Phillips: Deadline deals change AL playoff picture

Steve Phillips

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The Houston Astros made a major statement to their fans in the final seconds before the midnight trade deadline Thursday, landing ace starter Justin Verlander and cash from the Detroit Tigers for three prospects.

Verlander is eligible to pitch for the Astros in the postseason as he was acquired before Sept. 1. He gives Houston an ace at the front of the rotation to go with Dallas Keuchel and Lance McCullers. He’s exactly what Houston needed.

Verlander gives everyone hope that they can now match up with Chris Sale and the Boston Red Sox and Corey Kluber and the Cleveland Indians. He dramatically increases their chances of advancing.

Verlander (10-8, 3.82 ERA), has two years at $56 million and a vesting option remaining on his contract. If he’s in the top five in Cy Young balloting in 2019, the option vests for $22 million. The Tigers are paying $8 million a year to help offset the salary for the Astros.

The key to getting the deal done was Verlander’s dramatic turnaround since July 30. He is 5-1 with a 2.06 ERA since he shutout his new team on July 30 over six innings. As for the postseason, he is 7-5 with a 3.39 ERA in 16 games started over his career.

As exciting as this is for the Astros, I still think they’re the third best team in the American League behind the Indians and Red Sox. I will take Sale and Kluber over Verlander, and that makes a huge difference in a short series.

Harvey alters the schedule

Hurricane Harvey has left wreckage in its wake in the Houston/Southeast Texas region, with flooding unlike anything we’ve ever seen. It has devastated so many families and robbed so many people of hope. Baseball has a way of helping the healing process. I saw it first hand after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 in New York. 

The Verlander deal will help change the spirit and focus of many in Houston, which is a good thing because there is a lot of negativity to go around. The Astros players have been feeling a bit lost and victimized by all that has gone on.

Houston was playing in Los Angeles against the Angels when the storm hit. It became clear very quickly that the team wasn’t going to get back home anytime soon. Once it was clear the Astros weren’t going to be able to play in Minute Maid Park for the scheduled series against the Rangers this past Tuesday through Thursday, Plan B options were considered.

The Rangers suggested to the Astros that the games be played in Arlington at Globe Life Park. Houston would have been the home team and able to keep the revenues generated even though it wasn’t their stadium. The Astros rejected the offer because it compromised the integrity of the schedule and wasn’t in the best interest of their club.

The Astros preferred that the Rangers swap this week’s series with the three-game series between the teams scheduled to be played at the end of September in Arlington. The Rangers rejected that offer for the same reasons the Astros had rejected the previous offer: integrity of the schedule and not in the best interest of the players (and fans).

Under the Astros’ proposal, the Rangers would have to play four consecutive series on the road in the final two weeks of the season, which isn’t conducive to a team finishing the season strong.

So, after the failed negotiation, the games were shifted to a neutral stadium, Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla.

The Astros were inappropriate in portraying the Rangers as greedy for not making the swap of the series. Astros president Reid Ryan issued a statement that said the Rangers wanted all six games at their ballpark. That was the offer, but the fact that the Rangers were giving all of the revenues back to the Astros was a pretty significant point. It wasn’t a greedy offer at all.

Because of their stubbornness, Houston made it tougher on their players to have to travel to Tampa/St. Pete. Plus, if any of their families were able to get out of Houston by car they would have been able to join them in Arlington, which is only about three hours away. Driving to Florida was much less of an option. 

Also, the Astros donated the money made at Tropicana Field but they could have generated much more money if the games had been played at Globe Life Park.

Angels make deadline moves

The Angels made a bold move by acquiring outfielder Justin Upton and cash from the Detroit Tigers on Thursday for a minor-league pitcher and a player to be named later. Upton is available to play for the Angels in the playoffs if they get there as the deal closed prior to the deadline. 

Upton has four years at about $88 million remaining on his deal, but it was the opt-out clause in his contract that prompted the trade. Upton, who is having his best season ever (.904 OPS, 28 HR and 94 RBI), informed Detroit that he was likely going to opt-out at the end of the season. This allowed the Tigers to treat him like a pending free agent. The Angels are obviously taking a chance that Upton changes his mind but it’s a chance worth taking.

In a move to make room for Upton, the Angels dumped outfielder Cameron Maybin on the Astros after a waiver claim. Maybin will complicate playing time for an Astros outfield that already has more players than available at-bats.

The claim on Maybin was an attempted waiver block that went wrong. The Astros didn’t want him, but they also didn’t want others to get him. So they claimed him, anticipating the Angels would pull him back off waivers. The Upton deal meant the Angels needed to drop some salary and the Astros gave the Angels that out.

My educated guess is the Astros claimed Maybin with the hope of blocking an Upton deal to the Angels. They believed that Maybin would be going back to the Tigers to offset some of the money Upton is due. The Astros didn’t want to claim Upton and risk getting his big contract dumped on them, so they claimed Maybin to block the deal. Instead, it may have been the key to the deal getting done for the Angels and Tigers.

I’m so impressed by Maybin’s response. He shared his gratitude to the Angels’ organization and the fans for his time there. Instead of being disappointed and feeling victimized, he is looking at the move to the flood-ravaged city of Houston as gift and opportunity to help people who are suffering. He feels gratitude where other might feel rejected and abandoned. He can play on my team anytime.

The Angels were even more aggressive before the deadline, trading for Atlanta Braves second baseman Brandon Phillips. He adds another veteran leader to the Angels. His family encouraged the reluctant Phillips to pursue a chance to win a championship. Phillips, 36, hit .291 with 11 home runs, 52 RBIs and a .753 OPS in 120 games for the Braves this season.

With these two acquisitions the Angels are improved enough to earn the second wild-card berth.

September means expanding rosters

As the calendar turns to the month of September, rosters expand in Major League Baseball from 25 players up to a total of 40.

The reason rosters expand at this time of year is because the minor league seasons come to an end. This means there would be no available prepared players to call up in case of an injury, so clubs are allowed to bring up players to protect themselves. It also gives teams a chance to provide playing time to young players to acclimate them to the major leagues.

In addition to providing depth for team, call-ups allow clubs to be prepared for any situation that may pop up in the final month of the season. So teams add extra starting pitchers and relievers. Among the relievers, there needs to be options for the manager to neutralize a big left-handed hitter with a lefty out of the pen. There needs to be a groundball pitcher available if a double play is needed.

As far as position players go, managers want a bench player who can pinch-hit to lead off an inning and one with enough power to knock it out of the ballpark. The roster must expand to include a pinch runner who can steal a base. There also needs to be a catcher or two added to the roster to insure the club against the loss of a backstop. 

Teams in the playoff hunt tend to only call up players who can help win games down the stretch, instead of just giving a young player a first taste of the majors for the experience. Too many call-ups can change the energy of the clubhouse and dugout, making it a bit less intense. 

Playing time is easy when clubs are fighting for October baseball. The manager plays the guys he believes give him the best chance to win a game.

For the clubs who are not headed to the postseason, playing time can be handled in any number of ways. The only time a manager must play his best players is when his failed team is playing a club in pursuit of the postseason. There’s a responsibility to maintain the integrity of the schedule for clubs at the bottom of the division. They shouldn’t play all of their young rookies and make it easy on a contender.

How the Blue Jays will handle Bautista

I expect the Jays to play out the season with their everyday lineup getting the majority of the playing time until the team is officially eliminated.

Team president Mark Shapiro and general manager Ross Atkins didn’t completely disassemble their roster at the trade deadline out of respect to the 40,000 fans regularly showing up to the Rogers Centre.

Jose Bautista will likely keep getting a significant number of at-bats down the stretch. It’s likely that outfield prospect Teoscar Hernandez, acquired by Toronto in the Francisco Liriano deal, will work into the lineup on occasion.

Shapiro, Atkins and John Gibbons have great respect for what Bautista has meant to the organization. They will treat the veteran outfielder with compassion. Gibbons will communicate with Bautista to confirm how much he wants to play as they fall further out of the playoff picture.

When in doubt about whether to play Bautista, the Jays will default to the most respectful path, even though he will not be back next year. This way fans will be able to share their gratitude with the slugger and he can do the same with them.

One might wonder why the Jays would bother playing Bautista if they aren’t exercising his option. I always reminded myself that stars on other clubs notice the way I treated my stars. If I wanted superstars to consider my club as a future landing spot I wanted them to see how well we treated our players.

Spitting Seeds

- Rangers added starting pitcher Miguel Gonzalez from the White Sox in a nice little move. If the Rangers had an ace starter, a veteran catcher and a good reliever they would really have a chance to win a wild-card spot. Oh wait! They had all of those and traded them away. Yu Darvish, Jonathan Lucroy and Jeremy Jeffress sure would help in the final month of the season, but Texas traded them all at the deadline assuming they weren’t a playoff team. Those moves may have just ensured that they were right: The Rangers won’t make the playoffs. A hamstring injury to veteran third baseman Adrian Beltre on Thursday makes their chance of October baseball even more remote.

- Yankees manager Joe Girardi has played the media in New York like a fiddle regarding slugger Aaron Judge. He said he wouldn’t move him down in the order despite his second-half struggles and then moved him down to the cleanup spot from his normal position batting third. Then, after saying that he didn’t think Judge needed time off, he sat the rookie for a couple of days. Girardi understood the questions about his young slugger but he didn’t want to give the media power in his decision making.

I would have done exactly what Girardi did, but I would have done it three weeks ago. It seemed pretty clear that Judge wasn’t quite right rather quickly after the All-Star break. He set a new record for strikeouts in consecutive games (37). I would have started making adjustments well before the young man set the new strikeout mark. I’m all for letting hitters work themselves out of slumps, but at some point young hitters need some TLC. Judge showed he was a bit slow in making adjustments last season when he struck out 42 times in 84 at-bats after his call up. Hard work isn’t an issue for the 25-year-old outfielder. He took extra batting practice and watched film. If anything, he was trying too hard. At that point it was critical to take a step back.  A change in position in the lineup, followed by some time off, is a pretty standard approach to a struggling hitter. I’m in total approval in the approach, just not on the timing of it. 

- There were reports that Montreal officials reached out to Major League Baseball and offered the Big O as a solution for Rangers and Astros series. The average attendance at home for the Tampa Bay Rays this season is 15,815. They actually had a game last week of 8,264. Commissioner Rob Manfred knows that the team can’t stay in St Pete. The supposed gesture by Montreal was a brilliant move if it happened as they need to keep portraying themselves as a solution to the problem. At some point they will be the solution.

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Steve Phillips was general manager of the New York Mets from 1997 through 2003, helping lead the club to a National League championship in 2000 and its first World Series appearance since 1986. His analysis appears each week on TSN.ca, TSN Radio and SportsCentre. Follow Steve on Twitter at @StevePhillipsGM.