Houston Astros: The minor league touchables and untouchables in a trade

The Houston Astros are cruising at the moment, but no team is without its flaws. And the Houston Astros could use a back end of the rotation boost and a talented lefty in the bullpen to further solidify their chances of a World Series title.

The Houston Astros have an extremely deep farm system, ranked third by Baseball America, to deal from. But obviously you don’t want to sell the farm unless you can get someone so talented and for so long that you feel comfortable you can build the farm back up before hitting the doldrums of back-to-back losing seasons.

The Houston Astros have five top prospects that most teams must have their eyes on in regards to a trade being made. Those players are Francis Martes, Kyle Tucker, David Paulino, Derek Fisher and Forrest Whitley. Now Paulino has been lost to an 80 game suspension due to usage of PED’s, so right now with his diminished trade value, I don’t see the reason to send him anywhere at this moment.

Wait until he gets back and shows he still has good stuff and let his value get back to where it should be. Because of that suspension, we’re going to replace Paulino with Franklin Perez, our number six prospect according to MLB.com as we analyze which players in the Astros system should be touchable in a trade and which ones should be non-negotiable.

So going from top of the farm to the bottom, here’s the list of players and whether or not they should be sacrificed for this year’s chance at a championship…