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Houston Astros Land Scott Kazmir but was he Worth the Price?

By Josh Sippie

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The Houston Astros have finally made a move to solidify a starting rotation that included the best pitcher in Major League baseball, a few hot-shot youngsters and little else. Scott Kazmir will join the Astros in Kansas City on Friday, per ESPN, and figures to be a key ingredient to their playoff push.

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Dallas Keuchel is the undisputed ace of the Astros pitching staff, as he would be at any other pitching staff, but behind him there were a mass of question marks. Collin McHugh has had an up and down year. He is currently in a pretty solid streak of seven straight games without giving up more than three earned runs.

Scott Feldman just returned from injury but he had been incredibly anticlimactic this year, as he has been unable to establish any semblance of consistency.

Behind him there is Lance McCullers and Vincent Velasquez, two young guns that are pitching incredibly well, but given their youth, are being forced to bear an innings cap, which has already come into play, leaving the Astros incredibly short in the rotation.

Until Scott Kazmir, that is.

Scott Kazmir is a bit of a journeyman, as he has traveled from Tampa Bay to Los Angeles to Cleveland to Oakland, but no matter where he goes, he is a quality pitcher, with a career ERA of 3.95. The three time all-star was in the midst of one of his best seasons in Oakland, as he was maintaining a 2.38 ERA and 1.085 WHIP across 18 starts.

Houston will benefit immensely from this signing. As ESPN points out, the last time Kazmir was traded, from Tampa to LA, his ERA dropped from a 5.92 to a 1.73. Using basic math skills, we can deduce that if the same happens to Scott Kazmir in this scenery change, he will have a negative ERA, which (let me check the stats) has never been done before.

Scott Kazmir is going to help this rotation out immensely, but no deal is free. The Astros parted ways with top catching prospect Jacob Nottingham and right-handed pitcher Daniel Mengden.

I was highly skeptical of two of the deals the Astros made in the off season: trading Tropeano and Carlos Perez for Hank Conger and trading Foltynewicz for Gattis. Needless to say the latter has paid off, but the former still keeps me up at night. First of all, Tropeano could have made a solid starter in Houston, as he had proven, and we could have avoided having to make this deal. 

Secondly, Conger is not an upgrade at catcher, as Carlos Perez has been arguably just as good, and he is younger. The Astros need catching help badly, as Jason Castro is not panning out and Conger is, well, still not panning out. Max Stassi is massively struggling in Triple-A as well.

After him, the only real promising prospect is was Jacob Nottingham, who was hitting .320+ with exceptional power numbers wherever he went. Now, the entire Astros organization has run dry of catching.

Catcher is a pretty premium position, so maybe the Astros are looking at it in terms of “well, very few others teams have it, so why should we?” Either way, Nottingham has the potential to be something special whereas Scott Kazmir is going to be a free agent at the end of the year. The Astros have sold out a big player of the future for current success. That rarely works out for the long run, but we will just have to wait and see.

Another factor that inevitably led to this deal is the fact that Kazmir is from Houston. That always helps.

For the time being, the Astros made a great deal. Scott Kazmir gives the Astros a fantastic starting pitcher to sit behind Keuchel and give the Astros two guaranteed chances of winning games. If McHugh can keep up his streak and if McCullers and Velasquez keep pitching in quality starts with long breaks in between, the Astros are set.

Next: Do the Astros have a crisis at first base?

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