Two summers ago, the Houston Astros traded for a right-handed pitcher born in 1983 who had once won the American League Cy Young Award. That pitcher, Justin Verlander, carried the Astros to the World Series, which they won for the first time.
The Astros made that deal in August, after Verlander had gotten through waivers. With no waiver trading period this year, the Astros had to act by Wednesday’s deadline to improve a team that is running away with the A.L. West. They turned to 2017 for inspiration, sending four prospects to the Arizona Diamondbacks for Zack Greinke and cash.
“He’s one of the best of the generation I’ve been around baseball,” Astros Manager A.J. Hinch told reporters in Cleveland, adding later, “He’s elite across the board. Adding him to any rotation is a positive. Adding him to this rotation is pretty incredible.”
Of all the pitchers in major league history, Greinke, 35, compares most closely to Verlander, according to Baseball Reference. He is 197-122 with a 3.36 earned run average in his career and has earned six All-Star selections, including five since 2014. He won his Cy Young for Kansas City in 2009, two years before Verlander won his for Detroit.
Greinke has never pitched in the World Series, but with Houston, he may finally get the chance. The Astros now seem like heavy A.L. favorites, especially with the East-leading Yankees — a team on Greinke’s no-trade list — adding no major league pieces at the deadline.
The Yankees’ starting pitching has wilted against the better A.L. lineups, but few starters traded in July would have provided much of an upgrade. Besides Greinke, the best starters were actually traded to teams with losing records: Trevor Bauer from Cleveland to Cincinnati, and Marcus Stroman from Toronto to the Mets. Other top starters, like the Mets’ Noah Syndergaard, Arizona’s Robbie Ray and the San Francisco Giants’ Madison Bumgarner, stayed put.
The Astros, then, stand out as the only contender in either league to add a high-impact starter. Greinke, who was 10-4 with a 2.90 E.R.A. for Arizona this season, will join Verlander, Gerrit Cole and Wade Miley in a rotation that could be overpowering.
Only two starters in the majors this season have at least 190 strikeouts with an E.R.A. under 3.00 — Verlander and Cole. The left-handed Miley, a nine-year veteran with a 3.06 E.R.A., is having his best season.
The Astros’ bullpen, meanwhile, has held opponents to an A.L.-low .227 average. General Manager Jeff Luhnow added to it on Wednesday by acquiring a right-hander, Joe Biagini, in a trade with the Toronto Blue Jays. The Astros, who gave up outfielder Derek Fisher, also acquired starter Aaron Sanchez, who had the A.L.’s best E.R.A. in 2016 but is 3-14 this season.
To acquire Greinke, the Astros sent pitchers J.B. Bukauskas and Corbin Martin, first baseman/outfielder Seth Beer and infielder Joshua Rojas to Arizona. Only Martin has pitched in the majors, for five starts this season before undergoing Tommy John surgery. The Diamondbacks reportedly included $24 million in the deal to help the Astros absorb the remainder of Greinke’s six-year, $206.5 million contract, which runs through 2021.
“Trading a No. 1 starting pitcher is not something that we took lightly,” Diamondbacks General Manager Mike Hazen said. “It is very difficult to replace that player. But I felt like we needed to take an opportunity to strengthen the organization — and ultimately the major league team, eventually — and I felt like this was going to do that.”
The Diamondbacks acquired two starters in other deals — Mike Leake from Seattle and Zac Gallen from Miami — and were among the more active teams on a busy deadline day.
The top teams in the National League East revamped their bullpens, with Atlanta acquiring Shane Greene from Detroit and Mark Melancon from San Francisco, and Washington snagging Daniel Hudson from Toronto and Roenis Elias and Hunter Strickland from Seattle. The Chicago Cubs, who are trying to win their fourth Central division title in a row, added outfielder Nicholas Castellanos from Detroit and second baseman/outfielder Tony Kemp from the Astros.
But the Greinke move had by far the most sizzle, giving the Astros’ progressive 70-year-old pitching coach, Brent Strom, another star pupil. The Astros, who rely heavily on analytics, have helped Verlander and Cole elevate their performances and would seem to be an ideal match for the cerebral Greinke, who keeps hitters uncomfortable by mixing sliders, curveballs and changeups with a fastball that averages only about 90 miles an hour.
“The amount and information that he takes in, in my mind, it’s impossible for me to try to do,” Zack Godley, a Diamondbacks’ right-hander, said in spring training, adding later: “His thought process on everything is just on a different level than anyone else.”
Now the Astros’ rotation is on a different level, too, and it just might help them win another World Series.