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Astros Notes: Trade Market, Devenski, Paulino

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At 24-11, the Astros are the best team in baseball through the season’s first five and a half weeks — a blistering start that, according to GM Jeff Luhnow, will allow the team to remain patient on the summer trade market. As Luhnow explains to MLB.com’s Brian McTaggart, he doesn’t feel any urgency pushing him to rush into the summer trade market. “We jumped on Scott Kazmir two years ago early in the trade season, and there’s pros and cons to that,” said Luhnow. “…but other pitchers came available — namely, David Price — that had not really been available early, and so if you really want to know what the landscape looks like completely, you kind of have to wait until the end.” Luhnow tells McTaggart that he still plans to be highly active in trade talks from now through the non-waiver deadline, but the GM doesn’t sound anxious to augment his club, especially with Collin McHugh and pitching prospect David Paulino on the mend from injury. “As long as we continue to play well, there’s no urgency to solve a problem right now.”

A bit more on the Astros…

  • Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports takes an excellent look at Astros powerhouse Chris Devenski — one of the game’s most quietly dominant relievers. Devenski, nicknamed “The Dragon” by his manager in Double-A (Houston will give away bobbleheads of Devenski riding a dragon later this season), Devenski has followed an unlikely path to his current status as one of Major League Baseball’s best bullpen weapons. The right-hander was a 25th-round pick by the White Sox back in 2011 before being dealt to Houston as a player to be named later in the 2012 trade that sent right-hander Brett Myers to Chicago. Devenski wasn’t protected from the Rule 5 Draft by the Astros following a solid-but-not-dominant 2015 season in Double-A, which Luhnow describes to Rosenthal as “a bad decision with an OK outcome.” Luhnow concedes that Houston took “too much of a risk” in leaving Devenski unprotected, though he’s surely thankful for how it worked out. In 131 1/3 MLB innings since Opening Day 2016, Devenski has a 2.12 ERA with 10.0 K/9 and 1.7 BB/9. Teammates Brian McCann, Josh Reddick, Will Harris, George Springer and others all rave about Devenski’s talent and work ethic, and Rosenthal’s column (which I’d highly recommend reading in full), is stuffed with quotes effusing praise for “The Dragon.”
  • Top prospect David Paulino (mentioned by Luhnow as an “important piece” in the McTaggart interview above) made his 2017 debut at Triple-A Fresno after missing five weeks with a bone bruise in his elbow, as Jake Kaplan of the Houston Chronicle writes. Paulino finished the 2016 season in the Majors and opened the season on the Major League disabled list, so he’s technically pitching on a rehab assignment. Based on Kaplan’s writing, it doesn’t sound as if Paulino will be an immediate option for the team once his rehab clock is up; Kaplan notes that he’ll eventually be activated and formally optioned to Fresno. In the meantime, Paulino will continue accruing MLB service time.
  • In light of Rosenthal’s Devenski column and Paulino’s return to the mound, I’ll also point out that Paulino was acquired as a player to be named later in a trade for a reliever; Houston nabbed Paulino, who entered the season as a consensus top 100 prospect, as a PTBNL in the 2013 trade that sent Jose Veras to the Tigers. At the time, Paulino was a 19-year-old GCL prospect that was rehabbing from Tommy John surgery. He’s very clearly elevated his stock, having tossed 90 innings with a flat 2.00 ERA, 10.6 K/9 and 1.9 BB/9 across two minor league levels in 2016 (plus five more shutout innings in the Arizona Fall League).

Astros To Promote David Paulino

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The Astros have decided to call up right-handed pitching prospect David Paulino, according to Jake Kaplan of the Houston Chronicle (via Twitter). Because he already held a 40-man roster spot, no corresponding move will be required.

Paulino, a towering 22-year-old righty, drew top-100 prospect consideration entering the year from Baseball America. And he has largely continued that momentum, improving to 47th on BA’s midseason top 100 and rating as MLB.com’s 76th-best prospect in the game on their own midseason rankings.

The appeal here is obvious: Paulino has a huge frame and a mid-nineties heater to go with a quality curve. His third pitch, a change, is somewhat less developed but seems to hold the promise of being a useful major league offering. Paulino comes with a big ceiling, scouts say, but it remains to be seen how the entire package will translate at the major league level.

Paulino has impressed thus far in 2016, at least when he has been on the mound. He served a suspension for a violation of team rules in the middle of the year — the situation remains murky — meaning that he has only accumulated 90 total frames on the season. That still rates as a career-high for a hurler who had undergone Tommy John surgery before he was sent from the Tigers to the Astros as the player to be named later in the Jose Veras trade.

Despite that hiccup, Paulino obvious did enough to convince the Astros brass that he was worthy of a shot at the majors. He burned through Double-A, posting a 1.83 ERA with 10.1 K/9 and 1.5 BB/9 over 64 frames, earning a bump to the highest level of the minors. Though Paulino has allowed 16 hits and six earned runs over his 14 frames (spread over three starts) at Triple-A, he has managed to compile an appealing 20:6 K/BB ratio.

For the ’Stros, it’s hard not to wonder whether there’s at least some connection between the move and the recent loss of staff ace Dallas Keuchel. While Paulino’s precise role remains unclear, the injury to Keuchel may have made the organization more willing to roll the dice on an unproven arm — whether in the rotation or some kind of relief role. Even if it is somewhat sub-optimal to rely on Paulino at this stage, he certainly delivers some upside and didn’t require any roster maneuvering.

As for service-time considerations, the move will obviously get Paulino’s ticker started. If he opens the 2017 season in the majors, then the extra days of action will have no impact. If, however, the Astros decide they’d like to further delay his free agency, then time spent in the bigs this season will extend the number of days he’d need to stay down next year.

AL West Notes: Angels, Eppler, Dull, Paulino, Dyson

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Here’s the latest from around the AL West…

  • Angels GM Billy Eppler is non-committal about his team being sellers at the deadline, Pedro Moura of the Los Angeles Times writes.  “Let’s let this club play a little bit longer.  There’s no rush to make a decision right now,” Eppler said.  The front office wants to “get the full team intact and guys back on the field and healthy” before making any decisions, Eppler said, though Moura points out that this will be impossible given how many key pitchers are either out for the season or indefinitely shelved.  It could be that Eppler is simply engaging in some gamesmanship, as the Halos’ record (31-44, last place in the AL West) would certainly indicate that they’ll be selling come August 1.
  • Don’t look for the Athletics to trade reliever Ryan Dull, Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle tweets.  Dull has been a bright spot for the A’s, posting a 2.31 ERA, 9.7 K/9 and 5.25 K/BB rate over 39 bullpen innings this season.  The 26-year-old is under team control through the 2021 season, so it makes sense that Oakland hang onto Dull and instead focus on older players closer to free agency as possible deadline trade chips.
  • Astros pitching prospect David Paulino has been suspended by the club for an undisclosed period of time, Jake Kaplan of the Houston Chronicle reports.  “We’ve got rules and every once in a while rules are violated and we have to enforce them,” GM Jeff Luhnow said, though he noted that Paulino’s violation “wasn’t anything major” and the 22-year-old righty won’t be out of action for too long.  Paulino, ranked on top-100 prospect lists by Baseball America (91st) and MLB.com (98th), has a 1.86 ERA, 10.2 K/9 and 6.0 K/9 rate over 58 Double-A innings this season, with eight of his 13 appearances coming as a starter.
  • Sam Dyson has emerged as the Rangers’ closer but is also tied for the league lead in appearances.  As Gerry Fraley of the Dallas Morning News writes, this is an untenable situation for any closer, especially one with a checkered injury history like Dyson.  The logical answer is to limit Dyson’s innings, though that could be difficult with Texas in the thick of a pennant race.  The Rangers are known to be exploring bullpen upgrades, and they could even replace Dyson at closer if the Yankees made Aroldis Chapman or Andrew Miller available.

Added To The 40-Man Roster: Friday

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Tonight at 8:00pm ET is the deadline for teams to add players to their 40-man roster and thereby protect them from this year’s Rule 5 Draft. In other words: there will be a significant amount of 40-man roster moves made over the course of the next 13 or so hours. Six clubs already made moves to protect prospects from the Rule 5 yesterday, and each of the remaining 24 clubs should make moves today as well.

In brief: players drafted/signed at 18 years of age or younger must be added to the 40-man roster within five years of signing or be exposed to the Rule 5 Draft. Players drafted/signed at 19 or older must be added within four years. Those interested in all of the specifics can refer to articles from MLB.com’s Jonathan Mayo and J.J. Cooper of Baseball America. Perhaps of greater interest is that Mayo lists all of the prospects from MLB.com’s Top 100 list and from their organizational Top 30 lists that much be protected in advance of tonight’s deadline, while Cooper provides brief write-ups on each player that has been protected (and will continue to do so as additions are made).

Here are today’s additions to the 40-man roster. You can check out Baseball America’s coverage to learn more about the individual players listed below …

Earlier Updates

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