Over the past decade, there hasn’t been a franchise in baseball more successful than the Houston Astros. And while baseball fans will groan when they hear that because of Houston’s 2017 cheating scandal, the reality is that even after the scandal, Houston has continued to be highly successful.
Since 2017, the Astros reached the ALCS seven consecutive times, including three trips to the World Series and two championships before that streak was snapped this postseason with their wild-card round defeat to the Tigers.
When a team is as successful as Houston has been, there comes a time when a franchise takes a step back. Teams like the Nationals, Red Sox, Cubs and Giants have each been looking to get back to sustained success after their stretch of winning titles and the Astros are looking to avoid a re-tooling phase.
When a team is all-in every season, signing players, trading prospect capital to get players in trades, at some point, the bill becomes due on those moves as a team’s minor-league system becomes depleted. Houston has stated that it wants to continue to be competitive and be one of the American League’s best, but when turning a roster over and getting younger is imperative to the long-term health of the franchise, can they do it?
“To keep that window open, we’re going to have to continue to replenish the system,” Astros general manager Dana Brown told Yahoo Sports at the GM Meetings last week in San Antonio. “Continue to get draft picks that can develop. … It’s not always the high-round guy, you know.
“Sometimes it’s the guy that you take in the fifth, seventh or in the ninth [round]. Sometimes it’s the Latin player that was signed for $20,000. Those are good things that are happening in this organization, and we have to continue to keep bringing players out.”
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Astros’ development of rotation gives them options
The Astros has had their fair share of great players over the better part of the past decade. And even as stars like Carlos Correa, Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander went on to sign long-term deals elsewhere, being able to develop young players like Kyle Tucker, Yordan Alvarez into All-Stars while also keeping franchise cornerstones like Jose Altuve in Houston is crucial.
The Astros have another decision to make as far as the…