Dana Brown going out on a limb with stealth Astros offseason move is a throwback

In a lot of ways, transactions in the game of baseball feel scripted these days. Almost every team uses roughly the same ways to evaluate players and determine their worth in terms of dollars. After that, it just comes down to the level of a team's need and how many resources they have at their disposal. It feels sterile in a lot of ways, but a recent trade made by Houston Astros general manager Dana Brown is almost a throwback to a simpler time.

A couple of weeks ago, the Astros traded for Kai-Wei Teng, and the move was considered to be an afterthought for many. There was some discussion at the time as to the downstream impacts on Houston's catching depth, but Teng wasn't really given much attention beyond being a relatively intriguing depth arm.

However, it is sounding more and more like Teng just caught Brown's eye, and he decided to deal for the large framed righty even when much of the data wasn't exactly encouraging.

Dana Brown went with his gut in trading for Kai-Wei Teng

At first glance, Teng looks like little more than a curiosity. His average fastball velocity hasn't been anything special, and while the strikeout rate is good and the contact metrics are pretty promising, Teng has struggled to throw enough strikes for his strengths to play in games.

For Brown, this is a bet on his scouting acumen and on Houston's pitching development program. Brown has noted that when you find a pitcher with the raw ingredients that Teng has, bringing him into the organization has a real chance of unlocking upside previously unseen. The most obvious example of this was when the Astros traded for Yusei Kikuchi, but the Astros' ability to maximize their pitchers goes back much further than that.

Odds are that the trade for Teng will end up being forgotten pretty quickly. The Astros didn't exactly pay a king's ransom for him, and Teng projects best as a long reliever, although the team has stated its intent to stretch him out as a rotation option. However, if the move does work out the way Houston wants it to, it will be because Brown bucked recent trends and took a bit of a risk.