Houston Astros stay quiet at the trade deadline

The Houston Astros entered the season presumably needing a frontline starter to help them in their quest for their first World Series title. With the non-waiver trade deadline having passed, that isn’t likely to happen now.

The Houston Astros did make a deal on Monday morning, acquiring Francisco Liriano from the Toronto Blue Jays for Triple-A outfielder and number nine prospect Teoscar Hernandez plus Nori Aoki in return. It’s safe to say that what they gave up in this deal will outperform what they gained over the course of their contracts. Hernandez is a powerful bat that could take off in Toronto with the playing time he’s sure to see.

Liriano, 33, will be a free agent at the end of the season and held a 5.88 ERA with the Blue Jays. A lefty, he’ll likely slide into the Astros bullpen and give manager A.J. Hinch another option besides Tony Sipp (0-1, 6.39) and Reymin Guduan, who has all of 8 2/3 big-league innings under his belt.

The hope is that with Liriano coming out of the bullpen that his velocity will tick up and he could become more effective than he has been to this point. He also provides rotation depth, which is something that may come in handy.

Seemingly in between the deadline coming to a close at 1pm and the Yu Darvish trade being announced at 1:08, news came down that Lance McCullers, the team’s best starter behind Dallas Keuchel, was placed on the disabled list. The solid rotation arm that they didn’t add before the deadline could weigh heavily with Keuchel having just come off the DL and McCullers constantly moving between healthy and inactive.

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So right now their rotation consists of Keuchel, a recently activated Collin McHugh, Mike Fiers and Charlie Morton. Francis Martes could slip into the starting five, but Brad Peacock has had success there as well.

The Astros fans on social media that are defending their team’s inactivity commonly state that their team has a 16 game lead in the division, and that is true. Yet the division has been locked up since April. The concern is October and there aren’t enough reliable pieces in place to mark down the Astros as the AL favorites anymore.

Carlos Correa is on the DL. George Springer is on the DL. McHugh has made all of two starts after missing the first three and a half months. Keuchel missed nearly all of June and nearly all of July, bookending those months with a start in each.

The pushback to this argument is obviously that if those guys aren’t healthy the Astros weren’t going to make a deep run regardless. This is true.

But if they are healthy, then an addition like Sonny Gray or Zach Britton or Brad Hand or someone of value would allow for their key stars to have an off game. Say Dallas Keuchel gives up four runs in game one of the ALDS and the offense can’t respond after getting some increased time off in the lead up to this series (they do have a big divisional lead after all). What then? Well, if there is someone like Sonny Gray or Yu Darvish on hand, the prospects of winning a game two look a little better, no?

The mantra in Houston for years now has been one echoed recently in Philadelphia: Trust the process. Trust in Luhnow. In other words, they know what they’re doing. I’m sure they do. Jeff Luhnow runs one of the most successful franchises in baseball and I type words that come into my head. But that doesn’t mean that making a bigger splash at the deadline wouldn’t have been welcome or necessary.

Next: Yankees acquire Sonny Gray

You can keep all the prospects you’d like, but at some point they’ll either be Rule 5 eligible (like Hernandez has been) or they’ll be blocked at the big league level by the talent that you’ve already acquired. Then those prospects will sit down in Triple-A and become trade bait to land Francisco Liriano.

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