The Leaked Astros Trade Proposals Look Like My Fantasy Baseball Trade Ideas

There's a line from the movie Ghostbusters, near the end, when Peter, Ray, Egon and Winston are fighting Gozar the Gozarian, that directly applies to the Houston Astros and trade discussions that were leaked to the media on Monday.

Stay with me, I promise this will make sense.

Apparently, as the trade deadline approached last year, the Astros were offered Giancarlo Stanton for a package involving young Houston slugger George Springer and the number one overall pick in the 2012 MLB Draft, Carlos Correa. Houston countered with a deal centering around Jarred Cosart and Delino DeShields (the son, not the father, as the elder DeShields is in his 40s and is kinda busy managing the Pensacola Blue Wahoos in the Cincinnati Reds organization). In the end, no deal for Stanton was ever completed.

In "Ghostbusters," after Gozar asks Ray if he is a God, to which Ray foolishly responds "no," the foursome are nearly electrocuted with lightning bolts emanating from the fingers of the vivacious Ms. Gozar. After they've recovered, Winston yells some important advice to Rey.

"When someone asks you if you're a God, you say YES!"

Which leads me to my overall feelings about acquiring Giancarlo Stanton.

"If someone offers you Giancarlo Stanton in a trade, and the price is two top prospects and change, you say YES!"

Sure, Springer looks like a good power hitter in his own right, and Correa's upside is tremendous. But Stanton is a generational player, and currently has the fifth-best nERD in baseball at 4.06. He's a perennial MVP candidate. And although he's going to get expensive pretty soon and Springer is sporting a pretty nice nERD of 1.62 himself, Stanton is the kind of guy for whom you give up top prospects like Springer and Correa.

The revelation about a potential Stanton deal, as well as other interesting internal trade tidbits from the Houston organization were leaked to the website Anonbin, and are now widely disseminated for public consumption. It's an embarrassing gaffe for the Astros organization, with the team releasing a statement on Monday afternoon in response to the leak.

"Last month, we were made aware that proprietary information held on Astros' servers and in Astros' applications had been illegally obtained. Upon learning of the security breach, we immediately notified MLB security who, in turn, notified the FBI. Since that time, we have been working closely with MLB security and the FBI to the determine the party, or parties, responsible. This information was illegally obtained and published, and we intend to prosecute those involved to the fullest extent.

"It is unfortunate and extremely disappointing that an outside source has illegally obtained confidential information. While it does appear that some of the content released was based on trade conversations, a portion of the material was embellished or completely fabricated."

Of course, the leak of information from Houston's so-called "Ground Control" database is a huge problem for the team, and it's still unclear just what role Edward Snowden had to play in this latest security breach.

While the Stanton trade revelation was obviously the sexiest rumor of the bunch, there were others that were comparable to what you would hear on some of the more loopier sports talk radio shows in the country.

Houston asked the Orioles for Dylan Bundy or Kevin Gausman for Bud Norris, and queried the Red Sox about Xander Bogaerts, Jackie Bradley, Garin Cecchini and Allen Webster for Bud.

Tee hee hee.

Hey, I get the whole "nothing ventured, nothing gained" approach to wheeling and dealing. But teams have to be careful not to make ridiculous trade offers right off the bat, because doing so will signal to a potential trade partner that you're not really serious. In the end, the Astros ended up trading Norris for a less impressive package of L.J. Hoes and Josh Hader from Baltimore.

It's actually quite comforting to know that Major League general managers make the same kind of trade offers that you and I do in our fantasy leagues.

"Hey, I'll give you Marlon Byrd and his nERD of 1.36 and Jonathan Papelbon with his nERD of 0.90 for Mike Trout, because, you know, you need a closer and you're getting an outfielder to replace Trout and his second-ranked nERD of 5.05. Why on earth would you say no?"

See? I could be a big league GM!