Well destroying a dynasty (or just losing without ever having a dynasty) is easy: 1. Sign bad free agent deals 2. Trade away your best prospects for short term veterans added to an already aging roster 3. Miss on your first round picks 4. Have bad injury outcomes
I'd say the key takeaway is that a lot of prospects fail. Adding a lot of prospects anyway possible is key to a rebuild. Right now, I'm not seeing the statistical indicators that the Astros have a deep farm. The Astros farm is not capable of maintaining the MLB team as it currently is. I don't see trading every club-controlled, in-prime pitcher and everyday player as a cure-all. Only 38 hitters (50 PAs min), 25 and younger, with at least an average wRC+, and a K rate under 25% last season. 2015, that was 56. This is basically just a quick check of number of young hitters producing well and making contact. Pitchers with a K%-BB% over 15% with 50 IP, 10 last year. 21 in 2015. 2016 and 2017 were even better. To me, the farm looks very shallow in terms of depth, while not having much elite talent either (outside a couple of guys at low levels). Trading everyone at the MLB level does not likely fix this, but trading no one would likely make things worse long term.
I agree with all this, but think it’s worth highlighting that the analysis of 2015-2024 would show that while top 100 prospects have a pretty high bust rate overall, guys taken by Houston in the first 15 picks of the draft had a much higher success rate. In the end Houston had 5 signed picks in the top 11 over a 5 year period and 80% of them went on to become star players. So they got much more out of tanking into 5 very high picks than they did by trading with other teams to add a dozen or so Top 100 prospects. Its hard to find a winning team whose core was made up from guys they acquired with sell-side trades.
I'd guess the Astros were a little lucky at the top of the draft. Solely from sell-side trades, maybe not. I'd guess there are a few teams that were dramatically improved by them. The Rays went to a World Series with at least a couple of their better players from the Archer trade and likely had others. Which prospects develop and from what source has some randomness. Drafting a player high will likely mean he's highly rated. Trading a star player likely will get at least one highly rated prospect as well. The quality of the guy matters more than how he was obtained. I'd not try to rebuild with only one strategy of obtaining talent as weird things happen in baseball. I'd expect the draft is the most important source, but would not limit options.
The bottom line on all of it is, as you said, the quality of the prospect. Whether it's drafting or trading, it takes a GM and scouting department with a quality eye for talent to make those calls (and a good system that can develop said talent). I wouldn't trust Dana Brown to lead a rebuild. I don't think he's anywhere close to the talent evaluator Luhnow was. If you don't have the right GM in place, you're going to be trading ML talent away for prospects. If we're talking rebuild, we should start by making sure we have that GM.
While I am leaning towards down on Brown, I think fans typically jump too soon on the fire the GM bandwagon. The biggest problem with firing a GM is that there is not typically someone available that is a sure fire good GM.
Yeah GM evaluation is a lot like Manager. There are no metrics for predicting how good someone will be in the role. There’s a background and general traits somebody should have, but there is absolutely no such thing as a surefire GM prospect; even hiring away a successful GM from another franchise is a crapshoot.
It is really hard to get a read on Brown. Personally, I would be inclined to keep him for at least the short term if it is accepted that he is good at drafting and evaluating young players AND the Astros are committed to a rebuild. The problem is that I don't know which direction they will ultimately go.
He has amazing talent evaluation skills. I think his biggest weakness is that he's not the greatest at hiring staff since he's probably never done it. Espada was a miss although I understand the choice. It looks like we picked the wrong guy to keep between Miller and Murphy. I wish Brown would have found a way to keep both of them. Pay them both top money. I can't imagine they make a huge amount.
They can try to band-aid the team for another year, maybe two, hoping for magic, but the Astros GM's most desirable trait would be one that can add talent to the farm system by any means.
Eh - for a team without limitless resources, the Astros dynasty managed to last longer than pretty much any other in recent history and longer than most people thought possible. The reality is once you have to start paying people and don't have top draft picks for an extended period of time, its virtually impossible to sustain long-term elite success - and that's good for the game because it lets other teams rise. It's true in other sports as well. The Patriots are the rare exception, but you look at KC and other NFL teams and you see the same patterns. Whenever the Astros faltered, whether now or 10 years from now, people would complain about all the terrible decisions the Astros made to end up there.
It's shallow on infielders and pitching. I'm not against moving anybody on the team but Alvarez and Brown for multiple young up and coming young pitching. Boston seems like a good fit if they want to trade for Parades/ Pena or anybody in the bullpen.
At this point why would you think he is good at drafting and evaluating young talent? We have a farm with no elite talent and not much depth. We have multiple players on the MLB roster that have no business being in the big leagues Dana was great at his role of evaluating talent for the draft in Atlanta, but he wasn’t the one pulling the trigger. Truth is while there are multiple players having MLB success who were drafted since Dana took over here, we don’t even have a AAA roster that can put up average numbers in the Pacific Coast League
AAA team is .500 despite half their roster missing because they’ve been called up to fill in for injured big leaguers. Kevin Alvarez and Xavier Neyens are elite prospects. Dana Brown’s first 1st rd pick (only 3 drafts ago) has posted $3M worth of value so far this season, is one of the top 10 war leaders from his draft class, and has hit 4 HR in just 85 pa while looking like he will be an elite defensive CF once he hits his prime. I’ve lost a lot of faith in Dana Brown and wouldn’t object to firing him, but there’s a lot of evidence that he’s really good at scouting and drafting.
Absolutely. But so far, even at a 36.5% k rate he is producing like a solid everyday player. At 30% k rate he will likely be an above average everyday player. At 25% he’s an all-star and at 20% he’s an MVP. Of course, at 40% he’s a AAAA/bench player, and above 40% he’s not viable. For now my guess is he will settle in the 28%-38% range and oscillate between a really really good player and a frustrating whiffer.
Excellent comp. Upton ended up having 3 seasons where he posted a sub 25% k rate, so his prime is the absolute ceiling for Matthews. Upton’s career k rate of 25.8% is a reasonable ceiling for Matthews but I wouldn’t put the odds of him hitting that at more than like 5%, Upton had a pretty consistent ~12% swinging strike rate and ~16% called strike rate. So far in the majors Matthews has an 18% swinging strike rate and a 16% called strike rate. For Matthews to duplicate Upton’s career he is going to have to take a massive step forward in reducing his swing and miss. Still, there are a lot of similarities between them.
I feel like this argument is misleading in a discussion of prospects. The AAA team, more than at any time I can remember, is filled with a bunch of non-prospect, fringe ML guys in their late 20s and early 30s. It's doing OK because they are running a bunch of those guys out there instead of actual prospects. Who on the AAA roster is under 25 and a legit prospect? Pecko (who just got there), Ullola (and his 5.72 ERA), and I guess Santa in the pen? Not a single guy on offense.
I was just responding to the comment of “we don’t even have a AAA roster that can put up average numbers in the Pacific Coast League.” I agree the AAA lineup is short on young talent but that’s the result of all of the injuries at the big level (and to some degree, the Astros losing draft picks and trading away prospects). Dezenzo, Cole, Matthews, Loperfido, and Whitcomb would all be young players in AAA if the entire big league roster was healthy.
