Parades over Prospects? No, Prospects Lead to Parades
Trading for stars is no guarantee of championships, even if you win the trade (c.f. Cole; Greinke). Developing your own players is vital to winning title (c.f. 2017; 2022). Balance is needed.
Go search “Parades Over Prospects” on your favorite social media app.
Did the top search results come back with a bunch of Astros fans saying those words? Mine did.
It’s the catch phrase to explain why these Astros fans are happy that the Astros traded two top prospects for Justin Verlander. It will lead to another World Series parade this year.
But will it?
The Cole and Greinke Trades Didn’t Bring a Parade
In January 2018, the Astros traded four young players1 () to the Pirates for Gerrit Cole. It was a great trade for the Astros as the team’s player development staff was able to unlock the best version of Cole and by the end of 2019, he was the best pitcher on the planet.
In 2019, to make a final push to get another World Series ring, the Astros traded away four prospects again, this time to the Diamondbacks to get Zack Greinke. I was particularly giddy over that deal at the time.
In both cases, the Astros front office prioritized parades over prospects. They traded away part of their future to improve the team’s playoff rotation over several seasons. They got to employ Cole and Greinke in the playoffs, where both were quite effective for the Astros.
Yet neither trade led to a parade. If the goal of both trades was to win a World Series, the Astros failed.
Or did they?
But Cole and Greinke Were Not Traded for Useful Prospects
Of the eight prospects the Astros traded for Cole and Greinke, only two have positive bWARs over the course of their careers. One of those is Josh Rojas, who has been mostly a utility man during his career.
The other is Joe Musgove, who has developed into a fine starting pitcher over time. But it took a while to do that. Musgrove did not have an ERA below 4.00 until the 2020 season and really didn’t develop into a top level starting pitcher until 2021. The 2021-2023 Astros could have used Joe Musgrove, but I don’t think any Astro fan regrets giving him up for two top level seasons of Cole helping deep playoff runs. I certainly don’t.
Because the Astros Didn’t Trade Future Stars
The Astros won both of these parades over prospects deals even if Cole and Greinke didn’t get us to a parade. But that is because the Astros traded the right prospects.
According to the ESPN write up of the Cole trade, “Houston prospects Forrest Whitley, Kyle Tucker, Derek Fisher, and Yordan Alvarez were off the table [by] general manager Jeff Luhnow…sources said.”
Good thing. It’s hard to imagine the Astros winning the 2022 World Series title without star turns from Tucker and Alvarez.
The Astros traded two pitchers—Corbin Martin and JB Bukauskas—as part of the package for Greinke. But imagine if instead of those two, the had sent Framber Valdez and Cristian Javier in the deal instead.
Yeah, I didn’t want to think about that either.
The Astros Won Two World Series Thanks to Player Development
The Astros have won two World Series, four pennants, and made six (soon to be seven) straight playoff appearances primarily on the strength of their player development apparatus. They team developed star level players like George Springer, Carlos Correa, Alex Bregman, and Dallas Keuchel during their rebuild in the early 2010s. Those players formed the core of a team that ran away with the AL West in 2017.
The Astros then built a new core for the 2022 team featuring Alvarez, Tucker, Valdez, and Javier. These players were star players—both in the regular season and in the playoffs—as the Astros won their second title. I highlighted the Astros success in player development in explaining why they won the 2022 title.
The Astros got a parade in 2017 and in 2022 because of their prospects. The Astros have centered both of their World Championship teams on homegrown players who have blossomed into major league stars.
The Costs of the Verlander Trade Are High
Which brings us back to the Verlander trade. The Astros traded only two prospects to get Verlander—Drew Gilbert and Ryan Clifford—but both were highly rated in the Astros farm system. Gilbert was the team’s top prospect and Clifford was rising in the prospect rankings. Time will tell if they are the next version of Tucker and Alvarez, or are the contemporary versions of AJ Reed and Francis Martes—two prospects the Astros should have traded.
What I can say about them is that the cost for acquiring Verlander was quite high. There are no guarantees that either prospect becomes an effective major leaguer. The Astros previous front offices have done a good job for the most part in targeting the right minor leaguers to trade and we can only hope that Jim Crane and Dana Brown did as well this time.
Part of the cost of trading Gilbert and Clifford is that the Astros farm system is currently pretty weak. Fangraphs updates their prospect rankings contemporaneously and they now have the Astros ranked as the 30th farm system in major league baseball.
The team did not have prospects at the level of Tucker, Alvarez, and Derek Fisher to keep off the table in this year’s negotiations to get a #2 starter like they did in 2018 when they acquired Cole.
And as I noted in my analysis of the Verlander trade, the Astros are all in on 2023 and 2024. They need to win in these two seasons because it will get harder to win in 2025 and after, in large part because the farm system is less likely to produce young regulars.
But there is no guarantee of a parade because of this trade. The playoffs are, as always, essentially a crapshoot. Each baseball game is a coin flip, and in a short series, and even in 7 game series—much less a shorter series—the winner is usually the team that happens to roll a better set of dice. Skill matters, but, in a short series, it matters less that we would like it to.
The good news is that the Astros have a good chance of getting to a parade in 2023 (and in 2024, though we’ll talk about that more later). The team has developed a number of star level players and that has propelled the team to having an 86% chance of making the playoffs and a 10% chance of winning the World Series, according to Fangraphs projections.
We’ll take that shot over the next seven weeks of regular season baseball and four rounds of the playoffs.
Technically, Joe Musgrove and Colin Moran had enough major league service time that they had lost their “official” prospect eligibility at the time. I don’t think that changes any of my analysis.