A Clear Need and Limited Resources Will Push the Astros To Acquire Rental Starting Pitching: A Trade Deadline Primer
The Astros "have to" acquire a starting pitcher or two at the deadline, but don't have the prospect capital to acquire a long-term solution. Fortunately, the market is flush with rentals.
The 2023 Astros have a clear need that the front office must1 address at the trade deadline—starting pitching. This season, the Astros have given 31 starts to the combination of JP France, Brandon Bielak, Ronel Blanco, and Sean Dubin. None of these pitchers were on the playoff roster last year. Heck, only Blanco was on the Opening Day roster this year.
They have gotten only 12 starts from three members of last year’s playoff roster—Lance McCullers, Luis Garcia, and Jose Urquidy. And both McCullers and Garcia will not make any more starts this season—they have both had season ending surgeries on their right arms.
The good news is that the rookie starters have been more effective than we had any right to expect. Over those 31 starts, France, Bielak, Blanco, & Dubin have a 3.71 ERA and have averaged 5.8 innings per start.
That’s good work.
On the other hand, those four have combined for a FIP of 5.13. over a run higher. Over time, a pitchers’ performance tends to approach their FIP, so the Astros have gotten lucky so far in these performances.
We saw further evidence of this trend over the last two games. On Wednesday afternoon in Denver, Brandon Bielak allowed only 1 hit and no runs, but got some good fortune as the hardest hit balls against him were struck right at fielders. Last night in Oakland, J.P. France struck out 5 over 7 plus innings, but thanks to a key double play on a hard hit ball in the 7th, limited the A’s to one run.
Multiple Reasons to Acquire a Starting Pitcher
One reason to acquire new starting pitchers is to cash in the good fortune the Astros have received so far this year in the performance of their rookie hurlers before they regress to their means.
Another reason is that the current playoff rotation is Framber Valdez in Game 1. Then Cristian Javier—I guess—and then Hunter Brown. The fourth starter would be France. Javier and Brown have struggled recently and France is a 28 year-old rookie ranked as only the 12th best prospect in the Astros weak farm system going into this season. The Astros need another playoff caliber starting pitcher.
A third reason for the Astros to target starting pitching is that they need to tamp down on the innings pitched from some of their top starters—especially Javier and Brown. This is particularly true for Brown, who has thrown 99.1 innings in 18 starts this season. Brown’s career high innings pitched is 130 in 2022 (combining his AAA, MLB, and playoff innings). The injuries to McCullers, Garcia, and Urquidy have made it difficult for the Astros to limit Brown’s innings in the first three-and-a-half months of the season.
In short, the Astros have a clear need for one starting pitcher, and probably a second, both to be able to pitch in a playoff series but also to eat innings in the regular season.
Starting Pitching Over Corner Outfield and Bullpen
There are two other potential needs for the Astros—a left handed corner outfielder/first base type and a relief arm, preferably but not necessarily of the left handed variety. These seem must less important.
In the case of a left-handed OF/1B, the need for that has been reduced by the success of the three man job share in left field and center field between Chas McCormick, Jake Meyers, and Corey Julks. The market is also not very robust for left handed hitting corner outfielders.
Getting a bullpen arm is less important because the team has four high quality relievers in Ryan Pressly, Bryan Abreu, Hector Neris, and Phil Maton. An extra arm is always helpful, but not essential. And deals for bullpen arms take less prospect value that a trade for a starting pitcher.
The Difficulty of Trading for Starting Pitching
In many ways, Dana Brown’s task in 2023 is similar to James Click’s task in 2021—he needs to focus his trade deadline activity at one key position. But it is more difficult and fraught to trade for a starting pitcher than a reliever. And thus, Brown’s task is harder than Click’s was in 2021.
It is harder to trade for a starting pitcher for a couple of other reasons as well. One is that there is a lot of competition on the trade market for starting pitching. What teams are interested in starting pitching? One answer is all of them. Starting pitching is the most difficult resource for a team to develop. Also, as the Astros have unfortunately shown this season, starting pitching is also a team’s most fragile resource.
Modest Prospect Capital
Trading for a starting pitcher is also made more difficult because the Astros have only a modest amount of prospect capital. The good news for the Astros is that they are in a better position in their farm system in 2023 than they were in 2022. Last season, The Board—the quantitative value-based system used at Fangraphs—ranked the Astros as the 27th best farm system in baseball. This year, the Astros have moved up…to 21st.
Improvement is good, and of course, much of that improvement stems from the Astros having their first and second round picks in the 2022 draft, after having lost them in 2020 and 2021 as punishment for the sign-stealing scandal. But most of that improvement comes from a handful of prospects—Drew Gilbert is rated as the Astros best prospect, and he, Korey Lee, and Ryan Clifford are the only prospects rated 45 or better on the 20-to-80 scale that Fangraphs uses.
The best way to think about that scale is that everyone below 40 is average to below average, and thus acquiring them is like acquiring a lottery ticket. You know what the odds are, but you are hoping to beat those odds.
Dylan Cease Is Very Unlikely to Be an Astro
The lack of prospect capital means that the Astros will likely get outbid by other teams seeking out the most valuable starting pitchers. One example would be Dylan Cease. His name has surfaced as a trade target for the Astros. But Cease will not be a free agent until after the 2025 season, and thus, it would take a lot to get him. It would be difficult for the Astros to beat out other team that need a starter and have more robust farm systems (e.g. the Rays; the Dodgers).
But, if a team can keep Cease through 2025, why wouldn’t the White Sox want to be that team? They are having a down year in 2023, but with Cease and players like Luis Robert and Andrew Vaughn, they likely see themselves as a team that contend in the weak AL Central in 2024.
And more teams are like the White Sox—thinking they could be contenders in 2024, if they hold on to their best players. Very few teams seem to be entering a tear down where they trade off players who have multiple years of team control remaining.
The Rental Market
While there are very few players who are likely to be traded can stay with a team for multiple years, there are a number of rentals on the market. This is good news for the Astros because 1) prices are cheaper when the supply is high, and 2) as a team with modest prospect capital, they are basically limited to pursuing rentals.
So who might the Astros acquire as a starting pitcher? My favorite resource on the trade deadline is MLBTradeRumors.com, and earlier this month, they published their list of the 50 players most likely to be traded. The list includes ten starting pitchers whose contracts are likely to end after this season.2
I’ve put the ten pitchers in the table below and included three other columns—their listed “value” based on the algorithm used at BaseballTradeValues.com, their 2023 ERA to date, and their projected rest of the season ERA via the ZIPS model, posted at Fangraphs.
The chart gives you an idea of what the potential rentals have produced and might produce so far this year. You can also see that some of the less talented pitchers may not cost much of anything at all—their team may just want to shed salary. The Astros could consider somebody like Hendicks or Hill if they want someone to eat innings. But they would cost very little.
But one Astro priority is to get someone who can start for them in the playoffs, those pitchers—Giolito, Montgomery, Snell, Stroman, and Rodriguez—would require more of an investment.
The Rent—Not Too Damn High
But it is a relatively modest investment that would not require the Astros to give up their top prospects. Here’s one potential deal that would work—the Astros get Jordan Montgomery—who has the best projected rest of the season ERA of these ten pitchers—in exchange for two prospects ranked at a 40+ future value by Fangraphs—Alberto Hernandez, a 19 year old shortstop in the Florida Complex League, and Kenedy Corona, a 23 year old outfielder at Corpus Christi.
If you prefer Marcus Stroman, who has the best ERA to date in 2023 among these pitchers, you should be able to get him for the pair of catcher Korey Lee (Sugar Land)3 and utility man Joey Loperfido (Corpus Christi).
One should not get hung up on the individual prospects or the individual deals. But they should give you an idea of what type of pitchers the Astros can acquire—competent starting pitchers who, while not stars, would enhance a rotation that has been made wobbly by injuries. One could trust a Montgomery, a Stroman, a Snell or the like to start a playoff game.
And the cost is modest. Top prospects like Drew Gilbert and Ryan Clifford would still stay inside the Astros system and progress toward Minute Maid Park.
None of these trade truly transform the Astros, but they help them in an area of clear need and in a season where additional reinforcements are quite helpful to getting to the playoffs and overtaking the Rangers to win the AL West.
A Bigger Trade Is Not Likely
Could the Astros do something bigger? It is certainly possible, but as I noted above, there seem to be very few potential candidates to trade pitchers with multiple years before their free agency. The MLB Trade Rumors list includes Shane Bieber, but he has gotten injured since then and may not be traded as a result. It also include hurlers such as Aaron Civale or the Guardians and Paul Blackburn of the A’s. Both are effective starters, but none transform a rotation.
I will include the caveat that anything is possible at the trade deadline. Dana Brown is in his first year as a General Manager, so we have no track record to go with on his thinking on how to approach the Trade Deadline. And last year in this article, I wrote that the Astros would not get Willson Contreras at the trade deadline because the cost was too high, and technically, I was correct.
But my scan of the market and the Astros resources tells me the team will focused on a starting pitcher who can start playoff games for them as a 3rd or 4th starter an then will become a free agent after the playoffs.
Let’s hope Dana Brown identifies a pitcher who can be effective in October, and before then—the team needs to make a run at the Rangers for the division crown and to hold off their challengers for a Wild Card spot.
They don’t need to in the sense that they can’t field a team if they don’t. But they certainly need to in the sense that they damage their AL West and playoff chances significantly if they do not.
Both Stroman and Rodriguez have player options. For Stroman, it’s for one year at $21 million. For Rodriguez, it’s for 3 years at $16. million per year. It is likely that both pitchers will opt to be free agents this off-season, but if they get injured, they will not. As such, there is extra downside risk to these two free agents, and it is one of the reasons why their value is below Giolito, Montgomery, and Snell.
I know the Astros have talked as though Lee is someone they value for the future, but their actions—keeping in AAA for a second straight season after Cesar Salazar beat him out for an Opening Day roster spot—speak louder to me. They do not value him that highly and it is likely that another team values him more.