I acknowledged that the way I did it was biased high relative to that list. The Astros farm by my methodology was 142 fWAR. The average by that methodology was 45 fWAR. The bias would basically be that maybe the Astros 2015 Farm wasn't better than every non-Astros farm in the last 25 years. Trying to stretch that to say that a random, unknown draft should be assumed to be equal to the 2015 draft seems a stretch to me. 142 fWAR is basically 3 playoff teams worth of fWAR in a single farm, that had Altuve and Keuchel in his prime, George Springer with 6 years of club control, and was a few months away from adding about 60 more fWAR (whatever Bregman and Tucker were) in the 2015 draft. Luhnow made some bad trades. He made some good trades. That doesn't change that the 2015 Astros Farm was freaking deep, and its depth was likely way outperformed expectations. The Astros will likely make trades in the future. Though, the Astros did get Verlander discounted and Cole in trades so the bad trades likely were worth getting concentrated fWAR.
142 fWAR is basically 3 playoff teams worth of talent on club controlled costs. If the Astros have 3 playoff teams worth of players to trade, maybe the Astros should just keep them and go to the playoffs.
There’s a mountain of difference between 5 guys putting up 30 war each over 6 years versus 30 guys putting up 5 war each. Part of the reason the 2015 Astros farm produced so much is because they exported a lot of guys who got opportunities on crummy teams and were able to scratch out 1-5 career war. I don’t think anyone is going to argue that the next Astros window can’t open without producing Tony Kemps and Nick Tropeanos. You point out the trades for Verlander and Cole as evidence that the Astros trades evened out, but that 15 war you listed for Musgrove eclipses what the Astros got out of Gerrit Cole. Jake Rogers has put up 5 fwar for the Tigers so far. I’d challenge you to review the list from my original post, and point out where you think the meaningful variance should be expected outside of the 2-3 guys I concluded. This entire exercise is EXTREMELY subjective, so I want to emphasize I appreciate the dialogue. I will also acknowledge that even just the 3 guys I highlighted as the variance (Springer, Correa, and Bregman) represent hundreds of millions of dollars in surplus value, so it’s a big gap, even if only represented by 3 players.
Trading Yordan and brown with deep discounts on contract and 3 years worth of control would be unprecedented in baseball history. Yeah- they should get an insane haul from doing that. Pena and Paredes should be really decent. you’d pick up other guys. This Astros team is worth more parted out than whole.
To your point- you would have to get Correa, springer and Bregman production out of Yordan, Brown, Pena, Paredes, Hader and Walker while paying much of the freight for Yordan, Hader and Walker (like 100M, plus the players themselves). None of that seems inconceivable at all to me.
The biggest problem with your plan is that Jim Crane won't go for it. Its highly unlikely that Crane agrees to a rebuild, but even if he did, he wouldn't pay additional salary to get a better trade for a guy who already has surplus value. He would reluctantly pay what he had to in order to get rid of a guy with negative value but I can't see him paying a dime if a player has positive value.
Regardless of how it might compare to 2015 (I still think it would compare favorably), the Astros sitting with the objective facts of: 8+ prospects on most Top 100 lists, a pending pick in the top 5 of the 2027 draft, and a big league roster that still has Altuve, Correa, Diaz, Smith, Matthews, Loperfido, Burrows, Arrighetti, Hader, King, Sousa, and Teng is a much more hopeful position than where they currently sit. The other thing worth noting is that Crane could expedite the return to winning by spending money. If Houston trades Brown, Pena, Paredes, and Alvarez, there’s nothing preventing Crane from approving his new GM to backfill those holes with free agents. The aforementioned superfarm and leftovers plus Seiya Suzuki, Josh Bell, Michael King, and another SP would likely be an immediate return to a winning record.
I missed a couple of players worth 28.1 fWAR, bringing the total to 170 fWAR, because the farm was just so deep. I only did a quick check as I thought the 115 fWAR was good enough to show that assuming a random farm (much less a weak one) is not likely close to as good as the 2015 farm without Correa. I may still be missing more fWAR. That 170 fWAR is more than 5 teams from 2015 through 2022 without taking into account club-controlled talent on the Astros, anyone drafted or signed as an IFA after 2015 OD, and free agent spending. Trades depend on drafting, signing, and/or claiming talent. I also forgot that COVID happened, which depressed the fWAR for the 2015 Farm by probably at least 10 fWAR for just the good players. The 2015 OD Astros Farm was also the low point for a snapshot of the farm around that time. A year earlier, Springer was still on the farm. A few months later, the Astros added more talent than most teams had in their entire farm systems. It takes a really rosy perspective to think the Astros are on the verge of amassing a dynasty's worth of prospects in a season and a half.
You might as well be asking for Branch Rickey. No matter how much you spooge&spam for him, it's not happening.
This conversation has mostly convinced me that total war from the entire farm is a bad metric, at least if it is taken without further qualifiers. The Astros didn’t significantly benefit from the vast majority of that value. Yes, a farm system needs to produce 3rd and 4th tier major league players, but those values are relatively meaningless compared to the value provided by stars (1st and 2nd tier players). The opening day 2015 system had 2 legit stars in it (Corea, who was a highly valued prospect, and Framber, who no one had heard of yet), a few 2nd tier players (McCullers, Laureano, Teoscar), and whole bunch of AAAA/bench guys. A farm system that produces 150 guys who end up with 1 career war each would be terrible. A farm system with 2 guys who each produce 60 career war (and nothing else) would be amazing. ETA: I just realized there's a pretty easy way to sanity check this. I exported a random farm system's (2019 White Sox) minor league HITTERS ONLY to excel from fangraphs. Then I exported the MLB war totals from 2000-2026 from fangraphs and did a VLOOKUP to see how much MLB war each player ended up contributing. The 2019 White Sox system had 128 hitters take a pa in the minors, and those players ended up producing 95.4 fwar to date. So your estimate that 150 fwar in a system is high is probably off. If I have some down time over the next few days I may do a deeper dive on this to vet it further.
All of this discussion about minor leagues ignores the fact that the dynasty was also built around having an extraordinarily cheap HoF player that came out of nowhere, a once-in-a-generation trade in Yordan, some wow FA signings in Morton, Gurriel and Brantley, and a pitching team that could repeatedly churn out players from unexpected places (Framber, Keuchel, Javier, Gacria, Urquidy, etc). And an analytics team that was well ahead of the curve at the time. None of these things is necessarily repeatable, even with a magical farm that goes to top 2 or 3 in a year.
The CWS had a lot of talent in 2019 if memory serves. Even then, I'm a little surprised by that number. Care to show your list of 128 players and their fWAR to date?
I realize this I just dont like the fact that some posters dont appreciate what Luhnow built. Crane needs to find another guy that can carry out Luhnow's vision instead of what they are currently doing. Example: Do you think Luhnow would've hired Espada? Bring back the old gang minus Luhnow.
I am running into trouble with the data duplicating guys due to split seasons and overcounting WAR due to veteran big leaguers rehabbing in the minors. This is going to take a lot more effort to sort out than I thought.
I love all the talk and people thinking about things in a different way, analyzing things, nerding out and this is a great thread- so this is in no way a criticism. The nerding in the math can lead to a new way of looking at things that marginally advances our understanding. That said- we should always ignore WAR heavy metrics (IMO) as a sorting device or telling us something, until after we've intuitively looked through normal lenses to figure stuff out. Want to build a dynasty and have something like 250M to spend? Here's how you do it. First- you do NOT ever have anyone that's good up before April 15 or whatever the year of service time cut is their rookie season. This gives you "7" years of club control and not 6. Here's what you have to produce. Every year- 1 MLB compentent starting pitcher- 1.5-2 War type. 1 MLB competent regular. 2 War type Every third year- a good MLB starting pitcher. 3 war type. 1 fringe all star type. 4 war type. Every 6 years- Stud starting pitcher. 6 war position player. Then- you must use your money to re-sign both your all star types/fringe all star types and 1 of your Stud types. That makes your everyday starting 9 look something like (as far as home grown goes): 1 or 2 6 war types- that you are paying either 10-20M for or 40 or 50M for (Depending upon if you went that direction or not in FA 4 allstar/fringe all star types that you are paying 75M to. 3 average regular types that you are paying less than 10M total to. That makes your rotation 4 guys that are competent 4's and 5's that you are paying less than 15M collectively to 2 2's or 3's that are in their club control time that you are paying less than 20M to collectively 1 stud or 2 studs that you are paying 10-20M or 50M to depending upon if you are having one on extension or not. Total payroll (non bullpen and utilities) of something like 180 or 200M to The other use of the farm should be to reallocate positional needs and/or fill in rental needs for injury or unexpected performance. I'm talking about a handful of 45's and 50's being traded out every year. You nail that and you are in the mix to win a title every year. Putting names on it: 1 competent starting pitcher every year- Call that (from Astros recent history) someone like: Blanco, Urquidy, Peacock, Arrighetti- that type every third year- a good MLB starting pitcher- Javier, LMJ (hoping arrighetti gets to this level) Stud- Framber, Hunter brown. Position players 1MLB competent Regular: Chas, Meyers, Cam (hopefully he develops), Yainer, Yuli etc every 3rd year all star/fringe all star type: Pena, Springer, Bregman (outside of his 2 monster years- the rest of his 5 war type maybe allstar maybe not career) Every 6 year stud type- Yordan, Altuve, Correa, Tucker. That's it. That's the deal. Sign your stud MVP types 1 year in to 10 for 200M type deals and never sign your pitchers I guess. I don't care how many WAR a system produces in any 1 year stretch or whatever that's what you have to do. I'd contend that instead of papering over failures in FA markets you probably ought to go even more into developing your own and signing them early to long term deals- and use money you'd have spent in FA to buy propsects from elsewhere or trade to re-set.
I am still not 100% I've got the data totally useful. It got unwieldy so I shrunk my sample down to just look at 2015 farms of all 30 orgs. I removed duplicates and only included prospects with min 50pa/20ip in the minors, which should have eliminated all the rehab errors, but also likely eliminated some meaningful prospects. Prospects across all 30 orgs in 2015 went on to produce 4155 fWAR to date, which is an average of 138.5. However, I ended up highlighting your point, as Houston was FAR and away #1 with 312.9: Alex Bregman HOU 17678 43.67653272 Carlos Correa HOU 14162 41.45266572 Kyle Tucker HOU 18345 25.6026437 Framber Valdez HOU 17295 21.00754691 Joe Musgrove HOU 12970 17.97083156 Teoscar Hernandez HOU 13066 17.254925 Ramon Laureano HOU 17128 14.90113024 Lance McCullers Jr. HOU 14120 14.68547132 Josh Hader HOU 14212 13.28747949 Vince Velasquez HOU 11189 8.730048412 Jonathan Villar HOU 10071 8.708922803 Robbie Grossman HOU 5254 8.465288529 Adrian Houser HOU 12718 8.347021767 Myles Straw HOU 17620 7.680809789 Cristian Javier HOU 17606 7.310015246 Max Stassi HOU 10059 6.843980377 J.D. Davis HOU 16219 6.765045269 Bryan Abreu HOU 16609 5.574991502 Tony Kemp HOU 14894 5.523808668 Jose Urquidy HOU 18413 4.198827388 Domingo Santana HOU 10348 4.142968316 Chris Devenski HOU 12763 3.896697243 Brett Phillips HOU 14735 3.635992835 Dan Straily HOU 9460 3.184250306 Tyler Heineman HOU 13897 3.138554897 Brett Oberholtzer HOU 3855 2.699761559 Daniel Mengden HOU 16980 2.654398983 Ryan Thompson HOU 16647 2.154222064 Trent Thornton HOU 17948 2.03166139 Richard Rodriguez HOU 13549 1.989414224 Colin Moran HOU 16909 1.585033782 Juan Minaya HOU 10341 1.347663023 Asher Wojciechowski HOU 10836 1.139369474 Michael Feliz HOU 11903 0.994838291 Tyler White HOU 15564 0.728611761 Alex Presley HOU 5305 0.713816678 James Hoyt HOU 14605 0.673895374 Josh James HOU 16794 0.635728266 Jacob Nottingham HOU 16448 0.469152894 Rogelio Armenteros HOU 17679 0.456303395 Francis Martes HOU 17303 0.242324732 Jandel Gustave HOU 14665 0.160737458 David Paulino HOU 17418 0.088128272 Mark Appel HOU 14823 0.084693797 Matt Duffy HOU 12181 0.079805846 Jack Mayfield HOU 15402 -0.003233211 Akeem Bostick HOU 15979 -0.011530508 R.J. Alaniz HOU 10819 -0.057678145 Dean Deetz HOU 16687 -0.062273808 Carlos Sanabria HOU 16634 -0.0796424 Garrett Stubbs HOU 18067 -0.091535191 Jorge Alcala HOU 19459 -0.095651524 Hector Perez HOU 18592 -0.102499133 Alfredo Gonzalez HOU 14267 -0.182327184 Kevin Chapman HOU 11240 -0.212023132 Jordan Jankowski HOU 13313 -0.221018717 Jake Buchanan HOU 10962 -0.224875872 Mike Hauschild HOU 14033 -0.266272195 Brady Rodgers HOU 13393 -0.279262548 Nolan Fontana HOU 13267 -0.300172237 Jorge Guzman HOU 17505 -0.343110025 Troy Scribner HOU 15570 -0.398780172 Derek Fisher HOU 16192 -0.439645019 Ralph Garza Jr. HOU 17682 -0.45276086 Preston Tucker HOU 13633 -0.549205677 Alex White HOU 10054 -0.562287295 Bryan De La Cruz HOU 19600 -0.569988732 Jason Martin HOU 16429 -0.583821856 L.J. Hoes HOU 6656 -0.667190925 Matt Dominguez HOU 4903 -0.761874839 Daz Cameron HOU 18353 -0.885050565 Elieser Hernandez HOU 16933 -1.20929686 Albert Abreu HOU 17485 -1.303049929 AJ Reed HOU 16246 -1.410614328 Jon Singleton HOU 10441 -1.676838173 You can ignore the 5 digit number after HOU (that's the fangraphs unique player ID). The WAR total is the number with decimals at the end. Now, half of the WAR from Houston's system came from the top 5 guys (Bregman, Correa, Tucker, Valdez, and Musgrove), and only 2 (Valdez and Musgrove) was included in the exercise I performed at the outset of this post, as Bregman and Tucker weren't in the system on opening day and I acknowledged Correa was a variance outlier. I further highlighted that Framber was in the DSL at the time and made a note that I assumed the DSL had a match for the 2015 DSL; I'm fine conceding that probably isn't the case. Otherwise, I think both of our points stand. Houston did indeed have an amazing farm system in 2015 (your point), but if you exempt Tucker, Bregman, and Correa (getting the total to a much more reasonable number), the 2027 farm should be able to match it (my point). At worst, even conceding completely to your point, you'd need to exempt just 4 more guys (Framber, Musgrove, Teoscar, and Laureano) to get the total to a point matched by even average farm systems; if you account for the fact that Musgrove, Teoscar, and Laureano contributed almost nothing to Houston's actual big league production, that gets even easier to accept.
Exactly. Altuve/Springer/Keuchel already being here before Luhnow is even hired was imperative to getting this team to winning in 2015. Then add all the right draft picks (even the ones that didn't work out), and the right FA's and trades (with just the right amount of continued minor league and international development), and you get a dynasty. Notice we don't mention any of the trade returns from Carlos Lee, Berkman, Oswalt as part of that process (or before them, Hunter Pence, Michael Bourn). Yes, Jared Cosart netted Marisnick (and Frankie Tuesday) but that didn't necessarily jump-start anything. If Crane just wants to get rid of all high priced players, he can order the sell-off (and they'll go back to the free ticket/0.0 rating days...). He's just got too much invested with the network, current business partners, surrounding development, and a still very healthy season ticket base to do that right now. And even if all the trades are made, you still have the same people in charge making those decisions... likely for a regime that won't be theirs, and the reason for that being their current results aren't necessarily in line with what was expected when the current regime was hired.
