MLB Trading Deadline Postcard: A Letter to the Houston Astros

This is the fifth in a series of highly personal letters I am sending to teams of interest as we approach this year's trading deadline. Enjoy.

Dear Astros,

Let it bleed friend, let it bleed.

Put the gauze away and stick the band-aids back in their cardboard box. On a wound of this size they look like pizza toppings.

2005 was a good year but it’s time to let it go. For the past six years you’ve clung to the ghost of glory days and it’s only slowed you down. Every deadline deal, whether it was Oswalt or Berkman, came a year late and without the prospect return those players could have once commanded.

Adding veterans like Carlos Lee, Woody Williams, Preston Wilson, Miguel Tejada, Randy Wolf, Brian Moehler, Kaz Matsui, Mike Hampton, Ivan Rodrgiuez, Brett Myers and Pedro Feliz only further proved your reluctance. While younger players waited in the wings you continued to invest in what you thought was a promising present, only to find the corpse of 2005 was one year older.

Rebuilding requires total commitment. Unless you possess the unlimited capital of a New York or Boston, teams must be built and destroyed with equal gusto. Think of the 2007 Indians, a team that was good more recently than you were. After their fall they quickly dismantled and rebuilt. Now they have a top-10 farm system to go along with a winning big-league club.

But you, Houston, you tried to swim upstream and for your trouble you’ve gone from good to decent to bad to terrible without much in the way of young talent to show for your decline. Now you’re the worst team in baseball, by a healthy margin, and yet somehow still possess one of the weaker farm systems in all of baseball (appraised somewhere between 23rd and 28th on most lists). There are some bright spots, players like Jordan Lyles, Jose Altuve, and Delino DeShields Jr., but on the whole the prospects look dim.

Had you traded Berkman and Oswalt earlier you might have already bottomed out and nabbed Stephen Strausburg or Bryce Harper while you were down there. Instead you sat in purgatory for three years and collected those 70-to-80 wins. And for what? For this?

This year you can finally embrace the depths of your valley. Packaged the right way, Michael Bourn and Hunter Pence could be two of most attractive players on this year’s free agent market. Both are entering their prime, enjoying excellent seasons and under team control past this year. In an instant you could put the entire trade market in your palm, maybe even get your pick of prospect packages.

And even though they’re good players, Bourn and Pence aren’t much use in an Astros uniform. By the time you’re ready to compete again they’ll be on the downside of their careers. For your purposes they are simply figureheads, popular players that keep fans in the seats. And while that’s all well and good, at your current win-loss pace they probably won’t put butts in the plastic much longer.

So swap them for a 20-year-old arm or a 19-year-old bat. You need players to dream on, not finished products. Right now the finished products simply aren’t good enough. Both Bourn and Pence would fit perfectly in Atlanta, and the Braves have the sort of premium minor league talent you guys ought to crave. Same goes for the Giants, Red Sox, Pirates and Indians.

I know that new ownership probably doesn’t like the idea of 100-loss seasons in the near future, but that’s the only way out of this mess.

You’ve got to give up the ghost.

Best,
Avi

PS - I just want one ride on that train. What’ll it take?