They're going to be bad... until they get better. Not sure if that makes any sense, but there's nothing else to do right now but ride it out. It is a little bit unsettling that they're no longer bad "by design"... they're just bad. Being bad this year was not necessarily part of the "rebuilding" plan.
Yea, it's ugly, really ugly. The whole "great farm system" thing is all well and good. But other than Cosart, we don't have a single one of them that at this point has come to the majors and done what was expected or more. Not a one. Yes, I know the "big ones" aren't here yet, but we are building on our 4th straight overall #1 pick and we have ONE guy who has come to the big leagues and performed. We are likely years, and i mean years, away from being relevant I've been on board with the rebuild all along, but we sure aren't getting any better at all, not even a little bit, none
And you look at a team like the Marlins, who were in almost just as bad of a position franchise wise, selling off everything to get the payroll to a Crane level (this was after the Astros were already awful), and they've hit on some very promising young guys to have some real success much faster than anything the Astros have done with their suck-by-design strategy. Its all about hitting on some blue-chip prospects... and while its great to have everybody perform well in the minors, and have all the minor league teams win and make the playoffs... we all know its meaningless unless these guys perform in the big leagues. The Marlins have zero issues with fast-tracking guys with talent... then again, maybe the Astros wouldn't either if they truly had guys with "it" (right now, I only see Correa with that sort of promise).
I'm not so sure the Marlins success is coming quicker than the Astros. Outside of Jose Fernandez, almost all their good players were drafted in 2009 or earlier. It's those guys, plus free agents signings that are carrying the teams. The younger guys haven't done very much at all, as of yet. 2007 - Stanton, Cishek 2008 - Eovaldi, Koehler, Alvarez 2009 - Turner, Ozuna That includes their all-world hitter and closer and the entire rotation outside of Fernandez. They supplemented that with a bunch of veterans (McGehee, Saltalamacchia, Garrett Jones, Furcal if he ever gets healthy) and that's the core of the "good" part of their team. The two other younger guys (Yelich (2011), Hechavarria (2010)) have been mostly forgettable so far. So much of their elite talent is coming from back when we were still putzing around trying to pretend to be competitive. Fernandez really is the one exception - but he's also an exception in general. The odds of finding a pitcher that turns out to be the best pitcher in baseball at age 21 is pretty low. It's amazing what he's doing.
The Astros traded young talent that is producing elsewhere. Many appear to have been traded in no small part because they were part of the past reigme. The bullpen that has been awful...well, look no further than Mark Melancon and David Carpenter. Starting pitching, Jordan Lyles. Outfield, JB Shuck and Brandon Barnes. Though he was a Luhnow guy, there's Lowrie too. All of these guys were still under club control when traded from the Astros and could have been contributors on the first 'contending' squad. None of these past deals will set the organization back too far...but, each of the aforementioned players could have helped the team now and a few years into the future. The sum of what we've gotten back for these guys have amounted to a whole lot of nothing to this point. How long can the FO get a pass for trades and FA deals where the team consistently appears to be on the short end of things?
Of course it's coming quicker. They bottomed out for the second half of 2012 and last year. Now they're winning in part because of aggressive callups and great trades. The Astros had or acquired players that were drafted in 2009ish as well who haven't done close to what the Marlins guys are doing. Yes. Fernandez is a big part of why they're good. Finding guys like that, and promoting them aggressively, is usually the difference between rebuilding success and rebuilding failures. Those other guys you mention besides Stanton wouldn't have them at this point alone. Would the Astros have aggressively promoted a Fernandez in their system? Even though he'd be promoted at a time when the team was not in contention? Doubtful. And I'm saying the Marlins rebuild really began in earnest in 2012, after they opened the new stadium with a big payroll and flopped. Many here said they would rather rebuild the "right" way instead of being that sort of franchise... I'm saying that if it turns out that they find contention sooner, it goes to show you there is no "right" way to rebuild. Especially if you find "that" player. They are having exactly the sort of early "low payroll" success the Astros front office envisioned for this year. And it's chalk full of fast tracking and early promotions.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23Astros&src=hash">#Astros</a> recall RHP Josh Zeid from Triple A OKC. He takes the roster spot of RHP Josh Fields, who was officially optioned to OKC last night.</p>— Houston Astros (@astros) <a href="https://twitter.com/astros/statuses/464110437324185600">May 7, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Bo when asked about reaching a breaking point: "That's like the captain taking his hands off the wheel. That's not going to happen."</p>— Brian McTaggart (@brianmctaggart) <a href="https://twitter.com/brianmctaggart/statuses/464157192833073152">May 7, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Perhaps... or they were both bad teams with low payrolls who stirpped down their MLB rosters to rebuild. Their situations are very much comparable. One is still struggling, the other is already starting to flourish... and the Marlins are doing so after tearing their team down a full year after the Astros did. One stashes and hoards prospects... while promoting them level by level, regardless of their talent. The other promotes them aggressively and uses a sink/swim approach (or allows them to adjust/learn at the MLB level). Basically there is no "right" or "superior" way to rebuild.... and right now, the Astros are not only ostracizing their fan base, embarrassing themselves, but also getting outperformed by teams with just as low of a payroll who never had to bottom out to get back to respectability. I guarantee you Luhnow and co. would have wanted them to be having the sort of year the Marlins are now having with a 40+ million dollar payroll. Which team would you rather have, not just now, but 5 years from now?
I don't think that Fernandez is dominating because he was promoted aggressively, I think he is dominating because he is a dominant pitcher. If he was drafted by the Astros and held down longer, I seriously doubt he would be struggling at the major league level right now because of it.
In 2008, the Astros were trading away their entire farm system to try to remain competitive. At that point, the Marlins had just drafted most of the key pieces to this year's team. The Marlins are several years ahead of the Astros in the rebuild process. Not finding Jose Fernandez's is not the difference between rebuilding success and failure. If you're relying on finding a Fernandez for your rebuild, you should just expect to fail. He's a once in a generation player to be that good that early. He's the pitching version of Mike Trout. The difference is that in 2012, the Marlins already had a stocked farm system with players who had been in it for many years. They were never starting from scratch because they never destroyed their minor league system.
The fact that the Astros likely would not have promoted him aggressively is the problem I have with some of their "strategy". Sometimes you do have to promote/push the special ones.
You're being a little overly dramatic in saying the Astros traded away their ENTIRE farm system, and saying the Marlins were fully stocked in 2012. The Astros have still had drafts, and signed first round picks from 2008-2012, none of which have made as big of a dent as the Marlins drafts (with the exception of Castro). The Marlins also have made more of the players/prospects they received in return for stripping down the MLB team than the Astros have. The truth is somewhere in the middle... and the truth is also that the team at the MLB level was on the same level playing field (both payroll and results-wise) over the last two years. The Marlins actually had a WORSE run differential last year than the Astros. The Astros now have a fully stocked farm system... do you think they'll have as rapid a turnaround as the Marlins did? We're still looking at another 3-4 years from NOW, maybe longer. Maybe it takes longer than the 10 years it took the Rays. Hell, the Marlins have promoted aggressively and STILL have guys in the farm ready to contribute. Wasn't that the purpose of being this bad? To ensure the chance to acquire/draft/scout/sign the best of the best, with the most slot money and international money? My problem is that even if the Astros had a Jose Fernandez, he could still be down in the farm on this team/system. Same goes for Mike Trout. When you're as abysmal as you are at the MLB level, you bet your ass you need to be attempting to find that jewel/diamond/"once in a generation" player ASAP. I'm really not sure if that's the Astros goal, or if the "we're going to promote them all up at the same time, staggering some of them, and allofasudden get good at the same time" strategy is actually going to work. (btw, there certainly have been a few "once in a generation" guys touted on this board.... A-rod, Cabrerra, Straburg, Harper, Stanton, Machado, Trout, Fernandez... they're all basically the same generation... they can't all be considered "unique" when there are this many of them).
Agreed... but they're not. They decided to do that to themselves, as a "sure-fire" way to get really good again as soon as possible. Other teams have shown you can rebuild without having to do "this". After 34 games this year, I'm not even sure what "this" is anymore.
In 2009, they traded away 8 minor leaguers in 2 trades (Tejada, Valverde) in a misguided efffort to remain relevant. Half of those have gone on to have pretty good MLB careers now (Scott, Albers, Qualls, Patton). Agreed that many of their 2007-2009 draft picks have done nothing. That was a different regime that clearly did not do a very good job - part of the reason we are in the mess we're in. Yes, the MLB teams were equally terrible in W-L record (though Stanton was injured most of last year). But let's not pretend they were equally bad. The Astros had a -238 scoring differential. The Marlins were -133. And one had a farm system with a bunch of people from 2007-2009 that were ready to go; one didn't. Not surprisingly, the one that did is much better now. And of course the Marlins added a bunch of free agents as well. Sure - if the minor leaguers flop, it will take many years. But you way overestimate how long it takes to go from bad to good if your minor league plan works, which is odd given that you keep pointing to the Marlins. The Marlins are building off of prospects from 2007-2009 that are MLB ready. The Astros are a couple of years behind that. They aren't bad for the sake of being bad; they are bad because they traded all their good players to get prospects and reload the farm system to accelerate the process of trying to become good again. The Marlins didn't have to do that because they didn't have a barren farm system. Cosart; Altuve; Villar. I believe Altuve was the youngest player in the majors when he was brought up. You seem obsessed with George Springer - who's shown he has the significant holes in his swing that the Astros felt he needed to work on - while ignoring all evidence to the contrary. Fernandez and Trout, at their ages, have been far superior to any of the other players you listed except A-Rod, who is from the last generation. None of others are the best pitchers and hitters in baseball during their rookie years at age 21 or so.
