The Houston Astros won their first World Championship last night, their first after fifty-six years’ trying and taking down the Dodgers, 5–1, in L.A., in the seventh and final game of the World Series: a glorious but un-tense finale in which the Astros did all their scoring in the first two innings. Astro fans everywhere, including the jam-packed hordes at their home, Minute Maid Park, who were watching on giant television screens, loved every moment of this three-hour-and-thirty-seven-minute trial, but, dutifully sitting by my home set, I longed for the thrilling back-and-forth of the previous six, including even that 13–12, twenty-eight-hit, ten-inning monster of Game Five.
By now it should be clear the tear-down-and-rebuild model works in baseball. The Astros’ championship proves you can gut the roster, play several dreadful seasons while slowly building a winner for the future. To get to Wednesday night’s celebration at Dodger Stadium, Houston had to be bad, really bad. Their 104 regular season wins in 2017 were born from losing 106, 107 and 111 times in each 162 game season between 2011 and 2013.
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They endured being the worst team in baseball so that they could collect high draft picks. They then selected well in those drafts, choosing the nucleus of a club that came to dominate the American League this past season. It’s a formula loosely used by last season’s World Champions the Chicago Cubs and 2015’s winners the Kansas City Royals. Even the team that nearly won this year’s World Series, the Los Angeles Dodgers – who have baseball’s highest payroll – constructed a winner on homegrown players and bargain acquisitions they turned into stars.
The Astros’ championship is significant because baseball teams are about to face the ultimate test of economic willpower. Over the next two winters a handful of gifted but exorbitantly expensive players will become available. They are among the game’s biggest names and will come with guarantees of home runs as hitters and strikeouts as pitchers. Their acquisition will excite fans – but are they fool’s gold? Will chasing them be an empty pursuit?
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The first of them should come available in days. That is when the Miami Marlins start taking trade offers for their slugger Giancarlo Stanton. The Marlins, who are attempting their own tank-and-rebuild strategy under their new owners (a group that includes Derek Jeter) wish to trade Stanton before the biggest payments of his $325m contract come due. Stanton, who hit 59 home runs this year, is just 27. He is the kind of player a franchise should want to build around, but trading for him will mean giving up several elite prospects and taking on annual salary payments between $25m and $32m for the next decade. Is that a good value for a player who missed 131 games to injury in 2015 and 2016? Stanton is not expected to attract many suitors, no more than four or five teams. It is not as robust a market as one would expect for a player like him.
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The real test will come the next winter when several top stars become free agents. They include Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Josh Donaldson and the Astros’ best starting pitcher, Dallas Keuchel. The Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw and Boston’s David Price have the ability to opt out of contracts that already pay them more than $30m a year.
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The Yankees, long baseball’s most-reliable buyer, have embarked on a plan of building from within, creating their own superstars such as outfielder Aaron Judge and catcher Gary Sanchez. Even the Dodgers, who have baseball’s highest payroll at around $265m, have resisted $100m contracts in recent years as they shed old high-priced players in favor of developing their own players, like Corey Seager and Cody Bellinger or finding cast-away gems like Chris Taylor and Justin Turner. The buy-to-build concept may be fading from the game.
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Yes, the Astros splurged on Justin Verlander trading away promising young players to take on one of baseball’s top pitchers and the $40m they will have to pay him over the next two seasons, but they could afford to do so. Their payroll of $149m is 17th in the league. Eventually they will have tough decisions to make as their young players approach free agency. They will have to choose between spending and building. If they opt for building there might be some more bad seasons down the road.
But Astros fans would say Wednesday night made all that losing worthwhile. Others in baseball may well agree.
The Houston Astros are an American professional baseball team based in Houston, Texas. The Astros compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) West division, having moved to the division in 2013 after spending their first 51 seasons in the National League (NL). The Astros have played their home games at Minute Maid Park since 2000.The Astros were established as the Houston Colt .45s and entered the National League as an expansion team in 1962 along with the New York Mets. The current name—reflecting Houston’s role as the control center of the U.S. space program—was adopted three years later, when they moved into the Astrodome, the world’s first domed sports stadium.
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The Astros played in the NL from 1962 to 2012. They played in the West division from 1969 to 1993, and theCentral division from 1994 to 2012. While a member of the NL, the Astros played in one World Series in 2005against the Chicago White Sox, in which they were swept in four games. In 2017, they became the first franchise in MLB history to have won a pennant in both the NL and the AL, when they defeated the New York Yankees in the ALCS. They subsequently won the 2017 World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, winning 4 games to 3, earning the Astros, and Texas, its first World Series title.
