Houston Astros: Sonny Gray would be worth the cost

The Houston Astros have seen one of their primary challengers to the American League title, the New York Yankees, make moves to improve their roster prior to the trade deadline. The Astros now need to respond in kind and adding Sonny Gray is the best option available.

The Houston Astros trade talks have picked up some momentum between themselves and the Oakland A’s regarding Sonny Gray. This according to MLB.com’s Jon Morosi:

Sources: #Astros, #Athletics talks on Sonny Gray are heating up. @MLBNetwork @MLB
— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) July 20, 2017

Sonny Gray will not come cheap. He has been raising his trade value over his last five starts, all of which were quality starts, throwing 31.1 Innings during that span giving up only six earned runs (which equates to a 1.74 ERA) and a 0.80 WHIP with 27 strikeouts. He’s looking like the Sonny Gray of old.

If Sonny Gray is back to what he is capable of being, which is a Cy Young worthy ace, the Astros loss in prospects will be worth his addition. Obviously you don’t want to hurt the future of your team too much, but given that Sonny Gray would be with us over the next year and a half alongside Dallas Keuchel and Lance McCullers Jr., that gives us a great chance at winning a World Series both this year and next and gives us a year and a half of development time for whichever prospects we have left over after a trade with Oakland.

This trade seems like the one that’s going to happen, especially given Jeff Luhnow’s history trading multiple times with Billy Beane in the past (Once for Scott Kazmir and twice dealing Jed Lowrie to them.) This will be a much tougher negotiation though as we’re dealing with a relatively young, extremely cheap (Gray is making $3.58 million dollars this year with two years of arbitration left), former all-star and top three Cy Young Award finalist.

If I were Luhnow, I would be prepared to give up Francis Martes, Derek Fisher and Franklin Perez (our numbers one, four and six prospects according to mlb.com) alongside two lower level prospects if it meant we got Gray. Billy Beane will almost assuredly ask for Kyle Tucker in any deal, but we’ll see if we can pull this one off without including him.

Either way, Gray gives us a solid third starter who, if healthy and playing up to his potential, the sky is the limit on what he could do. We would have three Cy Young award worthy pitchers in our rotation in October if Keuchel, McCullers and Gray are healthy and ready to go.

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And with Chris Devenski as a super reliever who could come in to close out the final two or three innings of a game should the back end of the bullpen remain a bit of a wild card, it would solidify our pitching to go along with this absurdly productive offense.

Championship windows aren’t open forever. And prospects are just that. Prospects. While Carlos Correa, George Springer and Jose Altuve have worked out, we’ve also seen how Jon Singleton, AJ Reed, Jason Lane, Chris Burke, Jason Hirsh, Mark Appel, Jordan Lyles and the list goes on and on of prospects that didn’t work out.

Yes it will hurt even worse trading within the division and potentially seeing those prospects that turn into all-stars help beat our team rather than helping us win. But this is just how it goes. And our chances at a World Series title have never been higher at this point in the season. To not go for it now would be wasting a start to the year the franchise has never seen in 55 seasons and a chance at home field advantage throughout the playoffs.

These situations don’t come along often. The Astros cannot let this season go to waste watching other teams get better while we stand pat. And if Dallas Keuchel’s injury remains an issue, we’ll definitely want an insurance policy should he or McCullers befall something that makes them unavailable come October.

Next: Brad Hand should be on team's trade radar

This is no longer rebuilding mode looking towards the future. This is risking the future for the present chance. This is what we waited out 2012 and 2013 for. No time to get gun shy now. Let’s pull the trigger on Sonny Gray.

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