Okay, we're trying to sort through this here, but apparently the Astros are involved in the Carlos Marmol trade that just went down. Here's the Chicago Herald's Cubs beat writer Bruce Miles:
#Cubs trade Marmol to Dodgers for RHP Matt Guerrier. Dodgers get Cubs' No. 4 intl slot. Cubs get Houston's 2, 3 slots for Ronald Torreyes
I'm assuming this means that the Dodgers get what would technically be the money assigned to the Cubs 4th "pick" in the international free agent pool (Baseball America has the slot values listed by "pick." Teams can trade up to half of their bonus pool money without penalty.) So the Dodgers get Carlos Marmol and $209,700.
The Cubs then get recently-DFA'ed Matt Guerrier.
And now the Astros apparently get Ronald Torreyes for the value of their 2nd ($468,400) and 3rd ($316,300) "picks," which totals $784,700 in pool money, and would leave the Astros with $4,115,300.
Update: I used a round number of $4.9m for the Astros' bonus pool, instead of the hard $4,943,700. So the updated balance would be $4,159,000.
Torreyes will be 21 at the beginning of September, and is a 5'9" 140lb second baseman currently playing for Double-A Tennessee. In 64 games for the Smokies, Torreyes is hitting .260/.337/.381 with 15K:22BB in 264 PAs, 19 of his 58 hits for extra-bases. In 54 games, Torreyes has committed three errors in 235 chances for a .987 Fld%.
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
