Ken Giles has been acquired by the Houston Astros in a trade with the Philadelphia Phillies on Wednesday night.
Advertisement
Joining a Phillies staff that seems to be evolving by the day are Vincent Velasquez and Brett Oberholtzer. The San Diego Padres were able to get four highly-touted prospects from the Boston Red Sox in November for three years of Craig Kimbrel, arguably the best closer in the game.
The Astros add a young, flamethrowing reliever after acquiring Ken Giles from the Phillies.
Following a season in which the Astros struggled to close out games at times, Giles will solidify the back-end of their bullpen.
“[General manager Matt Klentak] has loaded up on relievers, signing Hernandez and claiming Otero, A.J. Achter and Michael Mariot on waivers”. Still, Velasquez is the highlight of this deal and a guy Phillies fans should enjoy watching next year.
That said, even with 2013 No. 1 overall pick Mark Appel in the organization, Velasquez might have the highest ceiling of any of Houston’s pitching prospects. Velesquez, age 23, was 11 with a 4.27 ERA in 19 games, seven as a starter, with 58 strikeouts in 55.2 innings. In 45 career games, 42 of those were starts, Oberholtzer has posted a 3.94 ERA, with a 3.72 FIP. The lefthander made eight starts for the Astros in 2015.
Fisher is an intriguing outfield prospect, although he’s not close to the major leagues.
Advertisement
Fisher, 22, is a native of Lebanon, Pennsylvania. As Klentak spoke, it became rather clear that the Hernandez signing was connected to the Giles situation. The last couple of months we’ve been adding quite a bit of depth to our bullpen, but many of those players don’t come with a lot of experience and we wanted to make sure we added at least one player who had experience that could help pitch in the late part of the game. The 22-year-old outfielder was originally selected in the sixth round of the 2011 Major League Baseball draft by the Texas Rangers, but opted instead to attend the University of Virginia. He was the closer in waiting until Jonathan Papelbon was finally dealt to Washington last July.
