The trade: The Houston Astros acquire RHP Justin Verlander from the New York Mets for OF Drew Gilbert and OF Ryan Clifford.
The dismantling of the most disappointing team money can buy continues as the Mets trade away a second future Hall of Famer in a matter of days. After trading Max Scherzer to the Texas Rangers, the Mets follow up with another blockbuster, sending Verlander back to the Astros -- the team he was on from 2017 to 2022.
Let's grade it.
Houston Astros: Let's hope Verlander has a good real estate agent because after leaving the Astros as a free agent to sign with the Mets, he's heading back to Houston, where he won two Cy Young Awards and two World Series championships. With Lance McCullers Jr., Luis Garcia and Jose Urquidy all on the injured list, a return engagement with Verlander was just too enticing for the Astros to pass on -- especially since the Rangers, with a half-game lead in the American League West, fortified their own rotation with Scherzer and Jordan Montgomery.
On the surface, it looks like Verlander is still pitching at an ace-quality level -- or at least very close to it. After missing April with a teres major muscle strain, he's 6-5 with a 3.15 ERA while holding batters to a .219 average. Among pitchers with at least 80 innings, he ranks 15th in ERA, 17th in average allowed and eighth in OPS allowed. He's been even better of late with a 1.49 ERA over his past seven starts and just one home run allowed.
So the Astros are getting the same pitcher who won the Cy Young Award last season and helped them win the World Series, right? Not necessarily. Some of the deeper stats show that it has become much more of a grind these days for Verlander compared to 2022:
Strikeout rate
2022: 27.8%
2023: 21.0%
Walk rate
2022: 4.4%
2023: 8.0%
Home run rate
2022: 1.8%
2023: 2.3%
Verlander's fastball, once the best in the game among starters, is now merely slightly above average at 94.3 mph. Back in 2019, pre-Tommy John surgery, he often would simply blow it by hitters with a swing-and-miss rate of 31%. That's now down to 17%, so he has to rely more on guile and execution rather than pure power. He's still a good pitcher -- one of the top 20 starters in the game -- and his competitive desire remains top of the line, but it's important to remember that he's more of a six-inning starter now. Indeed, Astros fans will recall his spotty postseason last year when he had two good starts and two bad ones, allowing 13 runs across 20 innings.
That said ... who wouldn't want to add Verlander to their rotation? Especially given the history the Astros are chasing: The first team to win consecutive World Series titles since the New York Yankees won three in a row from 1998 to 2000. If Verlander is the difference between winning the AL West -- avoiding that three-game wild-card series -- and finishing second, those odds of a repeat go up substantially. There's added incentive for Houston to go for it the next two years because Alex Bregman and Jose Altuve become free agents after the 2024 season. That alone was a reason for Houston to add another starter in hopes of maximizing this window.
Plus, the Astros will get Verlander for 2024 and possibly for 2025 (if he pitches 140 innings in 2024, his player option kicks in). Yes, it will be a ton of money to pay a guy who is already 40 years old. He's owed about $14 million for the rest of this season and $43.3 million next season, with a $35 million conditional option for 2025. But Verlander is driven to reach 300 career wins -- he sits at 250 at the moment -- and he has a better chance of getting there with the Astros than the Mets. I wouldn't bet against him.
Grade: A
New York Mets: No doubt, these past couple of days have been sad and depressing for Mets fans -- on top of a sad and depressing season. The hype of the largest payroll in history with two Hall of Fame starters to anchor the rotation has turned into one of the largest duds of a season in major league history. Yet ... the Mets did pretty well in both the Scherzer trade and now this one. I mean, other than the fact that they'll now need two new starters for next season.
For Verlander, however, they get two intriguing prospects from an otherwise thin Houston system. Gilbert was the team's first-round pick last year out of Tennessee and ESPN's Kiley McDaniel has a 50 future value grade on him. He tore up Class A to start the season with a .361 average in 21 games, but has slowed to a .241/.342/.371 line at Double-A. He's a power/speed guy with the possibility of remaining in center field, allowing the Mets to eventually move Brandon Nimmo to left field as he ages.
Like Gilbert, Clifford is a left-handed hitter with perhaps even more projectable power than Gilbert. Drafted in the 11th round out of high school, the Astros gave him second-round money to sign and he's already outperformed their initial expectations as scouts now project 30-homer potential. At 19 years old, he's already reached High-A and is hitting .291/.399/.520 with 18 home runs across the two levels. Kiley gives him a strong 45 FV as he's limited to right field or maybe first base, but clearly the bat has a chance to be pretty special.
Was it worth it for the Mets? I think so. It's not easy cutting bait on what was supposed to be such a joyous season, but the smart organizations are able to adapt on the fly. And remember: They still have owner Steve Cohen's money. This offseason's list of free agent starters will be deep (Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Nola, Blake Snell, Julio Urias, Lucas Giolito, Sonny Gray, Jordan Montgomery, Jack Flaherty and probably Eduardo Rodriguez and Marcus Stroman). They can easily sign two of them to replace their departed Hall of Famers. And now they have a slew of exciting prospects to help build a long-term foundation that the 2023 roster never had.