Ken Giles
Late Inning Relief Pitcher
2016 Houston Astros
The Deal: During the 2015-16 off-season, the Astros gave up five pitchers for the 2015 Phillies closer Ken Giles and a very young throw-in middle infielder. The deal swung on the fact that the re-building Phils were willing to give up a one-season effective young closer for more pitching depth. Principal acquisitions were former first guy in the former first round draft choice Mark Appel was showing some signs of becoming a slow-to-no developing talent – and Vince Velasquez, who had shown in 2015 some MLB promise as either a starter or useful guy out of the pen. Brett Oberholtzer also went to the Phillies as an established MLB upside possibility.
With no further subjective opinion, here are a few of the early 2016 statistical results for six of the seven players involved. We couldn’t find anything from 2016 on 17-year old Jonathan Arauz so we simply included his 2015 rookie league action for the Phillies and duly noted that we had nothing else on him from this year.
It’s a long season and all that good stuff, but here’s how the seven involved players have done, so far, in MLB and minor league action in 2016. Our data covers all six of the pitchers involved. Only further word on the 17-year old infielder is missing.
First up are two tables on the major and minor league players who went from Houston to Philadelphia, showing how the two major and three minor league ex-Astro organization pitchers are doing for Philadelphia this year, through all games of 4/27/16.
1.) New Phillies MLB Pitchers in 2016 through 4/27/16:
| PITCHERS | AGE | W-L | ERA | G/GS | IP/K | WHIP | ||||
| Vince Velasquez | 24 | 3-1 | 1.78 | 4/4 | 25.1/33 | 0.87 | ||||
| Brett Oberholtzer | 26 | 1-0 | 8.74 | 4/0 | 11.1/12 | 2.21 |
2.) New Phillies Minor League Pitchers in 2016 through 4/27/16:
| PITCHERS | AGE | LEVEL | W/L | ERA | G/GS | IP/K | WHIP | ||||
| Mark Appel | 24 | AAA | 3-0 | 1.62 | 3/3 | 16.2/14 | 1.27 | ||||
| Harold Arauz | 21 | A | 1-2 | 3.94 | 3/3 | 16.0/10 | 1.22 | ||||
| Thomas Eshelman | 22 | A+ | 1-1 | 1.80 | 4/4 | 25.0/22 | 0.76 |
These second tables simply show how former Phillies closer Ken Giles is doing in a less specific late-game role for Houston in 2016, and also how the throw-in young infielder did last year for the Phillies.
3.) New Astros MLB Pitcher in 2016 through 4/27/16:
| PITCHER | AGE | W-L | ERA | G/GS | IP/K | WHIP | ||||
| Ken Giles | 25 | 0-2 | 7.45 | 10/0 | 9.2/14 | 1.86 |
4) New Astros Lower Minor League Infielder’s Phillies 2015 Rookie League Player:
| SS/2B | AGE | 2015 | G | AB | R | H | RBI | HR | BA | OBP | OPS |
| Jonathan Arauz * | 17 | ROK | 44 | 173 | 21 | 44 | 18 | 2 | .254 | .309 | .678 |
* NO AVAILABLE REPORT ON 2016 RESULTS WAS FOUND.
If you have any comment on how you feel the trade seems to be working out, please feel free to leave it as a comment response to this publication.
Thank you.
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Bill McCurdy
April 29, 2016 at 4:50 am |
The Phillies have to love the Astros as a trade partner, since they always seem to get the better end of every deal. When the Giles trade was made, I thought the Astros overpaid for him. I will admit that the only Astros player/prospect I hated to see go was Velasquez – I thought they could have tried to make him a closer.
The Astros appear to have bought into Sports Illustrated’s hype, but they have too many holes to be a real contender this year – starting pitching, bullpen, catcher, first base, third base. Last year they had a great April & then were a. 500 team the rest of the way. This year they’re not going to be that..
Luhnow has done a pretty good job with the draft – the Apple & Aiken fiascos notwithstanding – but most of his trades have not worked out well for the Astros. It’ll be interesting to see what he does next winter & more interesting to see if Crane will loosen the purse strings a bit or if he’ll turn out to be the second coming of Drayton McLane.
April 29, 2016 at 2:47 pm |
Ed Wade works for the Phillies…. Ed’s Revenge?
May 2, 2016 at 1:02 am |
It’s early days on Giles, and I find it hard to believe that Appel is suddenly going to blossom into a front of the rotation pitcher now that he works for the Phillies. I think the world of Jose Altuve and I am so impressed with how much power this 5’5″ second baseman is flashing, and it’s very cool that he is the guy leading the team in homeruns in May. But if he is still leading the team in homeruns in June, this is a team that has serious problems with its offense.