The Astros getting Gerrit Cole is bad news for the Yankees

The Astros and Pirates shook the baseball world out of its unusually deep winter slumber on Saturday afternoon by coming to an agreement on a trade centered around Gerrit Cole. You only have to take a glance at the comments section over at The Crawfish Boxes to see how hyped Astros fans are right now and at the same time, our friends over at Bucs Dugout are doing their best to find the silver lining in all of this. The main takeaways from this trade should be that Houston’s going to be in good shape for their title defense, Pittsburgh is now firmly in rebuilding mode and there’s also the angle that focuses on the Yankees missing out on Cole.

Earlier in this offseason, there were reports that the Yankees were one of the serious suitors for Pittsburgh’s star pitcher. In fact, you could’ve considered the Bronx Bombers the favorite to acquire the 27-year-old righty in a potential deal. However, the trade talks cooled down in recent days and the reasoning behind it appears to be that the Pirates’ asking price was too high for the Yankees. According to Jerry Crasnick of ESPN, the Yankees were keen to hold on to prospects like Gleyber Torres and Miguel Andujar, among others and that was what stalled the trade talks for the Pirates.

So instead of adding Gerrit Cole to what would have been an impressive offseason haul, the Yankees now have to go into this upcoming season knowing that even with their offensive firepower, it’s still likely that they may have to go through the defending World Series champions, who have improved their rotation with the addition of Cole. The Yankees also have to do this knowing that the Astros didn’t have to pay a premium in order to get him. That makes this doubly disappointing for the Yankees and even better for the Astros, who strengthened their chances for a title defense for relatively cheap.

Either way, it’s hard not to get excited from a neutral standpoint if these two teams end up running into each other again when October 2018 rolls around.

• If you want to get an idea of what both the Pirates and Astros were thinking with this trade, then you should check out Grant Brisbee’s take on the trade as he tried to get inside the mind of both clubs.
• R.J. Anderson of CBS Sports brought in Christopher Crawford of Rotoworld to evaluate the return that the Pirates got for Gerrit Cole. They aren’t thrilled!
• Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts suggested that the only way that Sammy Sosa will be welcomed back to the franchise is if he puts “everything on the table” in regards to the past.

• Apparently the Mets believed that the Dodgers and Braves discarded a perfectly good first baseman because they have signed Adrian Gonzalez to a major league contract for the 2018 season.
• Brad Hand and the Padres came to an agreement on a deal that not only avoided arbitration but also made sure that the extension covers what would have been Hand’s first year of free agency.
• Meanwhile, the Twins bolstered their bullpen by bringing in Addison Reed on a two-year deal.
• It’s probably going to cost a ton of money to retain the services of Francisco Lindor, and the crew at Let’s Go Tribe believes that Lindor should go for the money and refuse anything resembling a hometown discount.