Major League Baseball is a different animal when it comes to tanking -- losing badly enough to reap the benefits of being bad. Draft picks don't come straight to the big leagues the way they do in the NBA and NFL, and it's often years between when an amateur is signed and when he makes a significant big league impact. You need to score in the draft and in the international amateur markets over a sustained period of time to go from the bottom to the top, but the Houston Astros have done just that and are beginning to reap the benefits of their labor.
A little over five years since Jeff Luhnow -- who had successfully merged traditional scouting and cutting-edge analytics as scouting director with the St. Louis Cardinals -- took over as general manager, the Astros are running roughshod over the American League. They're also doing it with youth, both in the majors and the minors. If they need a major league piece, they can dip into their minor league wealth without batting an eye. Their crown jewels are second baseman Jose Altuve, outfielder George Springer, shortstop Carlos Correa and right-handed starter Lance McCullers Jr. These players were acquired in different ways, showcasing many of the things that must be done to have a successful teardown and rebuild.
Jose Altuve: The cupboard wasn't totally bare when Luhnow took over. The Astros signed their 5-foot-6 spark plug back in 2007 as an international free agent out of Venezuela for all of $15,000. Most organizations sign a significant number of such free agents each year, and many of them never make it out of short-season ball, or even make it stateside.
It was clear fairly early that Altuve was different. Each year, I compile my own minor league prospect rankings, based on production relative to league and level, adjusted for age. Altuve ranked No. 81 and No. 9 in 2010 and 2011 on my lists; a top-10 ranking for middle infielders not named Alex Rodriguez (or Carlos Correa) rarely occurs.
Scouting a young Altuve, a couple of things immediately stood out: his ability to consistently make contact and his game-changing speed. He wasn't making slap-hitter contact, either; from a very young age he could put a charge into the ball.
As a major leaguer, Altuve has consistently posted strikeout rates far below league average. When you make that much contact, you have a margin for error as far as contact quality. A player with league-average contact quality and such a low K rate will typically post a wRC+ in the 120 range, a huge plus at second base. But Altuve's speed enables him to annually outperform his grounder authority and leg out base hits, so his offensive ceiling is even higher.
Some words of caution -- Altuve's K rate has bumped up from 10 to around 14 percent thus far, and his popup rate has jumped into the league-average range after being much lower for years. These trends bear watching, because if they stay that way his batting average could drop once his speed becomes less of a factor.
George Springer: With their 11th pick in the 2011 draft, the last of the pre-Luhnow era, the Astros took this center fielder from the University of Connecticut. In his first two years at UConn, Springer was a strikeout machine; he whiffed 70 times in his sophomore season. Then he cut his K rate in half in 2011 and punched his ticket. While he didn't face much elite competition in college, he showed exceptional athleticism and hit the ball extremely hard. He showed the potential to stay in the middle of the field at the game's top level, but he projected as a plus defender in right field if he had to move to a corner.
Springer's rankings on my annual minor league prospect lists closely mirrored Altuve's. Springer ranked No. 97 in 2012 and No. 11 in 2013. The strikeouts have never gone away, but he has posted lower whiff rates in the majors than in the minors because he continues to make adjustments.
While increased launch angles have been all the rage in the game these days, Springer's fly ball rate still has room to grow. His average 2017 launch angle is only 5.8 degrees, but I actually consider this a positive. Most fly ball hitters pop up a lot; Springer's popup rate has always been lower than the MLB average.
He has kicked up his power on fly ball contact to another level this season, raising his exit velocity from an average of 92.2 mph in 2016 to 94.7 mph this season. That might not sound like much, but those 2.5 mph are often the difference between a warning-track out and a homer. His adjusted fly ball contact score, a measure of projected production based on exit speed, scaled to a league average of 100, is up from 164 in 2016 to 299 this season.
Springer has one area of vulnerability; he is an extreme ground ball puller, often inviting infield shifts. He's batting just .185 (and slugging .198) on balls hit on the ground, partially due to a preponderance of topped, weakly hit grounders generated by his uppercut stroke. Because of that, he'll never be a high-average hitter.
Carlos Correa and Lance McCullers Jr.: These two will forever be linked as the Astros' first two selections in Luhnow's first draft at the club's helm. A brief primer on the maneuvering done by the Astros to land these two: Draft slot values were a new phenomenon at the time, and to give the clubs at the top of the draft a bit of a break, there were huge gaps between the first few slot values. This enabled a tanking team to land additional high-end players that no one else could afford in later rounds if they were able to negotiate some savings with their top pick. The Astros landed Correa with the first overall pick in 2012, signed him well under slot value for $4.8 million, and applied the savings to land McCullers with the 41st overall pick.
Correa was only 17 when he was drafted, but he was already a man. His swing was not yet a finished product, but he was a coachable kid with strength, advanced feel and enough lower-body flexibility to remain at shortstop at least through his team control years. Hitting, power, defense, "now" size, projection, makeup: Correa checked all of the boxes.
He outdid his aforementioned teammates on my annual minor league lists; he ranked Nos. 7, 11 and 1 in 2013, 2014 and 2015. He arrived in the majors as a 20-year-old in 2015 and hit the ground running. A .320 hitter in the minors, he's a .280/.358/.483 guy at a premium defensive position thus far in the majors, with plenty of untapped power potential.
Like Springer, Correa has routinely posted fly ball rates that are lower than league average. He is elevating the ball a bit more this year and has raised his average fly ball authority from 91.9 mph in 2016 to 93.3 mph in 2017. His adjusted fly ball contact score has barely moved from 153 to 160 over that span; he'll make a Springer-esque jump in that department in the next year or so.
There really aren't any areas of concern with Correa. He was actually a bit unlucky at the plate in 2016: On liners, he batted only .596 with a .788 slugging percentage (league average was .662 and .878 SLG). He uses the entire field and is in great physical shape. As good as he is, he might actually be underrated at this point of his career.
As for McCullers, health is the main concern. He missed time with an elbow injury last season and is on the disabled list with back issues. He has a plus fastball with plus sink and a plus curveball. His command has gone from below average into the average range. His average launch angle allowed this season is amazing (1.0 degree), second lowest among MLB ERA qualifiers to teammate Dallas Keuchel.
McCullers actually reminds me a bit of his father, also named Lance, who was briefly an ace reliever for the Padres. He had big stuff but some delivery issues, and injuries ultimately derailed his career. Here's hoping the younger McCullers thrives over a much longer period.
The Astros haven't hit on every draft pick or every signing or trade. They haven't won a thing yet, frankly. But what they have done is provide a blueprint for how to execute a teardown and rebuild of a major league club. Teams that might need to tank can try to follow such a rebuild.