7 players the Houston Astros wish they didn't give up on when they did

Every organization has players that they wish they hadn't given up on and the Houston Astros are no exception. The Astros generally have been very good at betting on the right players over the course of the franchise's history. In many cases, these deals looked perfectly reasonable at the time. However, hindsight is a fickle, fickle thing.

In some cases, a player completely defied even the wildest projections for how good they could become. In others, the player was already better than the team was giving them credit for and they blossomed once they left the organization. There were also a couple times where letting the player leave was bad back then and looks even worse after the fact.

Here are the players the Houston Astros regret letting leave

For this exercise, we aren't going to be dwelling too much on particularly recent departures unless the result is already obvious. Even if there are prospects that are playing pretty well that the Astros traded away or a guy ended up signing a ginormous contract due to their potential, it is just too early for them to be judged.

Anyways, here are the Astros players that the team wishes they didn't give up when they did.

Josh Hader

We will start with a fairly recent one to set the tone. Josh Hader started his career with the Baltimore Orioles as a 19th round pick in the 2012 MLB Draft. Hader saw his velocity jump up in a big way as a pro and in 2013, the Astros acquired him in the deadline deal that sent Bud Norris to Baltimore. Over the next couple of seasons, Hader pitched very well as a starting pitching prospect in Houston's system and made it all the way to Double-A before the Astros traded Hader to the Brewers at the trade deadline in 2015.

We aren't going to dig too much into the trade as a whole itself here, but it is hard to ignore the loss of Hader. Hader would stick as a starter in the minor leagues before getting called up to the big leagues as a bullpen arm. He has gone on to be one of the better relievers in all of baseball the last few years which would have been nice for the Astros to keep around.