Joy R. Absalon-USA TODAY Sports
Years from now when someone decides to take their baseball franchise and rebuild it from the ground up, they will look at the example set by the Houston Astros. What we are seeing right now is going to be one of the best and most completely rebuilt franchises in the history of Major League Baseball. They already changed leagues and by the time this is over they might as well change their name. It is a completely different set of people from top to bottom and they know exactly how to build a winning franchise. That carried through the MLB trade season as well.
The Astros made a few good trades to unload decent sized salaries and each time made sure to get a good set of prospects in return. Each time you could read or watch the news and see the experts not know where a certain prospect would rank on the Astros very deep list. Usually one who ranked seventh in one place would fall down at least five or maybe even ten places when placed in the Astros stable. That is the blueprint of a winner in the making.
Their trade season won’t help them win this season. That was never the goal anyway. Their measure of success is having a farm system stocked full of strong players that will fill rosters one day. In about five years when this franchise is one of the strongest in all of baseball, we can look back on trade years like this one and many like it to see why. Currently only one player makes over $1 million. That is a perfect set up to be able to lock in the players that come along and prove themselves worthy of a long healthy contract like Jose Altuve did. This trade season was another great moment for the future Astros franchise.
David Miller is a Senior Writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @davidmillerrant, “Like” him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google Plus.
