The Astros won't be making a play for Aroldis Chapman.
Ed Wade:
"In all candor, I don't see us a player in that market at this point. The economics are going to run away from us, only from the standpoint that if we're going to make significant investments in the development system we would like to sign [multiple players]...
...If there was an assurance that Chapman was going to be a top-of-the-rotation starter almost immediately, we would take a different approach. The kid has a great arm and stuff, but we'd rather have the flexibility to sign multiples. That's the approach I've taken since I've gotten this opportunity to be here and gotten our international and Latin American programs to the point they're at now.
"I'd prefer to give Felix Francisco and his guys the ability to go out there and sign multiple good, young arms versus putting the lion's share of our money on one particular guy. We took that approach this past year and lo and behold in December we were able to scrape together money already in the budget to sign Ferreira. Those are the types of things we want to continue to try to do. I'm a little leery committing our [international] resources to one particular guy."
It's not surprising, because it's going to take between $10-15 million to sign Chapman. As OremLK astutely pointed out in the post with the Signing Bonuses, the Astros signed their top 10 picks from 2008 and 2009 for less money than the Nationals gave Strasburg. Combined.
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
