Astros' longstanding model of success has oddly pushed Houston to the breaking point

While there are a number of paths that teams can follow to make it to the postseason, the Houston Astros have been one of the few teams that have figured out (at least for now) how to be a playoff contender year in, year out. For the better part of a decade, things couldn't have gone much better with the notable exception of the sign stealing scandal that cost the Astros quite a bit in terms of draft picks.

The model Houston implemented is actually pretty straightforward. Assemble a talented core from the draft, invest heavily in analytics to get the most out of every roster spot, trade aggressively for short-term roster fixes, and don't hand a monster contract to any one player, but rather spread money throughout the roster.

This plan is great, in theory, but calling it completely sustainable may have been a bit of a stretch. Over time, it has become abundantly clear that the Astros needed to change their approach and this past offseason may be only the beginning.

Astros' tried and true organizational strategy may be closing their competitive window

Here is the thing. If you want to employ this strategy, it all has to constantly work every year. This isn't a situation where you just have to hit on a couple of guys and throw money at the rest of your problems. The Astros have to continually get big league talent from the draft, otherwise, everything else kind of falls apart. No player development expertise can fix it, and if you aren't going to spend, acquiring players becomes even more difficult because you, as an organization, don't have the desirable pieces to make deals work.

Unfortunately, the Astros' track record in the draft (with forfeited picks or back of the first-round selections) is much less impressive than the days when Houston was picking players like Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker. Sure, there are some success stories, but the pipeline of talent has been more a drip than a flow over the last five years or so.

Complicating matters is that the Astros have had to trade heavily from their prospect depth in order to bolster their roster. Houston probably overpaid in last year's trade for Yusei Kikuchi, and had to really pony up to land Justin Verlander in 2023. As a franchise, when you don't hit on a lot of picks and you trade away the good prospects you have, it doesn't take a mathematician to figure out what happens next. Houston has also, perhaps foolishly, allowed too many players to leave in free agency rather than sign them to long-term extensions.

Maybe Dana Brown realized the problem and began to shift the team's strategy in somewhat of a different direction. Allowing Alex Bregman to walk feels eerily familiar to Astros fans, but making aggressive moves to trim payroll and get prospect depth back feels more like a team resetting than a team trying to make it to the playoffs. This is a tight needle to thread, and right now, it seems like the front office could be trying to keep the Astros' playoff window open.

The question is whether or not it's going to work. The Opening Day 2025 is a few weeks away, and Astros fans will have that answer sooner rather than later.

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