The Astros, Windows, and Waves

A term that has increasingly made itself a part of the baseball lexicon is “window”. The window of any given team supposedly opens and shuts as that team becomes competitive for a time and later regresses. Hence, upon reaching a particularly uncompetitive stretch, a team’s window is said to be closed. This, to me, is a rather poor analogy given that the word window suggests a dichotomy between competitive and not. 

Sure, the dichotomy between contenders and tankers/rebuilders seems to grow ever starker, but the term window implicitly suggests that teams flip between these dual states overnight. In fact, I might argue that baseball teams’ stretches of contention lie upon curves, where an inflection point could appear long before meaningful ascendence or unmitigated collapse. 

Another interesting term is wave, used perhaps most often to describe waves of prospects. Convenient to my tangential point, waves can also be described as curves. The term wave better indicates that a team’s chances are not like a flipped switch, or slammed window, but dynamic. Waves can arrive early, late, or fail to come to fruition altogether. In incredibly loose terms, a General Manager’s primary job is to anticipate, cultivate, and adhere to the windows and waves of the franchise that they steer. 

Like a long overdue wave, I am coming to the point of this post. A poster child of a team effectively embracing windows and waves are the Houston Astros teams of the 2010’s. First, they tanked, hard. Next, they meticulously rebuilt. And, finally, they generated a wave they continue to ride in 2019. 

Part of stocking a farm system with prospects in anticipation of sustaining a wave of young players is coping with the rules in place aimed specifically to deter overly excessive stockpiling. For instance, Major League Baseball has created a system wherein minor league players have finite numbers of options while on the 40-man roster. 

These rules are of considerable importance, even when considering that they are soon set to change.  They are important because teams have had to adapt to them, abiding in most cases, circumnavigating in others, but as a bottom line being perpetually cognizant of their present and future roster construction at the absolute minimum. And up until the existing rules do change, teams will be working within those constraints. 

FanGraphs has a great breakdown of some of these crunches created by MLB’s rules; it’s well worth a read. In this space though, the current aim is to examine a few particular players in the context of the Astros swing from rebuilders to contenders. They aren’t superstars (at least yet) and may never be, but they ascended all through the Astros rebuild and were impacted heavily (as victims some might argue) by the Astros roster evolution and stockpiling along the way.

The players I have in mind are Tony Kemp, Derek Fisher, J.D. Davis, A.J. Reed, and Tyler White. Each of these players is immensely talented, came up in a farm system that created a strong track record for player development, and ultimately might have been crowded out by the Astros stockpiling. They, in a hyper competitive organization, became depth pieces who crushed PCL pitching, but never had truly extended shots with the stacked Astros.

Each of these five players were drafted between 2013 and 2014 by the Astros. The Astros won 121 games in those two seasons combined, or less that 61 games on average. Tony Kemp and Tyler White were taken in the 5th and 33rd rounds of the 2013 draft, respectively. Fisher, Reed, and Davis were then taken in the first (compensation), second, and third rounds, respectively, of the 2014 draft. 

These players owned spots on significant prospect lists and were part of a formidable farm system that fed the Astros’ success these past several years. Given that they have all made appearances in the Major Leagues, they have all experienced tremendous success relative to most players even just drafted at all. That said, no player had a real extended shot with the Astros despite robust AAA numbers, in part because of the Astros’ wildly talented roster. 

None of these players currently has greater than 1.0 bWAR. And now, none of these players remain with the Astros. It is fair to wonder, were they victims of the Astros wave? Or have they simply not made enough of the opportunities that they were afforded? In either case, how specifically have their trajectories with the Astros been affected by roster rules and regulations. Whatever the case, they clearly didn’t fit within the Astros window.

First out the door was J.D. Davis (traded this past offseason), who the Astros couldn’t feasibly find a roster spot for given their depth, and the roster crunch that comes with possessing a host of developing players. To his credit, Davis has found a home with the Mets, to whom he was traded, and has played considerably well. Given Todd Frazier’s likely exit from New York following this season, he could very well be playing himself into a starting role for the Mets next season, at third base or otherwise.

For Tyler White and Tony Kemp, their lack of options made them trade candidates throughout 2019 and, in part, ensured them space on the Astros Opening Day roster. Despite the lack of options, each have recently been designated for assignment. Kemp plays for the Cubs now while White was picked up by the Dodgers. 

Despite being in his last option year, A.J. Reed was part of the flurry of July moves on the Astros part; he too was designated for assignment and later claimed by the White Sox. Derek Fisher is now a member of the Blue Jays in what the Jays are hoping is a buy-low opportunity on a former top prospect struggling to reconcile his AAA and big league track records. 

On a different team with lesser depth, each of these players might have had a longer shot at proving themselves to be more than a AAAA depth piece with the organization that drafted them.  But on a team with user-prospects like Kyle Tucker, Forrest Whitley, and recently graduated Yordan Alvarez, this quintet of athletes had perhaps a shorter audition than they might have in other circumstances.

While they may not be exceptionally accomplished at the game’s highest level yet, their departure seems to signify something. The Astros drafted them all as they bottomed out. Now with one World Series title in the bag and eyes set on another, the Astros have cut ties with these players that were there for everything in between. To me, that feels like an inflection point for along the Astros curve. 

That is not to say the Astros are immediately set to regress (although all teams eventually do), but the origins of their rebuild seem no longer in sight. Now it’s a matter of sustaining the wave that has already materialized.

With these departures and the Zach Grienke Trade, the Astros minor league system has a different complexion than it has had in a while. Their system is still formidable featuring upper minor league teams sustaining well about .500 records. Their two uber-prospects are still in the fold. Still, some of their trademark depth has taken a hit or, in the cases of these five players, failed to translate. What that means for the shape of their curve, or the state of their window, is anyone’s guess.