The Houston Astros Have Erased Their Summer From Hell

It's no longer difficult, P.R.-wise, for a sports franchise to tear itself down to the foundations. There is even a way that this goes: a grumpy lifer whose strategies move well slower than the times is relieved of decision-making duties, clearing the GM's office for an impossibly young replacement, who has been hired away from a job as an assistant builder with a juggernaut du jour. More dedicated corners of the sports-following Internet will celebrate this change in direction; traditionalists maybe less so, but obviously something needed to be done. And, in time, the roster begins to reflect the beaming, fresh-scrubbed face of the young GM—entirely inexperienced, but showing moments of the sort of potential that inspires hyperbole.

Even though this, shall we say scenic, route to victory has become industry standard, there has yet to be a rebuilding project that has finished before the public has reversed their optimism. Fans can steel themselves for one season of unmitigated losing in the name of future contention. But when the rebuild gets to be about 18 months old—when a second season is obviously lost and the foundational cement is still drying—noise starts to gather to the effect of being fed up with this shit. This psychological pivot in the rebuilding process cues a deluge of editorials—the fans are restless, the traditionalists are now quite sure that the new GM does not know where he is going, has never known what he is going, and should be swiftly fired so an adult could do the job.

That about catches us up to the Houston Astros' 2014 season, which began 29 months after noted drafting whiz Jeff Luhnow was hired, two rings on his fingers, from the St. Louis Cardinals. The 2014 Astros won 19 more games than the 2013 model, a 100 percent true fact that nonetheless lies about the many-dimensioned disaster that was the 2014 Astros season. It's hard to remember, actually, any season for any baseball team going so catastrophically awry at seemingly every single department of franchise operations. A not-exhaustive list of the moments that left the 2014 Astros with egg dripping from face:

• The team signed prospect Jon Singleton, who had yet to appear in the majors at the time, to a five-year contract that drew criticism for exploiting MLB's bizarre service-time rules.
• Internal records of the team's ongoing trade negotiations ended up on Deadspin.
• After aggressive negotiation with first overall draft pick Brady Aiken, the Astros did not reach an agreement with Aiken following weeks of bitter dispute that ended with threats of lawsuits (ultimately unrealized).
• Actual members of the Astros complained that the team's frequent infield shifting was a dastardly metaphor for Luhnow's data-centric, humanity-crushing baseball worldview.
• Actual members of the Astros complained when Mark Appel, first overall pick of the 2013 draft, was promoted from Single-A to Double-A.
• The team ended the season by firing manager Bo Porter after his frequent disagreements with the front office.
• All the while: broadcasting games that received 0.0 ratings.

Any one of these moments, by themselves, would be disconcerting enough to ominously headline a more ordinary season from a more ordinary team. The smallest of these stories—say, the melodramatic grumping surrounding Singleton and Appel—is heavy enough to push a fanbase into anxious brooding. Discord between a team and some of its top prospects? That's no joke. People get nervous about things like this, and reasonably so.

The team's 19-game improvement even, from a certain perspective, felt like a stinging slap: it was as dramatic a single-season acceleration as any baseball team can realistically expect, and all it did was lift the Astros from the league's worst record to the fourth-worst record. All that trouble, for that payoff.

The issues continued apace over the winter. When Ryan Vogelsong, Platonic ideal of the fifth starter, gave vague criticisms of the Astros after Houston's failed free agency pursuit, it was easy to imagine a gaggle of pocket-protected engineers standing too close to the mound as Vogelsong takes warm-up pitches. They pester him with arcane questions about the spin rate on his curveball, which unwittingly evolves into a lecture about his likely xFIP regression. On his way back to the airport, Vogelsong clandestinely texts his agent and says he'll take anything, anything to return back to the reigning champion Giants—the minimum, lower than the minimum, whatever. That the Astros could not secure the services of an out-of-demand free agent like Vogelsong felt comedically, quintessentially Astros.

Now that we have been introduced to the 2015 Astros, it seems even funnier that the team bothered with Vogelsong. Funny for a different reason, though: the Astros' 25-man roster is so phenomenally crowded with players in their early- and mid-twenties who are dominating their major league opponents that Vogelsong could not have possibly lasted in Houston without being designated for assignment. The Astros' roster is so crowded that Brett Oberholtzer—starting pitcher who has so far produced even more value per inning over his major league career than Houston's 27-year-old ace, Dallas Keuchel—must endure being shuttled back and forth from Triple-A. Oberholtzer, at 26, is still a prospect in most systems but is old news with the Astros, who have called up 23-year-old Vincent Velasquez and 21-year-old Lance McCullers in the middle of the season and seen them both lock down rotation spots.

We are deep enough into the season that the Astros have no longer just gotten off to a hot start. At 50-43 after a deep swoon before the All-Star break, they are just a game-and-a-half out of first in the blooper-tastic AL West, and no scenario is unrealistic once the playoffs are underway. The Astros do not only hold the advantage for the majority of batter-pitcher match-ups in any given game, but Luhnow has engineered long-term advantages for the team at every turn.

Will they trade for veteran help at the trade deadline? Well, they can if they want: their roster costs less than every other MLB team, save the threadbare Miami Marlins. Will that bountiful pipeline of prospects dry up soon? The Astros had four of the first fifty picks in last month's draft, and at historically advantageous slots. Will the team regress in the second half? It's not impossible, and they seemed to be regressing in a hurry before the break—but, even as George Springer goes on the DL, the team is about to see Jed Lowrie, Jake Marisnick, Scott Feldman return from injury. Will they be able to sustain their success next season? Most of these players are going to remain Astros for a very long time.

Even all of the non-baseball kerfuffles that flummoxed the 2014 Astros have been soothed by the calming elixir of victory. Their proprietary information ended up on the Internet because the St. Louis Cardinals broke into it. Fans are coming back to the ballpark. Aiken, the unsigned 1-1 pick, had to endure Tommy John surgery and fell to number 17 in this year's draft; he settled for a signing bonus about half as large as what the Astros offered last summer. Singleton's big league struggles, while not competitively advantageous, even spin positively for the Astros: guaranteeing money in any prospect, even one as impressive as Singleton, is a calculated risk and far from labor-exploitative.

The sundae-crushing cherry on top is that this team is also supremely easy to root for, stacked with laconic dudes who have embraced Luhnow's mandate to let it rip. The 2015 Astros have officially killed batting average, that statistic previously seen wheezing its last breath: Houston sits in the bottom-five in batting average while comfortably leading the league in home runs. Chris Carter balances out his nutty stat line—striking out 33% of the time, hitting more homers than anybody but the super-est of stars—by appearing perpetually on the edge of a nap. Colby Rasmus and his gangly dude-ness is my personal favorite player on the roster—check that, in the whole sport—striking out prolifically or homering emphatically with the same groovy bounce of the hair, accented now with the overwhelmingly attractive wrist-band. Jose Altuve is both the most visible and widely beloved Astro and also the precise antithesis of the modern Astro, all short swing and merry, slapped singles.

Although they have effectively done it, the 2015 Astros did not set out to redeem the sins of the 2014 Astros. These Astros have been such a revelation precisely because they conducted their business in the exact same way that the 2014 Astros did, which also happens to be the same that the desolate 2013 and 2012 Astros did. Ever since Luhnow's arrival in December of 2011, the Astros have been a monolith of consistency, resisting the sweet empty calories of present wins with every possible decision, each time so that the team would be filled with the more wholesome—and, sure, boring—nutrients of future sustainability. The only thing that ever changed was our patience. People forgot Luhnow's considerable prior credentials and thus were eager to explore the pessimistic shadow of each Houston sub-plot. For all the things this season has been, it has finally been a reminder.

When a rebuild is this thorough—totally supported by ownership, led by qualified minds, monastically disciplined towards reaching a big future—the question is not whether it will work. It's going to work. It's already working. What is a fair question is whether or not a fanbase should be excited to see a rebuilding GM come in to your town. Unlike most other executives, they're going to be up-front and ask for something of yours: your time, and lots of it, or at least enough to do the job right.