Surely there will be some current minor leaguers that will unexpectedly emerge as major league players.
This is my point when I say that with what’s under club control all they really need to do is create 1 good player a year from bargain basement FA signings, development or the draft. That doesn’t seem like an insurmountable ask for this group, even picking at the back of the draft.
There will also be signings like Brantley or Miley... guys other teams pass on but the Astros end up getting elite value.
I think as a rule of thumb you can expect as many unranked prospects to unexpectedly emerge as you can expect elite prospects to bust. I don’t buy the logic of “it’s ok to trade away all our top prospects because Luhnow is badass enough to consistently develop lower ranked prospects into stars.”
Yes but if there’s no money for those guys then they won’t be around. Also, those are 2nd and 3rd tier complementary players you bring in to supplement a core of affordable superstars. Once the superstars are old or no longer affordable, you can’t expect to compete for championships replacing them with Miley’s and Brantley’s.
One possibility to alleviate payroll constraints and rebuild the farm would be to trade the group of players making moderate but meaningful salaries who aren’t in the top tier of performers: Reddick, Gurriel, Brantley, Peacock, and Devenski. Trading those 5 players would clear ~$45M in payroll and potentially bring back 3-4 Org Top 10 level prospects. It still wouldn’t give them money to resign Cole, but it would put them well below the luxury tax and give them enough money to get the catcher they will need, while bringing the farm back from ~20th into the teens. On the position player side, Tucker would replace Reddick, Alvarez could play LF, and they could bring in really cheap DH and 1B. On the pitching staff, Whitley or another prospect would replace Peacock as the SP5, and they could bargain hunt for cheap relievers to fill the bullpen and replace Devenski behind Osuna, Pressly, James, and Biagini. An unlikely option but an out of the box idea to solve what is going to surely be a payroll problem.
Name me Oakland’s super star that is better than Brantley. Or their SP that is better than Miley. Same with Tampa (bat anyway). How about Minnesota. How many guys do they have truly better than either of those 2? Those teams will likely all be playoff teams and playoff teams are “competing for championships” to my way of thinking. This is baseball. If you get a ticket into the post season you have a chance of winning, just like on the NCAA tournament. Sure, the winner is usually a 1 seed or 2 seed and royalty of some kind but not always. There’s enough chance and variance in there that I wouldn’t intentionally kick a post season berth in the same way I would a 7 seed in the eastern conference.
I guarantee you, as long as Luhnow is running things, there will not be a situation where.... all their star players are now old and still expensive, there is no money available, AND the team is still expecting to compete. You're basically creating the doomsday scenario that led to the Luhnow era in the first place. 2 years ago, Brantley and Miley were on nobody's radar as far as being future Astros. There's a high likelihood there will be similar signings over the next 3-5 years, or however long this window runs, that is similarly on nobody's radar.
You forgot Marisnick. No way Brantley gets traded while they keep Jake, imo. I don’t see why that doesn’t mean you can’t keep Cole tbh. With all those guys gone he’s slide in there fine if you could get him for 7/205 or something like that. And if he said no to 7/205 then he just didn’t want to be here, shake his hand and say thanks and good luck.
Oakland sucks and their method will never result in a championship. I don’t want the Astros to be like them.
Marisnick will make ~$3M and projects to be worth ~1.5 fWAR. Brantley will make 5 times as much and be worth twice as much. Marisnick represents a much better value and unless another team offers $10M+ in prospects for him, they should keep him. Brantley has surplus value, so he could be traded without eating salary and possibly even bring back a back end Org Top 30 level prospect.
But I thought you said its just about getting to the post season? Oakland's system was great... when you have 3 potential HOFers in your rotation. All systems would seem great with that sort of development. Ironically, moneyball didn't really expand upon the importance of Hudson-Zito-Mulder... except to say that its pretty damn important to have elite starting pitching, let alone homegrown elite starting pitching.
I have Jake at $5,000,000 next year. I could well be wrong. Even at $5,000,000 he’s got surplus value as you pointed out. They can move off him and get someone interesting I would think.
Which would yall choose. Being a fringe wild card contender for a few years like Oakland or Tampa, or letting Luhnow and Crane do another rebuild. Honestly curious.
I think that’s possibly a false dichotomy. I guess what I’m saying is that I don’t see the need to strip it down to the studs ever again with this crew, and while I don’t see the Astros winning 100 games a year into infinity, I think that a step back year or two where they win 85-90 and compete for a playoff spot isn’t something that should be avoided at all costs. The nature of baseball is such that 88 or 92 win teams can win it all, unlike basketball. I trust this FO and ownership group implicitly. I think we might be about 5 years into an a Atlanta Braves like run of playoff appearance after playoff appearance, and I’d rather not see a total punt on a season where we might only look like an 85-90 win team. Ymmv.
Rebuild, but only if the management in place shows competency in doing so. The mediocrity treadmill is the worst place to be in. What's the point of making the playoffs only to be eliminated in a wild card/divisional series? suck a couple of years to be great and contend for multiple years.
Wild card teams have a nearly 0.500 record in the playoffs and have won 6 World Series (out of 25). That's statistically about the same rate as non-wildcard teams. Also "suck a couple of years to be great" is not that simple. It's far morely likely that "suck a couple of years" leads to "suck a lot of years" than it does "be great". The Astros are far more an exception than a rule. It was a combination of skill and a lot of luck along with the benefits of sucking - Altuve & Springer were prior to the real sucking; Keuchel was the result of analytics (or luck) rather than sucking, many other players were drafted much later in the draft and didn't need the sucking, etc.
That factors in the years with only 1 wild card when winning the wild card was as good as winning division minus HFA. Since the two wild card format, there have been 28 wild cards and 1 WS champ or about a 3.5% chance versus the 14% chance of division winners. Having to play the Wild Card game halves the wild card chances right off the bat. In addition, the wild card teams likely used their best starter in the wild card making them at an even bigger disadvantage in the next round. Yep, the Astros had good timing. That said, teams can maintain farm system such that when they rebuild, they don't have to suck. They might not be good, but teams that suck usually have spent years neglecting depth chasing low odds.