MINUTE MAID TO ORDER
Stanton in Houston would be out of this world
ORLANDO, Fla. — I played a game with a few executives when it came to Giancarlo Stanton — forget about where he wants to go (since he has a no-trade clause) and who might be able to afford him (since he is owed $295 million the next 10 years) — and asked them to come up with the most interesting landing spot. Mine? The champion Astros. Can you imagine the Murderers’ Row impact of putting Stanton in the lineup that already was the best in the majors last year with Jose Altuve, Alex B reg man, Carlos Corr ea and George Springer? Can you imagine the 70-plus homer potential of Stanton with that lineup protection shooting at the oh-so-close Crawford Boxes in left at Minute Maid Park? Can you imagine how much more baseball crazed Houston would become if the Astros made this move?
So I asked Astros owner Jim Crane about doing it and he said, “Don’t think we haven’t thought about how easily the ball would go out in our ballpark.”
Crane mentioned the danger of absorbing 10-year deals. He cited that the Astros already expect a big bump in payroll with a full season of Justin Verlander on the books and nine arbitration-eligible players. Plus, on the horizon the contracts of Correa, Bregman and Springer will go up significantly, while Dallas Keuchel is a free agent after 2018 and Altuve after ’19. Yet, Crane would not fully dismiss the Stanton possibility, though to be fair, a highranking team official saw it as against just about every stricture that GM Jeff Luhnow has put in place and, therefore, highly unlikely to ever occur.
“We look at everything,” Crane said. “[Stanton] does not fit a specific need, but we will go outside the box, too. No one thought we’d take on Verlander and we got that one done by the skin of our teeth. There are only four or five teams that can take on that kind of contract at this time and we are one of them.”
Still, as baseball officials left the GM meetings on Wednesday, the Giants and Cardinals continued to be viewed as the favorites to land Stanton in a trade with the Marlins.