Over the last few years, I’ve been chipping away at a longer, deeper look at how team rebuilding goes, both during the rebuilding process itself and in the return to success period. It started as a look at the Orioles, with a front office full of Astros alumni now trying to repeat that magic a second time, then expanded to include the Braves as a sort of counterpoint who both mirrored and contrasted the Orioles and the Astros.
The project slowed down a little as I expanded the scope, to get a wider view of the options. I still want to finish that part someday; I have a whole bunch of data that I’ve collected, and while it can be a little overwhelming to sift through and distill into meaningful narratives and strategies (not to mention balancing all of that against everything else in life), I think the information there is useful.
However, a useful thing I think I can talk about from all of this is one specific slice of the rebuilding process! At the time I’m writing this, the trade deadline is rapidly approaching, and the Astros sit in a strange place. They’ve been carrying a losing record most of the season, and even now, are hovering around .500 while being outscored on the year… but it’s been a disappointing year across the board in the American League too, and they’re still very much in the thick of the playoff race
“Should the team go for it, or sell off and start a rebuild?” has been a prevalent question leading up to the trade deadline, and the answer right now seems to be “whatever facilitates making a playoff run this year”. There are of course fair questions about this, though; the team is unbalanced to say the least, with a Yordan Alvarez-heavy top covering up for a lot of holes in the roster. The team’s stash of prospects is relatively light too, which complicates attempts to patch up holes. And in contrast, there are some attractive pieces that the team could move for prospects: Christian Vázquez and Bryan Abreu are free agents after the season, while Christian Walker, Jeremy Peña, and Isaac Paredes will all hit free agency the year after (among others). And if you’re punting on next year too, you may as well also listen to offers on Hunter Brown and Yordan, since they’re hitting free agency after the 2028 season and will likely command a hefty return…
Up front, I will admit that I am personally against that, even before getting into the results of this study. The point of baseball is to win championships, and committing to a hard rebuild when you’re one game out of a playoff spot and carrying a potential Triple Crown winner feels like deliberately avoiding the whole reason for playing. I can see scenarios where this might make more sense, like from the back of a more crowded playoff chase, or following a spate of major injuries. The Astros are a middling roster with weak spots, but in a year where that describes the entire AL (and frankly, I’m not sure that won’t be the case next year, either). They’ve been outrunning a disastrous April (.308 winning percentage) as more and more players returned from injuries, so why not try and ride that success?
All that said… I do understand the thinking behind proposing a rebuild. The parts of a middling roster could turn into a juggernaut down the line, with good planning and some luck, and the Astros have ridden a similar process to success in the past. So, since I have all that rebuilding data, why not put it to good use? What might the Astros be forgoing by not selling off their stars on expiring contracts? How much does trading those players for prospects contribute to future success?
With that question in mind, let me first go over the data that I have: I went through the rosters of the Astros, Braves, and Orioles over the course of their rebuilds and subsequent returns to successes (periods starting in 2011, 2015, and 2018, respectively, and running to the present). I went through the top 12 players on each year’s roster by Wins Above Replacement on Baseball Reference (basically, who all shows up at the top of each team-year’s page), tallied their WAR in each season, and also categorized how every one of those Top 12 players was acquired.
Basically, what we’re asking here is “how many of the core players in a rebuild were obtained as a prospect via a rebuilding trade?” And I wanted to be a little more thorough, so I pulled in a few more teams into my research as well. It’s a little subjective, but I wanted to look for teams that had gone into a full rebuild in the time since the early 2010s Astros and seen at least some repeated success after the results; in more concrete terms, that meant any case where the team had seen some success, then hit a year where the winning percentage dropped and led to the team dealing away several core members, eventually building to multiple playoff appearances. The other test cases that I came up with were:
The post-2011 Twins, the post-2012 Cubs, the post-2015 Athletics and Phillies, the post-2016 Padres, the post-2017 Tigers and White Sox, and the post-2018 Rangers and Marlins
Some of those are a little dubious (the Marlins’ only just skirted by; I included the Rangers because a World Series felt like it should count even without a second playoff berth at the point where I started collecting data), but they had enough boxes ticked that I could check to justify their inclusion, and we don’t exactly have infinite cases to sift through. Arguably, some of the ones here have actually gone through multiple rebuilds in the time span listed.
Meanwhile, some “Rebuilding Teams” didn’t really feel like they had enough success to merit consideration just yet (the Royals, the Diamondbacks), since our goal is to look at stuff that has worked to at least some degree. Conversely, some teams are competing too consistently, and didn’t really have a clear Rebuilding Period to look at (like the Rays, Brewers and Guardians). I’m open to hearing cases for those, but I think they are distinct from full rebuilds. It’s complicated, and I’m open to hearing counterarguments here, but I did pick who I picked for a reason.
(But on the subject of those teams, I’m more open to the idea of dealing players with the intent of competing in 2027 or 2028; but that is a different process in my mind, and one that I actually think would rule out trading guys like Peña or Brown, barring very specific kinds of returns.)
I think the best way to tackle this is to just go team by team. So, what have the “cores” of these rebuilt teams looked like, and how were those players acquired?
Astros
Let’s start with the first and most successful of the rebuilds. Here are the Top 20 core guys from 2011 to the present day (obviously, 2026 numbers will be incomplete and a touch out-of-date, but they’re included up through July 28th), as well as their WAR during those “core” years, the number of seasons they fell in the team’s top twelve spots, and how the team acquired them. And in cases where a player was acquired for a former member of the team’s core twelve players for a season, I noted who they were traded for as well (as well as a few other cases of interest, as I saw them).
Just for clarity’s sake on my categories: I classified the top three rounds of the draft as “High Rounds” and anything after the tenth round as “Late Rounds”. Free agents are “Major” simply if they signed major league deals, with deals over $100 million getting the special designation of “Mega Deal”. And there are a few edge cases where I lumped together technically-different roster moves because the spirit of the moves were similar, like “Purchasing a contract” getting included under “Traded for Cash”. And for simplicity’s sake, I usually just referred to the initial way the team acquired each player, rather than noting each subsequent re-signing.
Trade designations are usually by the state of the player or the deal rather than the team, so any prospect who was acquired was generally classified as a “Rebuild” trade, even if they were just swapped for other prospects or not a top prospect themselves. Players with several years of major league experience were deemed “Established”, and divided between “Major” (anyone brought in to be a part of the long-term core), “Rental” (similar, but generally with an expectation that the player would leave in the next year or two), or “Rebuild” for a few cases where an experienced player saw significant improvement upon arrival (think Mauricio Dubon) or they were part of a larger Rebuilding trade (think Isaac Paredes). These cases can overlap a lot, so I’m open to disagreement on some of them, but I think the classifications are generally accurate. Transaction details also come from Baseball-Reference (with a few uses of Wikipedia to clarify ambiguous situations). And the summary columns are the number of seasons each player appeared in the team's Top 12 Players, and the total WAR of those seasons.
Now that my scratchwork is hopefully a little more legible, let’s break down what we see. This probably won’t seem notable until you have some other teams to compare them to, but the Astros are actually a relatively draft-heavy team, particularly at the top of their list. And they’ve been especially successful with high-level picks as well; most other teams don’t have that many first rounders or top ten picks listed. Add in some solid mid-round picks and some key international signings (including Jose Altuve at the top), and their farm system in the 2010s did some impressive work.
In contrast, there are only three players here who were acquired as prospects in “rebuilding” trades, and it’s an unusual bunch. Yordan Alvarez is the obvious big win, and Yainer Diaz has clawed his way into the bottom of the Top 20, but those were actually pretty low-profile deals rather than the prototypical Rebuilding Trade that you might expect; Josh Fields and Myles Straw never cracked the Astros’ top twelve players, even at the lower ranks. And even Jake Marisnick was obtained for just Jarred Cosart, rather than any of the big-ticket veterans who were dealt around the start of the tear-down. In fact, let’s take a look at that full list of acquired prospects who made the Astros core-twelve for at least one season.
We’ve got another non-traditional case in Mauricio Dubon in fifth. And the Kyle Tucker deal seems to be the one unambiguous successful rebuilding trade, with Isaac Paredes just outside the overall top twenty and Cam Smith and Hayden Wesneski with a chance to climb still. But for those 2010s teams, the biggest prospect received largely ended up just being bit players on the winning teams, like Brad Peacock and Chris Devenski.
Braves
The general overview of the Braves’ Top 20 is similar to the Astros’, but you can see some differences. Their biggest hits were a little more from their international scouting and trade acquisitions, and their High Round draft picks are a little less dominant and much less from the first round and especially their top ten picks (although their biggest such hit in this stretch was definitely Shea Langaliers, who was part of the package that brought in Matt Olson, so it’s wasn’t like it was all complete busts).
We also see more Rebuilding Trade players here, including unambiguous win Max Fried (obtained from the Padres in the Justin Upton trade). However, it’s maybe worth mentioning that half of the four names here came over in the same trade, specifically that Shelby Miller-for-Ender Inciarte/Dansby Swanson deal that was almost immediately written off as a historic blunder for Arizona. I’m not sure what lesson we should take from this exactly, other than “if your trade partner offers a historic overpay, obviously take them up on it”. Astros draftee Mike Foltynewicz gives Atlanta a fourth name, although he’s just barely hanging on to that last spot for now.
Expanding to their full list of Rebuilding trades, their prospect hit rate from the big deals is a little better than the Astros. Sean Newcomb was a useful bullpen arm for several years, and Miller obviously turned into some major pieces. But it’s also kind of funny that the only one of note from the 2021 Championship team is Huascar Ynoa; I completely forgot Jaime Garcia even played for Atlanta, let alone that they traded him for prospects.
Orioles
This is the newest of the rebuilds here, so a Top 20 is probably a little overkill. We’ve still got a number of guys in the top of the list who are mostly here on the strength of the quantity of seasons, largely leading the bridge-year teams from the end of the rebuild into the start of contention. There are even a few rentals here, and Manny Machado sneaks into the bottom of the list, despite his trade being what I used to mark the starting point of their rebuilding era. This will all probably sort itself out with another year or so of data.
Mike Elias seems to be following the plan from his Astros years of strong drafting, especially at the top, and the Orioles see a similar distribution to that effect. However… that does seem a little less impressive when the sum of your successes so far is just “two ALDS appearances”, and the names at the top are all well below what the Astros saw in value.
The two big prospect pickups are Kyle Bradish and Dean Kremer, which are an interesting duo. Bradish just signed a big extension, and has been very good outside of missing time for Tommy John surgery; the team got him for Dylan Bundy, himself a former top prospect who put together a couple of good seasons despite a litany of his own arm injuries. Maybe also of note, the Orioles got Bradish from the Angels’ system. Depending on how Taylor Ward finishes the season, that may give them two Angels acquisitions in their Top 20; Ward was obtained for Grayson Rodriguez, another high-first round draft pick who battled injuries so far in between spots of promise, and who has an ERA of 7.98 through 10 starts this season in Anaheim. It’s all perhaps calling to mind that Diamondbacks’ front office that traded for Shelby Miller…
In contrast, Dean Kremer wound up being the biggest get in the Machado deal with the Dodgers; he’s been a back-end starter, with some decent bulk innings but only one season of sub-4.00 ERA. His age 30 season so far has been his worst yet (edit: And in further contrast with Bradish, he’s now officially somebody else’s problem to solve, going to Minnesota in a trade yesterday). In the full list of prospect acquisitions, we also see Yennier Cano, an bullpen arm who’s been fine at his peak but inconsistent; the team got him in exchange for Jorge Lopez, a journeyman reliever who had a fluke All-Star campaign where the O’s flipped him. Again, interesting to note that’s our other biggest win for the Birds, rather than any of the initial bigger deals like Machado, Jonathan Schoop, Kevin Gausman, or even a later major flip like Trey Mancini.
Cubs
Again, like the Astros, there’s a real concentration of success from the top draft picks here, although fewer drafted guys overall (high round or otherwise). And perhaps fitting of their major market status, there are more free agent deals here, and fewer scrap-heap pickups, like waiver deals or Rule 5 guys.
But the Cubs are also one of the clear masters of the sellers’ market. Top player Anthony Rizzo came over in a trade for Andrew Cashner, although that was more of a prospect-for-prospect swap when it happened. And they’ve also got Jake Arrieta (acquired for Scott Feldman), Kyle Hendricks (for Ryan Dempster), Pete Crow-Armstrong (for Javier Baez), Addison Russell (for Jeff Samardzija and Jason Hammel), and Travis Wood (for Sean Marshall) in the positive side of their ledger, performance wide. And that’s not even counting other guys who were key parts of their 2016 title, like Carl Edwards Jr. and Pedro Strop. This is basically the ideal case for going full-seller, I think.
White Sox
The White Sox are maybe even more of an outlier here than the Orioles, given that they also topped out at two early playoff exits (one in the shortened 2020 season, at that), no 100-win seasons (not even the pro-rated 2020 season), and an immediate hard crashdown that saw them dropping immediately to 81 and then 100 losses (and beyond). That 2023-25 disaster period makes it easy to forget, but for a minute there, it looked like they’d have a run atop a weakened AL Central.* At least this season looks like it might give us the start of a second rebuild to study.
*Really, they’re in this data set at least as much to model why some rebuilds collapse instead of sustaining themselves longer. That’s definitely more of a longer-term project, though.
That also makes it hard to determine whether they’re a success or not when it comes to evaluating their returns in their big sell-offs. For example, with 6 players, they lead the list so far in “Acquired Prospects” in their Top 20! They’ve got guys in this list who were returns from Chris Sale, Jose Quintana, and Adam Eaton; that was all of their major sell-off pieces! They’ve even got one of their new guys from their second round of sell-offs here, in Michael Vargas, with Chase Meidroth (acquired for Garrett Crochet) about to join him…
But really, how much of the “success” here is just volume and lack of alternative good players to push them out? The White Sox’s organizational failure to develop talent is clearly a major factor here, too many other players have seen success upon leaving the team. But on the other hand, it’s not like other teams have been able to get much more out of Eloy Jimenez or Yoan Moncada (Moncada was even outperformed by Red Sox-era Chris Sale, if you’re setting aside cost!). Nor has anyone else made Lucas Giolito or Reynaldo Lopez into consistent stars. Maybe this really was their ceiling, rather than totally the White Sox fault?
In the end, I don’t know what to make of this. “Trade your three stars at their peak to get a lot of parts and kickstart the rebuild” feels a little bit like a potential course of action for the Astros’ rebuild, and it’s hard to imagine it going as poorly as it did for the White Sox. But at the same time; “a lot of them don’t live up to their potential” is already kind of the established process for prospects; maybe “a bunch of useful supporting parts who maybe have fluke great seasons” is an upper-level outcome of a full tear-down?
So who would the Astros be planning to build around in this case? Someone already in the system? Someone they’re hoping to acquire? Guaranteeing those guys will match up to present Yordan, Jeremy, and Hunter already feels like a tall order. And it really isn’t out of the question that even your more-successful pickups ultimately still fail to match up to the guys you give up (especially if Yordan is one of the names you’re thinking of moving), a la Chris Sale-for-Yoan Moncada and Michael Kopech.
Phillies
Philadelphia is a funny rebuilding case study. They initially seemed to be following the Astros and Cubs’ total teardown models, after holding onto their 2000s core well past their competitive days. They spent years floundering during their rebuild, and in the end, the thing that actually finally ended their long playoff drought and even took them to a pennant was saying “screw it” and bringing in a bunch of good, established players.
Supplementing that with a few internally-developed guys has been key to keeping things manageable, but even that has been non-traditional; like, as far as “Drafted by Phillies” or “International signings” guys go, half of the biggest successes in their Top 20 were past their best days by the time the team actually returned to the postseason. By-and-large, the successful Phillies teams are a core of big free agent signings. They’re like the antithesis of how we think about rebuilding.
Like the Astros, they do have a very notable Acquired Prospect towards the top of the list, and also like Houston, it’s a case that only loosely fits the definition of a rebuilding trade: Christopher Sanchez, who the team brought in via a one-for-one prospect swap with the Rays (fun fact: the prospect Sanchez was exchanged for was the recently-traded Curtis Mead). Their second-biggest win is actually a similar case, getting the useful Brandon Marsh in a one-for-one swap for (the also recently-traded) Logan O’Hoppe. The only real win from the actual tear-down days was Zach Eflin, who came over in the Jimmy Rollins exchange.
Tigers
Another one where the extended rebuild time and lack of results so far make our results look a little weird; once again, Justin Verlander and Justin Upton are both in the top twenty, despite their trades being the point I used to mark the start of the rebuild era. Those rebuild trades did actually return a number of guys on the Top 20 list as well, like Matthew Boyd, Michael Fulmer, and Jeimer Candelario (as well as the just-missed Daniel Norris, and Isaac Paredes, who only developed after leaving Detroit).
However, all of those guys were out of the system by the time the Tigers actually returned to prominence; at least they got Reese Olson when Norris was dealt. Most of their recent success has come from developing their top draft picks.
Padres
The Padres are a weird case. In the end, I decided to include them, because they fit the general guidelines I had set out: some major trades of established players for prospects in 2016 (including Craig Kimbrel and James Shields, among others), followed by a losing stretch and a few eventual returns to the playoffs. But look at their transaction page for the 2016 season, and there’s a LOT going on there. They were sending away veterans for prospects, they were sending away prospects for veterans, they were swapping veterans and prospects straight-up. There are guys listed there that I didn’t even remember passing through the Padres system (Josh Naylor? Luis Castillo?). One of the returns from the off-season Kimbrel trade, Drew Pomeranz, was dealt away that same July. I think the real answer here is “A.J. Preller just really freaking loves making trades”.
If there was ever going to be a team to see a lot of results for their trades, it’s this one. Over half of their Top 20 here are trade acquisitions, and the guy at the top is one they got as a prospect: Fernando Tatis Jr., from the already-infamous James Shields trade. But the rest of their rebuilding deals are interesting, and the majority don’t really fit the traditional “rebuilding” mold (even if I used that label for any prospect acquired during a deal, to keep things simple).
Jake Cronenworth actually came over with veteran Tommy Pham (in exchange for two prospects, one of whom was Xavier Edwards). And Trent Grisham had only just over 50 games played in the Majors, but was packaged with veteran arm Zach Davies (before eventually being sent out for Juan Soto and Michael King). I classified the Wil Myers pick up as a “rebuilding” deal; you could just call it a regular “Major” trade, but I usually tried to save that label for teams in the middle of contending, while the Padres picked him up coming off four straight losing seasons. At least Myers held on until they returned to October, and that’s more than I can say for Manuel Margot.
Like I said, I do not know how to process Preller’s moves, beyond that he loves making them.
Rangers
This is another fringe case, and didn’t even meet my minimums (since they still only have one post-rebuild playoff appearance so far). But in the end, I decided that winning a World Series superceded any other distinctions and threw them in. And their decision to rebuild was a good call! While the core of the team was big free agent signings, guys like Jonah Heim, Josh Smith, Dane Dunning, Ezequiel Duran, and Mitch Garver all played a role in their 2023 title. It is still funny that the highest-ranked acquired-prospect though was Nathaniel Lowe, yet another case of a prospect-for-prospect swap (Lowe had less than 80 games played with Tampa Bay before the Rangers acquired him in an otherwise-unnotable three-for-two exchange).
I classified trading away Cole Hamels as the starting point just to include every major prospect infusion, but the real bulk of the rebuild was a little later; from the 2020 trade deadline to the end of the 2021-22 offseason, they sent away Joey Gallo, Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Joely Rodriguez, Mike Minor, Lance Lynn, and Elvis Andrus. It doesn’t change the end rankings too much here if you cut out 2018-19; you’d just see smaller free agent pick-ups like Kirby Yates, Kyle Gibson, and Jon Gray enter the bottom of the list (and it’s a small enough sample that Duran and Jacob Latz should bump out one or two of them before year’s end).
I think if there’s a factor that gives you pause in the comparison to the current Astros, it’s that that batch does not look very much like the guys the Astros would be trading. The back half of that batch was already well into their 30s, and the younger front half simply does not come close to Yordan/Jeremy/Hunter in quality. Of course Texas didn’t feel bad about dealing Gallo and Kiner-Faleda away and starting over, that was not even close to a playoff-level core!
Twins
This one was another stretch, when I was trying to find as many comparable cases as possible. The Twins never had one big sell-off like many of these teams, slowly shedding players over the years, and even held on to the main piece available in Joe Mauer. The end result has also been on the lighter side, with only four playoff appearances that failed to advance out of the DS round. Still, they did eventually rebuild, and their initial collapse back in 2011 and subsequent drafting of Byron Buxton in 2012 gave me a neat parallel to the 2011 Astros and picking Carlos Correa right ahead of him.
The Twins actually have the lightest representation among acquired-prospects, with only Joe Ryan represented (and even Ryan missed three of the four playoff appearances in this stretch). You could maybe also include Pablo Lopez if you stretch definitions, although it would entail overlooking a couple of solid seasons in Miami. Outside of them, Jhoan Duran just missed the list before his trade last season. And he was acquired for Eduardo Escobar, another near-miss who was actually in turn brought to Minnesota in a trade for Francisco Liriano (which was one of the deals I considered as part of their initial 2010s sell-offs). We’ll see if that trade chain continues into the future. But really, most of the success Minnesota saw was through drafting and international scouting.
Athletics
We’ll also have to wait and see if the Athletics can turn this into a double-rebuild. But the main focus here was the 2010s, when then-Oakland went from three playoff appearances in 2012-14, finished last place in the AL West for three seasons, then rode that to three more playoff appearances from 2018-20. And while they didn’t reach the heights of the Cubs, the Athletics have got to be the other ideal consideration in selling off, given the sheer quantity of talent they brought back.
Nearly half of their Top 20 players came to the franchise as prospects in rebuild trades, and there were a few more misses just outside of that cutoff too. And while there were a few success stories that came over in minor swaps, like Ramon Laureano or Mark Canha, almost all of their big wins came over in the marquee deals for guys like Jeff Samardzija or Ben Zobrist. Not every big swap brought in a star (the returns for Sonny Gray and Josh Donaldson were relatively light), but the hit rate was still pretty high, and the team certainly made enough deals to cover for the misses with bulk. And if they succeed again in the near future, Shea Langaliers (plus the return for Mason Miller and J.P. Sears, who’s just outside of the Top 20) will probably be a big part of why.
If there’s a point of hesitation in drawing comparisons to the Astros, it’s that the A’s are sort of their own beast; they’re probably closer to the perpetual-competition models of the Rays or Brewers, except for one cycle where everything busted hard so they decided to burn it down and start over. It’s a little weird that it happened again so soon after that time, although I think it’s also fair to wonder how much of their post-2020 struggles were the result of ownership trying to force a move out of town…
Marlins
The fact that the Marlins even reached my criteria is mostly a fluke (their second playoff qualification was back in the expanded 2020 playoffs, barring a late run this season). But like I said earlier, I was really looking for as many cases of rebuilding as I could find to compare the variety of outcomes, and the late-2010s sell off of Giancarlo Stanton, Christian Yelich, Marcell Ozuna, and J.T. Realmuto was unquestionably a complete teardown.
The Marlins also have a pretty healthy representation of prospect pick-ups, which is even more impressive considering they kinda biffed three of those four trades; the single best pick-up from the Stanton, Yelich, and Realmuto trades wound up being Starlin Castro, who was already a 28-year-old former All-Star at that point and only played two seasons in Miami before his contract expired. Thankfully, the Ozuna deal brought back their best player from the last decade in Sandy Alcantara, as well as Zac Gallen (who they instead chose to flip for Jazz Chisholm Jr.).
But outside of the Ozuna deal, the Marlins’ biggest prospect acquisitions have also typically been on less traditional trades. Miguel Rojas came over in the trade that also brought in veterans Dan Haren and Dee Strange-Gordon (with Kiké Hernandez and others going out to the Dodgers). Xavier Edwards came to Miami back in 2022 as part of a package with reliever JT Chargois (in exchange for the Marlins sending out two prospects of their own).
And the David Phelps deal that brought in Pablo Lopez does fit the normal “veteran-for-prospect” mold, but only barely made my cutoff; Phelps only had one season as one of the Marlins’ Top 12 players (and it was one of only three times he had a season worth more than 1 WAR). Otherwise, I probably would have lumped it into the “Yainer Diaz-for-Myles Staw” category. It’s kind of shocking that Phelps brought a better return than all of Stanton, Yelich, and Realmuto. At least Jesús Luzardo for Starling Marte is a very straightforward example of a success, even if Luzardo’s time in Florida was short; we’ll see how his return shapes up.
Kyle Stowers (from the Trevor Rogers deal) is also just barely here, although he’s struggled this season after his breakout 2025 season. If we’re being technical, both this deal and the Chisholm trade are actually losses for Miami; both Gallen and Rogers have actually outperformed the guys they were traded for (going by B-R’s version of WAR). And both of them were pitchers in their 20s with multiple years of team control remaining, so neither was exactly a must-trade for Miami. It’s good the Marlins didn’t totally bust at least, but it’s hard to call either move an unqualified success. At least there’s still some time for Stowers to try and turn that deal around, though.
This feels like another mixed bag at best. Yeah, there are some wins in the prospect returns, and it’s hard to hate a Cy Young winner like Alcantara. But at least some of the other “wins” only stand out because of the relatively thin rosters and lack of major results so far. And it’s especially galling how many misses they made in the actually-major rebuild deals, while most of the non-Alcantara successes seem closer to flukes, if not technical net-losses.
So, where does this leave the Astros leading up to the 2026 Trade Deadline?
Let’s be real here; we know a teardown isn’t happening in the next few days. Astros officials were already saying that a week ago, and while that may have partially been posturing at the time, the team closed out July on a 9-1 run that not only took them above .500, but also gave them the division lead. They just won the home opener against the Rangers, which not only let them leapfrog their division rivals for first place, but also guaranteed them the edge in the season series and any postseason tiebreakers. Whatever ambiguity there was several days ago when I started this oversized article has been pretty pretty clearly and decisively resolved in the time since.
Yes, this is a flawed team, but that describes almost every team in the AL this year. Even if the Astros weren’t leading the AL West, they’d still be in a dead-heat for a Wild Card slot. Their injury concerns from the start of the season seem to be behind them, and really, their performance outside of that very-thin April has been not bad. And having Yordan Alvarez playing out of his mind is one hell of an advantage to be starting from; nobody else has an ace in the hole of that caliber. The point of the game is to win championships, and given the randomness in the postseason, there really doesn’t seem to be a reason to pre-emptively punt on the year right now (to say nothing of 2027). Shoot, they’re even still in the hunt for a first-round bye!
But to anyone who was still having doubts, maybe this look at rebuilding trades will help assuage them. Really, this summary was just as much me trying to establish the stakes for future reference as it was trying to determine the right course for the Astros this season. A rebuilding team can bring in real talent, but the hit rate is a lot lower than you might think if you’re just looking at the success stories.
A lot of dealt-away stars don’t actually bring that much talent back, and even when they do, it’s often mostly just supporting parts to supplement the stars that you draft or sign from elsewhere. The promise of a Max Fried or Sandy Alcantara is enticing, but realistically, your biggest get might just be a Jared Eickhoff or Mike Foltynewicz or Pedro Strop. It’s a worthwhile gamble on a team going nowhere, but that’s not the Astros at the moment.
Conversely a lot of the biggest prospect trade wins actually come from random trades that only barely qualify as rebuilding trades. If a team gives Houston something intriguing for a less essential part, say, Bryan Abreu, that could make sense. But shopping a reliever on the brink of free agency (and in the midst of a down season, at that) is very different from trying to move core guys like Jeremy Peña, Isaac Paredes, or Hunter Brown.
And maybe this discussion is worth re-evaluating in the offseason. I kept mentioning teams like the Rays, Guardians, and Brewers as counterpoints, with their perpetual building and rebuilding. They do make big moves like that from time to time. Given Dana Brown’s relative success in dealing Kyle Tucker, another trade like that may be worth taking if someone throws the right mix of young players at you.
But I don’t think any of those teams would be making that kind of move mid-season, giving up a key piece of the roster while in the thick of a playoff hunt; giving up an extra swing at the postseason pinata is a fairly steep cost, and whatever extra sweetener you might get from giving the receiving team an extra postseason run would come out in the metaphorical wash, given the relative randomness of prospect development and who gets traded. Maybe things look different a year from now, with a weaker Astros team and a stronger field. And if the team is falling apart, you’ll still be able to swap guys like Paredes, Walker, or Peña and make the best of a lost season. But I really don’t see a reason to be doing that this year.
(Now, should they push all their chips in making a big splash and going for it this year? Probably not, but that’s a very different question from what I’ve been digging into for the last few weeks…)
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