Thats what I was hoping for....Verlander, Liriano, Weaver, Sowers.....I guess you can only have one of those guys a year and ours was Papelbon.
Lester doesn't have the control of any of those guys and doesn't have the "out-pitches" they do
According to cbs.sportsline I saw that Oswalt and Berkman combined to make 25.5 million this season. I can understand how good the two of them are and I can see why they would not make the deal (they didn't explore it which proves that). That money compared to the amount of a Hansen, Lester, and Crisp combination certainly saves. I was also reading that Roy Oswalt may not be interested in returning to Houston after 2007.
I'm not exactly sure what we are really talking about. This trade never happened. The rumors I heard after the trade deadline was the Red Sox were going to swing Andruw Jones to Houston in exchange for Roy Oswalt (that makes even less sense for Houston). I would expect the Houston Astros to make major moves after this year since Roger Clemens will be leaving and they have key components walking into contract years.
Either way the Astors didn't make any moves and the Red Sox remain reluctant to moves there young pieces. I don't forsee this changing but....its possible.
Like I said....if the Astros were looking to get younger and cheaper it was a route they may have considered. Whether they would take it or not, I don't know. The Phillies took a bag of s*** for Lidle and Abreu so you never know what teams are thinking.
I wouldn't trade Jonathan Papelbon straight up for Roy Oswalt (age is the issue there). I would trade Lester, Hansen, and Crisp for Berkman and Oswalt. Houston would get much younger and cheaper....everything being mentioned was talked about at the trade deadline. If the Astros were looking to rebuild there team...this might have made sense but they never did that.