It certainly won’t happen this year. It probably won’t happen next year. But for Astros fans that are patient enough, a playoff contender could be on it’s way by 2013.
After trading away two of their best players, Hunter Pence and Michael Bourn, the Astros have solidified their title as the worst team in baseball. If they continue on their current pace, they will end the season with the lowest winning percentage of any team since the 2004 Arizona Diamondbacks (51-111 record, .315 winning percentage). There seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel, but there is, it just takes a microscope and a little squinting of the eyes to see it.
The Astros front office has made some bad decisions over the years. In 2006, they signed a 31-year-old Carlos Lee to a six-year/$100M deal, ensuring that they would be on the hook for the most expensive years of the big-bodied outfielder’s contract as he aged into his mid-thirties. Lee hasn’t accumulated more than 3.6 wins above replacement (WAR) in any season with the Astros and from last season to this point in 2011, he has been a negative return on investment in terms of his production versus his salary (about $19M per year). While most teams have learned to not overpay for relief pitchers, the Astros quickly handed Brandon Lyon a three-year/$15M deal in 2010 after he had posted a 2.86 ERA, but a 4.19 xFIP and below average 1.8 K/BB rate with the Tigers the season before. Lyon posted only one fWAR last season and has spent the majority of this season on the DL. He has a career 4.41 xFIP.
Those two mistakes are partly to blame for the trading away of Pence and Bourn, two of the team’s most popular players. Pence, who is making almost $7M this season, is likely to receive a significant raise through arbitration before next season, possibly (likely) pushing him over the $10M threshold. Bourn will be heading into his third year of arbitration this offseason and would likely receive a $3-4M raise over the $4.4M he’s making this season. If the Astros had kept both Pence and Bourn, they would be looking at committing somewhere around $65M between six players: Carlos Lee, Brett Myers, Wandy Rodriguez, Brandon Lyon, Pence and Bourn. The Astros 2011 opening day payroll was about $77M.
That being said, the Astros have a chance to rebuild with a clean slate starting in 2013. By then the contracts of Lee, Myers and Lyon will be off the books (aside from a $3M buyout in Myers’s contact) and their top two young starting pitchers, Bud Norris and Jordan Lyles, will only be in their first or second years of arbitration. It’s those two young pitchers, more than any other players on the current roster, that give the Astros some hope in the coming years.
Bud Norris has had some ups-and-downs this season, but to-date has posted a very respectable 3.73 ERA and 3.58 xFIP. By 2013, he’ll be 28 years old and hopefully, for the sake of Astros fans, in the peak years of his career. If he can continue to make improvements on his command and control, his big-time strikeout ability should make his overall numbers shine. Jordan Lyles has not had much success as a rookie this season, but his 1-6 record is not reflective of his true talent level. Lyles is, after all, a 20-year-old rookie pitching in the major leagues. Whether or not that was the right call by the Astros front office is debatable — I’d argue that it was the wrong call — but nonetheless, he’s here now and posting an impressive 2.9 K/BB all the while.
If both Norris and Lyles can continue to improve over the next few seasons, the Astros have the potential for a very solid top three in their rotation, assuming they don’t trade Wandy Rodriguez, which is certainly a possibility. One of the prospects they received in the Pence deal, one of the top prospects in baseball, is Jared Cosart, who could be ready to contribute by 2013 as well.
More than the prospects, however, is going to be the Astros’ ability to spend on free agents. Currently, this offseason’s free agent market includes high-end talent such as Albert Pujols, Prince Fielder, Jose Reyes and Carlos Beltran. As I pointed out in a pre-trade deadline article, the 2012 offseason free agent list is even more impressive. There is a reasonable chance that by 2013 the Astros will have a talented, cost-efficient starting rotation that would serve as an anchor to go along with low-cost positional players like Jose Altuve and J.D. Martinez. With a rotation worthy of helping them to contend, they would have the financial flexibility to improve the offense and defense through free agency, prospects and the draft.
In order for this to work, the organization will have to develop more impact prospects and the duo of Bud Norris and Jordan Lyles will have to continue to improve. The team will also have to be in position to land the free agents that they seek and dissolve themselves of bad trades.
For Astros fans, this scenario is at least a small glimmer of hope for the future, in the midst of what has been a hopeless 2011 season.
Charlie Saponara is the owner/author of Fantasy Baseball 365 and also contributes to ESPN Sweet Spot, Fire Brand of the AL and Project Prospect. Follow on Twitter
