The defending World Series champion Houston Astros entered the MLB All-Star Break with a 50-41 record and in second place in the American League West behind the Texas Rangers.
To an extent, the “first half” of the season was mediocre by Houston’s standards. While the team would earn a playoff spot if thing got going today, there are some issues that general manager Dana Brown would like to address.
During his weekly interview on the Sean Salisbury Show, Brown didn’t hold back when talking about a specific area of weakness with the in-season MLB trade deadline mere weeks away.
“With the pitchers that we’ve had going down, it could put us in a situation where we come up short or we don’t get to that next round of the playoffs. A good arm would be really, really helpful. The problem is, there are not many good arms out there.”
Houston Astros GM Dana Brown on MLB trade deadline plans
Houston currently has starters José Urquidy and Luis Garcia on the 60-day injured list. This has impacted rotational depth. Despite all of this, Houston headed into the All-Star Break with the second-best ERA in MLB behind the Atlanta Braves.
Framber Valdez (7-6, 2.51 ERA), Hunter Brown (6-6, 4.12) and Cristian Javier (7-1, 4.34) have been mainstays. Finding another veteran arm to help Houston repeat as World Series champs makes sense.
Related: MLB trade tracker with grades
Houston Astros MLB trade deadline targets
As Brown pointed out, there are not a lot of top-end arms available ahead of the MLB trade deadline early next month.
Corbin Burnes (Milwaukee Brewers), Shane Bieber (Cleveland Indians), Lucas Giolito (Chicago White Sox), Marcus Stroman (Chicago Cubs) and Eduardo Rodriguez (Detroit Tigers) are the biggest names that have been floated about in MLB trade rumors.
The bad news for Houston? MLB.com ranks them with the fourth-worst farm system in all of baseball. A top-five prospect within said farm system would have to be included to pull off a deal for one of the pitchers listed above. All four of Houston’s top prospects are outfielders, leading to questions about whether they can pull off a needle mover ahead of the deadline.