Astros insider couldn't be more blunt about Dana Brown's trade deadline priorities

The major topic of debate all season has been whether or not the Houston Astros should be buyers or sellers at the trade deadline. Early on, it seemed clear that the prudent path would be to accept that the window of contention has closed and focus on selling off veteran assets to beef up a farm system that is devoid of both high-end talent and depth. However, a June surge led by the returns of Josh Hader and Hunter Brown has changed the narrative.

As Chandler Rome covered in his mailbag column for The Athletic (subscription required) in Dana Brown's mind, there is only one option -- buy aggressively and make as much of a push as humanly possible.

“We’re focused on making the postseason. That’s the end-all, be-all. We have to make the postseason. Anything other than making the postseason would be a failure, in my opinion,” Brown said via Rome.

Mystery solved, we can end the debate as that's as plain as a GM will ever speak regarding his club's intentions. It shouldn't be a surprise, either. Jim Crane has made clear that he never wants to concede and rebuild, which means even if he has a different opinion, his marching orders are clear.

Brown also can't afford to view things any other way. He's in the final year of his contract, so surrendering on August 3 would be effectively giving himself his walking papers, even if baseball logic says a rebuild would be prudent.

Dana Brown confirms the Astros are buyers at the trade deadline, but will they target the right holes?

Coming out of the All-Star break, the Astros had a 23.6% chance of making the playoffs, per FanGraphs, meaning some serious reinforcements are going to be needed for Brown to achieve his objective.

Per Brown, Houston's main need is a left-handed-hitting outfielder. Shocking right? That's been a need for the last few years, though it's not like the club hasn't tried to fill the hole.

Still, one might quibble with Brown's assessment. While the Astros don't really have a threat from the lefty batter's box not named Yordan Alvarez, the offense overall is in decent shape.

However, the starting rotation is a different animal. While (Hunter) Brown is back, Spencer Arrighetti has fallen back down to earth, Tatsuya Imai continues to disappoint, Mike Burrows was demoted until it came to light that he has an elbow injury requiring an IL stint, and Cristian Javier is a massive question mark.

Hayden Wesneski and Ronel Blanco are both on the way back from Tommy John surgery and could be back-end reinforcements. With that said, neither was exactly a sure thing before suffering a devastating injury, so they bring even less certainty with them now.

The problem is, starting pitching is one of the most expensive assets to acquire. With how jumbled the playoff races are, especially in the American League, it's going to be very expensive to acquire a quality starter. Similar to last season, we might not see very many of the rumored arms actually get moved due to those sky-high price tags.

That brings us back to the lefty outfield bat as being, maybe not the best target for the Astros, but the most realistic. The Lance McCullers Jr. trade helped free up a bit of room in the budget, but we're still going to be looking at lower-end targets. Creativity and a little bit of luck, in addition to some serious aggression, are going to be the keys to Brown achieving his goal.

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