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5 trade targets for the Astros this off-season
By Alec Brown
#3 Paul Blackburn
Some of you are asking, "What in the world are the Astros going to do with a pitcher with a career 4.90 ERA?"
It's a fair question. But Blackburn isn't nearly as bad as his career ERA shows. Over the last two seasons, Blackburn has a 4.35 ERA and 4.09 FIP. Houston could have used both of those things this season.
His fastball is flat with little life and gets lit up to the tune of a -12 run value, but his off-speed and breaking balls are actually quite solid. His breaking run value of 7 was good for the 86th percentile in the league while his off-speed run value of 4 was in the 83rd percentile.
His cutter in particular gets rocked, and if Houston could move him away from that and throw even more off-speed, there's a formula to success here as a reclamation project. He's not going to arrive in Houston and win a Cy Young, but he does have some potential as a solid 4/5 in the back of a rotation. For an Astros team that both desperately needs depth as LMJ and Luis Garcia rehab and doesn't have a plethora of prospects to part with, a piece like Blackburn could be a quite solid acquisition.