Major League Baseball

Five teams that could become next Astros

Updated Mar. 4, 2020 1:53 p.m. ET

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Despite a pretty terrible weekend in Toronto, the Houston Astros are still the owners of the largest division lead in the American League and according to the Baseball Prospectus Playoff Odds, more likely than not to make their first postseason since the pennant year of 2005. In a way, the model for everything a team can do wrong after a sustained run of success has become a model for cleaning that up the long way.

It’s a painful model to follow, though. Fans suffered through three consecutive 100-loss seasons not to mention some lesser irrelevance on either side of that, but the payoff seems to be building. They not only lead the AL West, something that’s pretty fragile at this point, but they do so with the youngest average age in the American League and a trio of top prospects added in the last two weeks in Carlos Correa, Lance McCullers and Vincent Velasquez. All three were products not only of smart drafting but their record, which allowed them early picks and in the case of the Correa-McCullers draft, big bonus pools. That success continued this year with an overwhelmingly promising haul of Alex Bregman, Kyle Tucker and Daz Cameron, considered to be all top-15 prospects in this class.

Was it worth it? At least assuming this run is real or at least the precursor to something real? Depends on who you ask, but it probably was. You might lose some fans along the way, but the history of baseball in Houston is one of attendance and interest fluctuations that leave no real evidence that people won’t come back to see a winner.

Every team’s circumstances are different – “burn it to the ground and rebuild like an expansion team” isn’t and should never be a universal prescription, but given that this is all going according to plan, it might lead to a few imitators, especially if they do turn it into a playoff berth in 2015.

Before thinking about who might be able to best emulate the Astros-style rebuild, it’s important to first establish what separates an Astros-style rebuild from the ones we typically see. The defining feature of the Astros’ rebuild wasn’t the part where they shipped off any veteran who cost any significant money – Roy Oswalt, Lance Berkman, Michael Bourn, Hunter Pence, Wandy Rodriguez, Carlos Lee, Brett Myers, Brandon Lyon. Teams have done that before and will do that again, and there was nothing all that revolutionary there.

What defined the Astros’ rebuild and what would take a team with a lot of (base)balls to emulate was the next level – trading away the players they acquired for those veterans to get even younger.

Mark Melancon, one of the young guys they got from the Yankees in the Berkman deal, was then flipped for a package including Jed Lowrie, who in turn appreciated in value and was flipped again for a package including current middle-of-the-order fixture Chris Carter.

Jarred Cosart, the centerpiece of the Hunter Pence trade, was somehow turned into something even less developed, with starting outfielder Jake Marisnick and third base prospect Colin Moran incoming.

And even when it wasn’t trade acquisitions, there were the cases of Bud Norris and Chris Johnson, who took on featured roles in the wake of trades but themselves became expendable long before they became expensive and were shipped out.

So who could become the next Astros? It’s really hard for a team to commit to it, both because it can cost you some fans in the short- or long-term, and also because every team thinks it can win now in the age of parity and the second wild card.

So to start the search with some direction, let’s look at the bottom five teams in terms of the BP Playoff Odds – the five teams that ended the weekend with less than a 4 percent chance to make the postseason. All are in need of something, whether it’s a quick fix or a more prolonged reconstruction. But the extent to which they’d benefit from the Astros-style rebuild or even be able to get it started given their current assets definitely varies.

Going down the playoff odds rankings…

26. Atlanta Braves – Playoff odds: 3.2 percent
Big contracts after 2015: Freddie Freeman - $118.5M through 2021; Andrelton Simmons - $53M through 2020; Nick Markakis - $31.5M through 2018; Julio Teheran - $28.6M through 2019; Chris Johnson - $16.5M through 2017; Cameron Maybin - $8M in 2016
Next-level notables: Mike Minor - Free agent after 2017; Shelby Miller - Arbitration-eligible after this year
Pre-2015 Baseball Prospectus farm ranking: 19th
The big rebuild: If anyone seemed to be taking steps toward what the Astros have done, it would have been the Braves, but their winter sell-offs were mostly just dancing around it. They got rid of Craig Kimbrel, a pair of Uptons and a good bit of salary, but the signing of Nick Markakis was an indication that the rebuild was to be a temporary state.

It’s still very much doable, but there are a few things that make it awkward, the first being a short-term thing. Their long odds to make the playoffs are mostly a product of their relationship to the Nationals in the preseason projections, which still carry a lot of weight, rather than the standings. If they stay only three-ish games back as the deadline nears, it will be hard to start up this process. Also, they have a lot of pieces locked down with extensions that took place early. If the contracts were still what an acquiring team could sign the player for, they wouldn’t have much impact on the trade value, but the lack of flexibility after an extension can diminish it a bit. Mostly, though, with the team moving into a new stadium in 2017 and given their run of better than two decades without ever being sustainably bad, this would just be out of character and is unlikely.

27. Cincinnati Reds – Playoff odds: 2.4 percent
Big contracts after 2015: Joey Votto – $192M through 2023; Homer Bailey – $81M through 2019; Brandon Phillips – $27M through 2017; Jay Bruce – $12.5M in 2016;
Next-level notables: Aroldis Chapman – Free agent after 2016; Todd Frazier and Devin Mesoraco – Free agents after 2017
Pre-2015 farm ranking: 15th
The big rebuild: July could be an interesting month at the Greatest of American Ball Parks, opening with a celebration and closing with a funeral. With the Reds fruitlessly chasing the Cardinals, not to mention the second-tier contenders in the Central, the period from the home All-Star Game to the trade deadline could be the end for this era of competitiveness in Cincinnati.

A Votto deal may come down to how much money they’re willing to eat, but between Chapman and free-agent-to-be Johnny Cueto, there could be a lot of progress made toward the end of the decade. With Bruce regressing and not in a limited sample – he’s been worth 1.0 win above replacement player since the start of last season – a lot of what the Reds are able to do will be based on how long-term they’re willing to go. Are they willing to ship out Chapman a year early, and would they punt the next two years of Frazier and sell him off in the middle of his best season? A typical cashing-in of talent about to hit the market wouldn’t get them nearly as far as a commitment to a three-year rebuild.

28. Colorado Rockies – Playoff odds: 1.5 percent
Big contracts after 2015: Troy Tulowitzki – $94M through 2020; Carlos Gonzalez – $37M through 2017; Jorge De La Rosa – $12.5M in 2016
Next-level notables: Wilin Rosario – Free agent after 2017; Charlie Blackmon and D.J. LeMahieu – Arbitration-eligible after this year
Pre-2015 farm ranking: 9th
The big rebuild: The Rockies might have close to as good a case as the Reds for a bigger-scale overhaul, and for both it starts with the degree of difficulty in the coming years. It’s no coincidence that the five teams that have the lowest playoff odds are all National League teams – it’s not just that these teams are weak, it’s that the Nationals, Cardinals and Dodgers are seen as the most impenetrable with the Cubs built for the future and the Giants marking their calendars for October of 2016 and 2018. Staying the course and making marginal improvements might work in the AL Central or as strange as it is to say it – the AL East, but the NL has been more predictable of late.

A Rockies shakeup could take years upon years. There isn’t a ton of value in the tradable talent even if they were to move the “next-level” guys. Their advantage is a bit of a head-start on the prospect side – their farm system is the best of the five teams listed here. That puts them one step ahead of where the Astros started, but beyond that, their paths after both getting swept in mid-2000s World Series have a lot of parallels, as do perhaps their solutions.

29. Milwaukee Brewers – Playoff odds: 0.3 percent
Big contracts after 2015: Ryan Braun – $91M through 2020; Matt Garza – $25M through 2017, plus 2018 vesting/club option; Carlos Gomez – $9M in 2016; Francisco Rodriguez – $7.5M in 2016
Next-level notables: Jonathan Lucroy – Free agent after 2017; Jean Segura and Wily Peralta – Arbitration-eligible next year
Pre-2015 farm ranking: 26th
The big rebuild: Milwaukee hasn’t finished in last place since 2004, and the last time they got a top-10 pick was in 2007 when they used it on Matt Laporta, who was both bad and traded for two months of the then-punctuated C.C. Sabathia. The times before that was Braun, though, so Milwaukeeans, don’t downplay the benefits of what could be coming up. The Brewers, 66-96 in their last 162 games, have a great shot at a top-three pick next year and none of this looks all that fluky.

Their farm system starts much closer to where the Astros’ system was when the boost started, which predated the current regime. (Jose Altuve and George Springer among others were acquired as amateurs under Ed Wade’s general management.) For the Brewers, it’s trading Gomez, Segura and assuming he rediscovers some productivity in good health, Lucroy, that would signal that they’re in it for the long-term and trying to rebuild their consensus bottom-third system.

30. Philadelphia Phillies – Playoff odds: 0.0 percent
Big contracts after 2015: Cole Hamels – $67.5M through 2018, plus 2019 vesting/club option; Ryan Howard – $25M in 2016, $10M buyout; Chase Utley – 2016-18 vesting options; Carlos Ruiz – $8.5M in 2016
Next-level notables: Ben Revere – Free agent after 2017
Pre-2015 farm ranking: 20th
The big rebuild: …should have happened two years ago. The time has passed them by for the systematic sell-off of the roster. Plenty has been written about trading Hamels, but whether they do or do not, there just isn’t enough here to restock a roster that’s been wasting away without being turned into future assets. They have the veterans who are hard to move, and they have more promising young players than in recent memory with some better drafts and Aaron Nola on the way. But it’s that in-between player who’s missing, and that pre-free-agency semi-established player was a big part of how the Astros turned this around.

This isn’t to say that the Phillies’ situation is hopeless, but it will require a lot more use of the free-agent market than how the Astros got there on the smallest payrolls in baseball.

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