While some of baseball’s best teams got aggressive at the trade deadline, the Houston Astros were relatively quiet. Aside from acquiring struggling pitcher Francisco Liriano, Houston stood pat. Their ace pitcher Dallas Keuchel was unhappy about that and made his feelings known.
“I’m not going to lie. Disappointment is a little bit of an understatement,” Keuchel said, via Brian McTaggart, MLB.com. I feel like a bunch of teams really bolstered their rosters for the long haul and for the huge playoff push and us just kind of standing pat was really disappointing to myself.”
While Keuchel did want to see more done, he does feel that the Astros are still a contending team, adding “I think we have a good enough team to go to the World Series.”
As good as Houston has been in 2017, it’s far from a perfect team. The Astros would have done well to add a quality starter like Sonny Gray or Yu Darvish. Additionally, a top bullpen arm like Zach Britton or Justin Wilson would have made Houston a much better team.
But if this is going to hurt the Astros, it won’t happen until October. Houston is 16 games up on the Seattle Mariners in the American League West and 11.5 clear of the Cleveland Indians and New York Yankees for the American League’s best record.