{"id":283867,"date":"2025-11-15T03:14:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T03:14:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/283867\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T03:14:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T03:14:08","slug":"astros-interested-in-brendan-donovan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/283867\/","title":{"rendered":"Astros Interested In Brendan Donovan"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Astros are back in the mix for\u00a0Brendan Donovan<\/a>, reports Chandler Rome of The Athletic<\/a>. That\u2019s not surprising, as Houston\u2019s interest in the St. Louis utility player has dated back to at least the trade deadline.<\/p>\n

Donovan is an obvious target. The Astros skew very right-handed. They tried to balance the lineup with the deadline trade for\u00a0Jes\u00fas S\u00e1nchez<\/a> from the Marlins. S\u00e1nchez was terrible down the stretch and is probably going to be traded or non-tendered within the next week. That leaves the Astros with only\u00a0Yordan Alvarez<\/a> as an everyday left-handed bat. Rookie outfielders\u00a0Zach Cole<\/a> or\u00a0Jacob Melton<\/a> could play their way into the mix, but it\u2019s clear that adding a lefty hitter will be a priority.<\/p>\n

There are few better ones known to be available in trade than Donovan. The 28-year-old (29 in January) is coming off a .287\/.353\/.422 slash across 515 plate appearances. He\u2019s a career .282\/.361\/.411 hitter over four seasons. Donovan has enough power for 10-15 home runs and 30+ doubles, while he\u2019s a safe bet to hit for average because of his excellent contact skills. Like most lefty hitters, he\u2019s far better against right-handed pitching, but he has reached base at a reasonable .325 clip against southpaws in his career. He fits at the top of a lineup against righties and is playable if unspectacular against same-handed pitchers.<\/p>\n

[Related: Top 40 Trade Candidates<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Donovan has the multi-positional versatility to fit any number of teams. He\u2019s already been linked to the Guardians and Royals this offseason. The Yankees and Dodgers have shown interest in the past. MLBTR\u2019s Mark Polishuk examined various other possibilities<\/a> last moth. Houston would use him mostly at his natural second base position, where they don\u2019t really have an everyday player. They\u2019re still planning to move Jose Altuve<\/a> between second and left field, where he and Alvarez would divide time when the other isn\u2019t at designated hitter. Donovan can play both corner outfield positions as well, and some teams could feel he\u2019s capable of holding his own at either spot on the left side of the infield.<\/p>\n

The Cardinals are committing to a retool under first-year president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom. Donovan is down to his last two seasons of club control. MLBTR contributor Matt Swartz projects<\/a> him for a $5.4MM salary. That\u2019ll likely jump into the $8-10MM range for 2027. There\u2019s no indication the Cards will seriously pursue an extension, so an offseason trade seems likely given the amount of interest they\u2019ll receive from teams currently in contention windows. Among their realistic trade candidates (i.e. not including Masyn Winn<\/a>), Donovan has the best chance of netting an impactful prospect return.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Astros are back in the mix for\u00a0Brendan Donovan, reports Chandler Rome of The Athletic. That\u2019s not surprising,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[21168,49,48,462,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-283867","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-brendan-donovan","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-mlb","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}