? No.
The package that was given up was for 1 year of control for Halladay, and also for a negotiating window. The eventual contract the Phillies signed was never anything given up by the Jays…
So, to my mind, the contract was:
1 year of Halladay + negotiating window for Drabek, et al.
as compared with
2.5 years of Pence for Singleton et al.
That is a little more even than what you are trying to make it out to be which is 4 years of Halladay for Drabek, et al.
“So the negotiating window was the equivalent of extra control remaining.”
No. The negotiation window has some marginal value, however assuming that the new contract was at market value it didn’t add any surplus value to the trade.
I disagree, Blue.
It’s not Pence is going to be cheap. He’s going to get 9-10M next year. The value is that you know you will control him, you know (approx) what he’s going to get paid, and he won’t have FA leverage.
It’s the same situation as Halladay, except Halladay’s contract at 20M is probably more surplus value than Pence at 9-10M.
The boat is a boat but the mystery box could be anything, even a boat! You know how much we’ve wanted one of those.
Just because the Phillies traded for Pence doesn’t mean they can’t go and include Brown in another deal this off-season if they are so inclined and get really good value. You can have Kemp for Brown, Singleton, Cosart and friends, or you can Pence and Ethier for Brown, Singleton, Cosart and friends.
Isn’t the “later” part of “player to be named later” redundant given the inclusion of “to be” in the expression? How ’bout we just go with “player to be named”, or PTBN for the acronymophiles?
Why do we drive on a parkway and park on a driveway? [smashes watermelon with a giant wooden mallet]
Have you been watching those Gallagher commercials on the Mariners’ network?
It could also just be Player Named Later right? Cut out some of the passive voice.
Terrible trade for the Astros. i haven’t even heard of any of those guys they got from Philadelphia but we gave up our best guy? the heck is that about! Ed wade should be chased out of town for not getting an allstar calliber player back from philly like chase utley or heck we coulda brought oswalt back home! bad bad trade
que?
Sarcasm I think? Either way -1 for you, sir
Two pitchers with declining K rate as they advance a level and a hitter with a declining ISO as he advanced a level ?
Sorry….this is not enough for an established above average major league outfielder with 2 1/3 years of control left.
Bad deal for Houston in my opinion.
As he advanced a level, into the FSL. I don’t know why Cosart is still so well-liked by the internet prospect guys, but Singleton shouldn’t really have hurt his standing that much this year.
Cosart is well-liked because he throws in the high 90s with his fastball and has a plus, hammer curve. His changeup has also reportedly improved quite a bit.
i also believe that by going to aaa now brown will not get a year of service time and will be under phillies control for another 6 not 5 years. he needs to be down there for about 20 days. now, the 2017 phillies may be in the basement and it wont matter or he may be a stiff…..but there could be some type of additional benefit to the phillies (or not). the difference between brown and ibanez is unlikely to impact the phils #1 nl playoff seed
Everyone here knows the Astros made out like bandits, they’re just trying to find a way to take the edge off the bad news while they break it to the Phillies.
I thought it was common knowledge that contending teams give up a little more to get better “now”. Trade away a great amount of future potential for better current talent. That’s how the situation is, yet we sound stunned when teams follow the script.
At some point, we’ll stop being surprised or act like we don;t know the rules of the activity.
We need to examine just how many of these “overpay trades” for contention really come back to hurt the contending team. The analysis here seems to indicate that it always does, or that it’s certain to … but then we’ll have other discussions where the unpredictability of prospects is the focus.
So, Philly, St Louis, and San Fran all made horrible deals. Naturally. Toronto, New York, and Houston made out like Bandits. Wanna take a guess which teams are playoff contenders in 2 years and which ones aren’t? Does that even factor in?
I don’t think people are saying that St. Louis and San Fran made “horrible” deals…at least on the sites I frequent. I’ve heard people say that the White Sox made a horrible deal, but getting two starters for Colby Rasmus, a guy who wasn’t a full-time player (sure, due to the coach, but whatever), while not ideal, makes sense if you’re trying to win this year. And as for San Fran, most of what I’ve heard was that the deal made sense for both sides. Wheeler’s a pitching prospect that may not pan out, Beltran’s a no-doubt impact bat, if only for two months.
The Philly-Houston deal is different, because the difference between Pence and Dom Brown this season isn’t so big. They’re not making their team dramatically better in the short term (like they did in STL and SFG), they’re making their team a tiny bit better. Next year, when they replace Ibanez with Brown, the LF slot will be quite a bit better, but the rest of the team will likely be a little worse – and they’ll have to commit a fair slice of cash to Pence.
The sentiment at FG was that StL got fleeced and SFG mortaged the future.
I think Pence does improve the Phillies, although not to a large degree. He also hits right-handed, which may factor in to the Phillies thinking.
OPS splits (vRHP; vLHP)
————————
Ibanez — .840, .750
Utley — .894; .891
Howard — 1.021; .751
Brown — .733, .547
Pence — .814; .832
Not that it matters, Carlos Ruiz turns into Johnny Bench come playoff time (.280/.412/.456; .868 OPS) *grin*
All top prospects pan out…just ask Matt LaPorta, Andy Marte, Justin Smoak, Jarrod Saltalamacchia (finally showing some glimmers but not nearly what everyone thought), Andy LaRoche, etc, etc.
Yeah, so this trade is definitely a nice “saber-value” trade, but most of the analysis I’ve seen here for the prospects acquired by Houston is flimsy. So, that’s where the value of this deal by Houston will be made or broken regardless of how high they were on Phillie’s list to start the season, the extremely varying interpretations of a player’s “floor” I’ve been hearing, and etc…
The fact is that the Astros chose the rout of spreading out higher ceiling talent in the hopes of say filling 2 major holes (with Cosart and Singleton) with above average talent instead of filling one hole with a more reliable high ceiling talent. The catch for Houston in acquiring that spread was by acquiring a higher ceiling with vulnerability. It’s a great risk to take, but a major gamble for a team that’s essentially empty.
Cosart and Singleton are still very questionable prospects. You can argue that any prospect is highly vulnerable, but looking at some of the regression that’s taking place with the two, their youth, and their more dominant success at the lower levels (with steps taken backwards above the A level), I see them as being a handful of years away from being possibly adequate contributors.
So if Houston does see a payoff, it might still be 4-5 years down the road, even though I’m sure both will be on the fast track to help the MLB roster. It’s a major gamble to put your hopes on two 20 year olds that have only had substantial success below the A+ level (1 that shot up the charts only a season ago after struggling to close out his high school career). For instance, Singleton’s vulnerability against left handed pitchers has been dramatically exposed this year. That makes his floor substantially lower for a left handed hitter for the time being. Cosart has very realistic durability and command issues, which leaves me keeping his ceiling at around a 4-5 starter.
This deal could work out tremendously for both sides because there’s still lots of promise involved, but hype over the “saber value” really says nothing other than the Astros were able to make an even swap for a general consensus based on perceived value.