Houston Astros Rumors: How the Justin Verlander ‘talks’ vanished within an hour

The Houston Astros are about to hit their stretch run and the rumors continue to fly in regard to starting pitcher Justin Verlander being a part of it.

It has been an interesting turn of events over the past few weeks for the Houston Astros since Justin Verlander has cleared waivers.  He continues to be a likely candidate to be moved because the Detroit Tigers aren’t going anywhere fast and it doesn’t make sense for him to be a part of rebuilding project as he ages.  But the team has until Aug. 31 to get a deal done if he is the team’s top target before the deadline.

Jon Heyman of FanRag Sports reported that talks have “reignited” and that a deal still remains difficult to make:

Okay, so after reading his piece, I’m thinking that things have heated back up once again and that a deal could be imminent to send the veteran hurler and his beautiful wife to H-Town.  But I was definitely assuming the unthinkable was about to happen.

Now take a look at Heyman’s tweet one hour 14 minutes later:

What in the hell?  I had my hopes all up that our starting pitching woes could be solved and then I find out that nugget.  So we go from “reignited” talks in the present tense to “haven’t spoken in a couple of days.”  This basically means that nothing has happened over the past week, to which I’ve already reported on and we may not be any closer to deal since that point.

BOOOOOOOOOO!  Come on Jon!  But I do digress a bit as I understand the nature of the breaking news element with information constantly changing.  Or did it?  We’ll never know.

I was opposed to a potential trade for Verlander at first during the stages of the July 31st deadline because a lot of talent such as Justin Wilson, Sonny Gray, Yu Darvish and Zach Britton were being talked about and connected with the Astros.  But as each and every one of those guys went off the board, the pickings are now slim and Verlander is now a prime candidate to help this team as our rotation continues to struggle.

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Speaking of rotation, Dallas Keuchel got his groove back Sunday afternoon against the Texas Rangers putting up a stat line of seven strikeouts, three walks, one earned run, one home run and six hits to his credit through 6.2 innings of work.  He also picked up his 10th win of the season (10-2 overall record) as the Astros eked out 2-1 win.  Keuchel looks like the one of old and seems quite confident that his pitching wheelhouse is back in order.

The Tigers got their turn against the Rangers tonight with Verlander being on the bump.  He started off quite well through the first two innings until Robinson Chirinos homered off a fly ball to left-center, followed by Nomar Mozara single to score Elvis Andrus and back-to-back homers by Joey Gallo and Mike Napoli.  He did recover after that and finished the night tossing eight strikeouts with five earned runs, allowing three homers and eight hits in their 10-4 loss to the Rangers.

It was the first time Verlander had given up more than three runs in his last eight starts.

He still would be someone I’d target and I hope this gives Jeff Luhnow an opportunity to get the Tigers to lower their price on him which is certainly the sticking point at this moment.  We’ll have to see about that with about two weeks to go before deadline.

Next: Three issues facing the Astros right now

Up until tonight, Verlander had posted a 2.01 ERA, 44 strikeouts off 12 walks through 40.3 innings.  The good thing is that this stat line doesn’t change much for the worse except for a modest increase in the ERA.  Come on Jeff, let’s get a deal done!

Go Astros!