Trade Chris Burke.

Let's look at what happened this offseason:

Astros do not offer Jeff Kent arbitration.
Craig Biggio, a still-productive but aging franchise icon, makes noise about wanting to move back to 2nd.
Chris Burke, the consensus top prospect in the Astros minor league system, has a huge year at 2B in AAA, then has an excellent spring training.
Craig Biggio is named starting 2B, and has started every game but 1 this year, and is still playing well. He collected his 2,654th hit yesterday.
Chris Burke is struggling to get playing time.

I think it's fairly obvious that the organization intends to start Biggio until he doesn't want to play anymore; specifically, I think the organization and the fans want to see Biggio get to 3,000 hits. Just because I disagree with the strategy doesn't necessarily make it wrong; but if it's true (and it certainly seems like it is), we need to trade Chris Burke now. He probably had a career year last in AAA - he's 25, and looks ready to start in the majors. His trade value is likely at its highest. In order for Craig Biggio to get to 3K hits, he'll need to play for at least the rest of this year and all of '06. I also think the organization would like to have Biggio and Bagwell retire at the same time: think of the stories (Farewell year for the Greatest Astros in History!) they could produce.

Do we really want to see Chris Burke on the bench for the next 2 years? In addition, we have a prospect in Brooks Conrad that may well be better than Burke in 2 years. He should be good to go in '07.

Trade Chris Burke.