The Astros must be extremely careful if you care about the sustained success of this franchise past 2025 IF they acquire Justin Verlander today.
They MUST include in the deal a way to force the Mets to take salary- and a lot of it in 2025 IF they want to do more than one of these three things.
Re-sign Jose Altuve
Re-sign Alex Bregman
Extend Kyle Tucker
If they don't do what I am about to say and just add Justin Verlander and try to do all three of those things, the Astros would project to have a $300M CBT in 2025. This will also trigger a ~$30M CBT tax. THAT WILL NOT HAPPEN. I do not care what anyone says today about just go for it and worry about that later. ALL of you will be screaming when the team announces they are incapable of doing two of those things and the team is no longer championship worthy in 2025 and beyond.
This is my out of the box Astros trade to the Mets to get Justin Verlander.
This Deal SUCKS for them from a trade value standpoint. However, IF the Mets view Lance McCullers Jr. as a viable pitcher in 2024-2026, THIS could be the best deal they get. This allows them to save face in not having to give the Astros cash in the trade.
For the Astros, LMJ has a CBT Payroll number of $17M. This is what the Astros NEED in 2025 that would allow them to do two of the three above items,
Editor Note (8/2/23): Last night I was told LMJ has no-trade clause. Per Heyman at the time it was reported to be a limited no trade clause. Simply put- I failed you in missing that and I apologize. I should have stuck with my original plan of Montero in this deal. At the end of the day, The Astros chose $54M in cash and gave up two of their top prospects- Gilbert and Clifford instead of this route.
Impact of trade-
Odds of winning division per Fangraphs
7/31 50%
8/2 60.8%
Odds to make postseason
7/31 78.1%
8/2 87.3%
Win World Series
7/31 7.9% (4th highest MLB)
8/2 11.4% (4th highest MLB)
There is probably no other single move that would have improved their odds this much. They are still the 4th most likely to win the WS, but almost 3rd.
Now whether one considers moving these odds this much is worth two of the Astros top prospects is an opinion that we should respect and allow others to have. I do think the underreported aspect of the deal is the massive cash paid by the Mets.
In a way the Astros chose cash over prospects. This deal was spot on from surplus value valuations. So, what if the Astros took five million in less cash and substituted a different top OF prospect than Clifford? Probably makes the deal a lot better to me.
What I am not really interested in having is more discussions with fans that just think caring about prospects is stupid and I am stupid for caring that we lost an important part of our future. Trying to demand that I change my mind about TOP prospects won’t happen. I won't be bullied to shut up here or on social media. As I stated yesterday when I was told to shut up, telling me that is likely to have the opposite effect.
If you think my framing of JV deals was terribly off, I am sorry. I assumed they would value their top prospects more than they did cash. Silly me.
There you go Mets. This is my final offer. You get the three Ms- McCullers, Meyers, and Melton. Say Yes before I change my mind.
Check out the other trade articles too.
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