The Rebuild Review: What Do Rebuilding Trades Look Like, and What Does That Say About the Astros' 2026 Deadline Plans?

Editor-Theo’s Note: When I started work on this piece, the question of “should the Astros sell at the deadline” was looking a little more open-ended. However, while that question is looking fairly resolved now, this piece is just as much a case study on the history and past successes of MLB teams doing total tear-downs and roster rebuilds. It’s definitely influenced my understanding of the process, and I think it’s worth sharing those results.

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

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“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?

2026 Quarter Season Questions over at The Launch Angle

Over at The Launch Angle, we've got a new Batting Around article up, where everyone takes a swing at the big questions facing the Astros now that we're a quarter of the way into the season. I was of course one of the participants; you should head over there to check out where everyone stands, but I'll be posting my answers here for posterity as well:


1. Is this season salvageable.
Yes, of course it is. It’s by no means guaranteed, but I don’t see any reason to be writing things off completely in the middle of May. Especially when there are only two teams in the AL more than 2 games above .500, neither of whom play in the same division as the Astros. I’ve suspected that the further expansion of Wild Cards has introduced even more uncertainty than we realize into the playoff race process, as evidenced by the number of unusual occurrences we’ve seen in the short time since it happened (like the 84-win Diamondbacks winning the pennant in 2023, or the Mets and Astros’ both missing last year after strong starts). But even leaving that aside, this is a team that’s only 3.0 games out of a playoff spot and 5.5 games out of the division lead with 120+ games to go, including plenty of head-to-head match-ups remaining against the teams ahead of them, all of whom are just as flawed in their own ways.

2. Would you fire Espada and/or Brown? Is there any way either are retained after this season.
I actually think Joe Espada has done a decent job holding things together the last two years in the face of injuries. Taking last year’s decimated roster to one game shy of the postseason feels almost miraculous in retrospect, and I think the team’s strong offense this year is also impressive. Juggling all the moving parts and working around the injury gaps is no small feat. The pitching side looks does look rougher in comparison, but second-guessing there feels less useful because of how often the alternatives to Espada’s choices have also struggled. Everyone on the pitching staff looks rough right now, and I’m not sure there are obvious good options there that he hasn’t been taking. 
Which does bring us to the roster construction. I do feel bad for Dana Brown, because he’s clearly had to do a lot to work around Jim Crane and his advisors’ decisions. We also haven’t really had time to see his prospect evaluation pay off, which was supposed to be his strength. The roster does feel rather snakebitten by injuries the last two years, and he’s done a decent job patching holes as they arise on basically no notice and with few options. 
That said, coming off a season as injury-filled as 2025 and running into the same issue in 2026 does make it feel like there might be underlying process issues here. There probably should have been a little more depth there given what we saw last year, especially on the pitching side. I don’t think I’d axe either of them yet, but if someone is on the hot seat, it feels silly to blame Espada for cycling through a myriad of suboptimal bullpen and rotation options rather than the guy who handed him all of those suboptimal options.

3. What should the Astros path be going forward for the rest of the 2026 season?.
“The season is salvageable” is obviously not a guarantee of anything. If things don’t improve by the midway point, the most immediate plan is still to start listening on guys like Christian Walker, Isaac Paredes, and Christian Vázquez. But until that point, keep running with your best roster and hope it gels. Hopefully the pitching staff firms up as Mike Burrows and Spencer Arrighetti find their footing and the injuries start to return; there are enough names and talent there that some of them should stick. And I think that a more stable rotation will also help the bullpen substantially, since I think a big part of their struggles was being overtaxed at the start of the year thanks to an abundance of short starts. 

4. What are you watching for in the Astros in the rest of the 2026 season?
Obviously Yordan Alvarez, since he looks like a serious MVP contender regardless of how the rest of the team does. But it’s been exciting to watch the young outfielders during their flashes of brilliance, and I hope at least a few of them get more consistent, it could turn things into a great year; Cam Smith primarily, but also Brice Matthews, Zach Cole, and Zach Dezenzo. And I hope Tatsuya Imai can put it together and come back strong, that start against the A’s was fun and the team could desperately use more of that. I’m rooting for him. 
 

 

 

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The Launch Angle's 2026 Houston Astros Predictions!

I wrote up my predictions for the Astros in 2026 as part of The Launch Angle's Season Preview. I'm adding my part here for posterity, but definitely go check the full thing at to see where the group consensus lands! This season's predictions are definitely the most polarizing one in at least a decade, so there's a lot to cover. And if you're an Astros fan, definitely check out The Launch Angle this year!


I feel like I’ve seen a lot of doom and gloom around predictions for the Astros in 2026. And I don’t know that I can blame it all; the 2025 team missed the postseason for the first time since 2016, suffered from a rash of bad luck along the way, and in the offseason lost long-time ace Framber Valdez, continuing a multi-year run of high-profile free agency departures.

And yet… I feel like it’s important to remember that somehow, the 2025 team wasn’t nearly as much of a disaster as it felt like at times. In last year’s preseason predictions, I guessed that the squad would finish with an 88-74 record, good for second place in the AL West and a Wild Card spot. The end result was instead 77-75, good for second place in the AL West and missing out on the last Wild Card spot by a tiebreaker. That one game difference was incredibly consequential, but this team was more or less where I expected.

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Of course, how the 2025 team got to that end point was extremely unusual. If I had known going into the year that Yordan Alvarez would miss over 110 games (not to mention his as poorly as he did in the first few weeks of the season), that Yainer Diaz would be a below-average hitter, that Jose Altuve would struggle in the outfield, that Christian Walker would take several months to heat up, that Chas McCormick would play so poorly that he would get demoted, that Framber would somehow go on a protracted meltdown to close out the season, that Josh Hader would go down at a critical point, that Lance McCullers Jr. would return from injury looking totally spent but still rack up substantial innings anyway, that the rest of the rotation as a whole would continue to get generally bad luck on the injury front… Frankly, that all sounds like a disaster scenario taken together. I think if you had just told me the Yordan tidbit prior to my 2025 prediction, I would have knocked a full 5 wins off my estimate, let alone any of the other news.

And I think that’s why I… actually feel somewhat optimistic about 2026? Don’t get me wrong, this version of the team is still a far cry from the 2022 Championship team. But taking a team that missed something like 18 Wins Above Replacement due to injuries* (far ahead of anyone else) all the way to the brink of the playoffs feels like a big deal, and it provides a very obvious answer to the question “where will your potential improvement in 2026 come from?” Even mediocre injury luck in 2026 would be a huge step up over what the team got in 2025, and hopefully the new medical team can manage that.