Justin Verlander. Alex Bregman. Jose Altuve. Yordan Alvarez. Those are the names largely associated with the Houston Astros' continuing run of dominance, one that has taken them into five consecutive American League Championship Series and currently trends toward a sixth.
But there are four other, far-less-heralded names who have become just as important to their sustainability. Four pitchers who deepened what has evolved into an impressive rotation. Four young players who contributed critical value to a top-heavy payroll. Four homegrown guys who emerged from an international market that typically ignores them.
It's Luis Garcia, Cristian Javier, Jose Urquidy and Framber Valdez -- and that even one of them emerged to become a major league starting pitcher borders on a miracle.
"Not one, not two, not three -- four," Bill Murphy, one of the Astros' pitching coaches, said. "Hopefully I coach for a number of years more. I may never see that again. Four is probably never gonna be seen again, for myself personally. But that's pretty cool."
The Astros begin the second half with a nine-game lead in the AL West, representing the third-largest divisional cushion in the sport, while trailing only the New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers in both winning percentage and run differential.
Pitching has been the key.
Verlander is putting together a Cy Young season as a 39-year-old coming off Tommy John surgery, and a collection of recent bullpen additions -- Rafael Montero, Hector Neris, Ryne Stanek -- have consistently shortened games. But Garcia, Javier, Urquidy and Valdez -- the first two of whom will start today's doubleheader against the Yankees -- have elevated the staff to a different level, combining to post a 3.37 ERA in 376 2/3 innings while accumulating six FanGraphs wins above replacement.
None of them was supposed to be here.
Latin players -- excluding those hailing from Puerto Rico and Cuba -- can officially sign with major league organizations through the international signing period at the age of 16, at which point the best of them secure six- and seven-figure bonuses. But the international market has long been plagued by teams striking pre-arranged deals with players as young as 13, a wide-ranging issue that has exacerbated Major League Baseball's long-held desire for an international draft.
The Astros went the other way, bolstering their pitching depth and extending their contention window by signing international players at older ages for pennies on the dollar. Javier signed for $10,000 one week before his 18th birthday, Garcia signed for $20,000 at the age of 20, Valdez signed for $10,000 at 21 and Urquidy was acquired from his Mexican League team -- an exchange that ultimately netted him $100,000 -- two months before he turned 20.
"We weren't anchored to age being the driver of whether the player was good or not," said Oz Ocampo, who ran the Astros' international department for five years and has since returned to the organization as an international crosschecker. "The driver was the talent and the ability and the player and the person."
Of the 91 major league pitchers with at least 75 innings this season, 14 of them were plucked from the international market. Other than Garcia, Javier, Urquidy and Valdez, only four (Sandy Alcantara, Luis Severino, Ranger Suarez and Luis Castillo) signed when they were older than 16, and only four obtained signing bonuses of $100,000 or less (Castillo, Suarez, Frankie Montas, Jose Quintana and Ranger Suarez).
The Astros are far from alone in prioritizing the international market. Teams have increasingly committed resources in baseball-rich countries like the Dominican Republic and, when politics allow, Venezuela because the acquisition cost is so low and the upside is so high. Only the top prospects secure seven-figure bonuses and get written about in national publications, but teams annually sign dozens of players to five- and six-figure bonuses and funnel them into their system largely to fill out their minor league affiliates. If somebody evolves into a trade asset, or even develops enough to earn a spot on the 40-man roster -- let alone emerges to become a consistent major league contributor -- it's a massive win.
But nobody expects to build out the majority of a rotation that way -- and yet the Astros somehow have.
"It's pretty amazing," said Murphy, who previously spent five years in the Astros' minor league system, coaching in the lower levels before becoming the organization's pitching coordinator from 2019 to 2020. "I think back to when I was evaluating, when I was watching them, thinking of what I thought they were gonna be and what they turned into -- it just goes to show you that you can think all you want about how good a person is gonna be, and most of the time you're probably gonna be wrong. That's ultimately what it's gonna show you. It's a special thing."
Murphy, in his second year with the major league coaching staff, worked with Garcia, Javier, Urquidy and Valdez at critical junctures in their development. Ocampo, the Astros' international director from 2012 to 2017, is credited with signing them (Valdez, Javier and Urquidy all signed in 2015; Garcia followed in 2017).
But the likelihood of turning five-figure signees from foreign countries into consistent major leaguers is almost nothing. Their success is an organization-wide triumph. It's a credit to area scouts and strength-and-conditioning coaches and English teachers and an assortment of pitching coaches. It's Andy Nunez, the team psychologist who helped Valdez maintain a positive mindset after struggling through the 2019 season. It's former All-Star third baseman Melvin Mora, who opened the doors to his Venezuela academy to Garcia when he was no longer a teenager and still searching for a team. It's Todd Naskedov, the former rehab pitching coordinator who navigated Urquidy through the final steps of his recovery from Tommy John surgery in 2018. It's Leocadio Guevara, the Dominican scout who hails from Javier's Dominican hometown of La Victoria and has followed him since he was a child.
The Astros signed Javier (3.22 ERA in 78 1/3 innings this season) in 2015 because his mid-80s fastball was impossible to hit, then watched him continually increase velocity with a diligent weight-training regimen. Urquidy (4.09 ERA in 94 2/3 innings) had advanced pitchability at an early age, then added the sweeping slider that took his arsenal to another level. Valdez (2.66 ERA in 115 innings) initially wowed the Astros' scouts with his curveball, then later developed the sinker that helped make him an All-Star this season. Garcia (3.65 ERA in 88 2/3 innings) displayed impressive feel for his curveball and changeup at an early age, then experienced a velocity spike that made him a legitimate strikeout pitcher.
"I think it just goes to show you that with the right resources, anybody can be good," Murphy said. "You should never give up on anybody, because you could be shocked. It just goes to show you if you get good people who work hard and wanna get better, those are the people who are successful."
Garcia, Javier, Urquidy and Valdez hit at the perfect time. In the early 2010s, the Astros, under exiled general manager Jeff Luhnow, had become the poster franchise for tanking, when three consecutive triple-digit-loss seasons helped to secure the core that produced a juggernaut. What followed were the typical obstacles that threaten sustainability -- bloated payrolls as their best players became more expensive, later draft picks because their winning percentages annually fell among the best in the sport.
The Astros faced even greater difficulty when the sign-stealing scandal stripped them of two first- and second-round picks -- but their international success has overcome most of it.
Houston produced an industry-leading 20 major league players from the international market from 2013 to 2017, according to internal numbers kept by the team. Eleven of those players signed for $25,000 or less. The only other team to produce even 11 major leaguers during that stretch was the Dodgers, and their list is composed of multiple players who attained seven-figure bonuses. In other words: The Astros could have been restricted to $25,000 bonuses, and still no team would have produced more major league players during that four-year period -- quite possibly the most defining stretch in their franchise's history.
Garcia, Javier, Urquidy and Valdez developed to help them directly on the field. But there was also Franklin Perez, a pitcher who signed for $1 million out of Venezuela and became the key piece in the Verlander trade of 2017. And Dominican outfielder Gilberto Celestino, who signed for $2.25 million and later helped secure closer Ryan Pressly from the Minnesota Twins in 2018.
The Astros aren't the only team to take chances on bargain talent; every year, somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 players are signed to five-figure bonuses. They just seem to hit on them at a much higher rate, as evidenced by the way Garcia, Javier, Urquidy and Valdez developed. Ocampo, 39, believes it's because they place just as much importance on the five-figure signee as they do the high-priced, seven-figure splurge. He credits a concept he learned at Georgetown University, where he secured a bachelor's degree in political economy: cura personalis, Latin for "care for the entire person."
"That is a critical piece which gets overlooked," Ocampo said. "But if you look at, one, the brotherhood that exists between those players, and then others that moved up the minor league system, as well both former and current Astros staff and players that have helped along the way, that's been a critical piece. And I think it's really hard to replicate."