GM Luhnow still a firm believer in Astros' prospect depth after trades
The Houston Astros know the high cost of making trades these days. After all, they shipped a few of their premier pitching prospects (Mark Appel and Vincent Velasquez among them) to the Philadlephia Phillies recently for closer Ken Giles. Over the summer, they also had to give up pitching prospect Josh Hader in the Mike Fiers and Carlos Gomez trade.
Houston has one of the league's top farm systems and a reputation for cultivating young talent - but GM Jeff Luhnow recently sounded pragmatic when discussing the organization's decisions to trade away controllable young talent with a high ceiling. As he sees it, the Astros know they won't be retaining all of their elite young players forever. His quote to MLB.com's Brian McTaggart regarding that:
"You look at the trades we made last summer when we acquired Gomez and [Brewers starter Mike] Fiers. We were doing that to improve the team, not only today but the future. We were giving up players we might regret giving up three years from now. We can't keep all our players in the Minor Leagues, and we know that. We've got to figure out which opportunities we take to trade prospects to get better now."
And despite trading away former No. 1 pick Appel and Velasquez in this latest blockbuster deal, Luhnow still firmly believes in the Astros' prospect pitching depth:
"It's tough to give guys away because pitching is hard to find," Luhnow said. "But right now, we feel our system is still stocked with good pitching that's going to be able to help us out over the next five years."
With Houston quite clearly going for it all in 2016, it seems all but inevitable that they will be involved in another big trade featuring some of their young talent sometime between now and the end of the 2016 regular season.
After coming so far in 2015, they're hungry for more.
