The cold stove just got a little warmer as the Houston Astros have pulled the trigger on a three team trade with the Pittsburgh Pirates and Tampa Bay Rays. The Pirates are sending starting pitcher Mike Burrows to Houston with outfielders Jacob Melton and pitching prospect Anderson Brito going to the Rays as part of a deal. Obviously, some bigger pieces (namely 2B Brandon Lowe) are moving between the Rays and Pirates. The end result for Houston is a controllable starter for two of their top three prospects.
Obviously, Lowe is the center piece of the deal nationally as the second baseman is one year removed from free agency. The Rays seem to be involved in a cost cutting offseason as they also flipped Shane Baz to the Baltimore Orioles in a separate deal. On the Houston side of things, losing Brito is a tough pill to swallow, but Burrows has six years of club control left and gives them a middle of the rotation arm who is not yet eligible for arbitration. Accoringly, he will not become arbitration eligible until after the 2028 season and would not be able to enter free agency until the 2032 season.
Burrows had a 3.94 ERA in 19 starts for the Pirates last season. He had a 4.00 FIP on top of that with most of the Statcast ERA sitting at 4.30. Obviously, the hope is that the Astros could get him in their pitching lab and take him to the next level. However, he has already spent a year working with Brent Strom, so it would seem like he should be well on his way. I should point out that Burrows finished with a .646 BPO last season. That puts him above the league average for pitchers with ten starts or more and if those pitchers were broken into tiers (top 150 starters into tiers of 30 each) then he would be equivalent of a third starter. Furthermore, if we assume Framber Valdez is gone then Burrows slots in as the number two starter in terms of BPO.
Anderson Brito spent last season with Fayetville. He spent the season ranked #16 in the Astros system according to Fangraphs, but he was destined to start the season much higher in the prospect rankings. He seemed targeted to start in Corpus Christi as a 21 year old flame thrower. Iām sure Jimmy Price could give us more background on him, but based on his prospect profile, he seemed destined to be a late inning relief type at the big league level.
Including Melton in the deal is interesting on a number of levels. Melton struggled at the big league level last season, but entered the offseason as the #2 prospect in the Astros system. If the club chooses to move on from Jake Meyers and/or Jesus Sanchez then they will have considerable depth issues. So, this could be a signal that at least one of those two is staying put. Of course, there is a lot of offseason left to go. We have more about Burrows and the entire starting staff when we talk about the Astros rotation in the lab.
