It’s not exactly a secret that the Baltimore Orioles are hoping to find success in the Mike Elias era by being similar to the Houston Astros.
The Astros lost 100 games three straight years from 2011 to 2013 and had a similarly poor 70-92 record in 2014 as part of their plan to tank. Then in 2015, they won 86 games and defeated the New York Yankees in the Wild Card Game. The Astros also came bitterly close to advancing to the ALCS that year, kicking off a run of incredible success.
After missing the playoffs with 84 wins in 2016, they won the World Series in 2017, won the AL pennant in 2019 and once again find themselves in the World Series this year. You’re free to argue how tainted 2017 should be, but regardless, the Astros have made the World Series three times in five years and were eliminated in the ALCS the two years they didn’t make it.
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As for the Orioles, I think the big takeaway from this version of the Astros is that building multiple World Series rosters will require way more than just successful draft picks. Let’s examine how the Astros acquired their 26-man roster for this World Series and go from there.
The biggest thing to highlight is that only three of the 26 players on this roster came from draft classes after a tanking season. Carlos Correa was the #1 pick in 2012 and Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker were both taken in the top five during 2015, with Bregman being a compensation pick for Houston failing to sign Brady Aiken in 2014. The trio would be joined on the World Series roster by Lance McCullers Jr., taken #41 overall in 2012, but he suffered an injury during the ALDS that has sidelined him for the rest of the postseason.
The Astros would certainly be in much worse shape without Correa and Bregman, but it shows that mainly relying on the draft to produce a World Series core isn’t exactly a safe bet. The 2013 draft, Houston’s reward after a 55-107 season, has produced only one major leaguer among the top four picks. First overall pick Mark Appel has a career 5.22 ERA in the minors across six seasons and third-round pick Kent Emanuel just made his debut this year at age 28, appearing in ten games before getting injured. According to Baseball Reference, the most valuable player from that draft has been fifth-rounder Tony Kemp, with 3.5 career WAR. However, almost all of his career WAR has come with the Oakland A’s.
Orioles fans have also seen first-hand that not every Houston draft pick from tanking is a success. Rio Ruiz, a fourth-round pick of Houston in 2012, played over 200 games with the Orioles but never did much on offense with a .672 OPS in Baltimore. Meanwhile, Thomas Eshelman is yet to produce anything meaningful after being taken in the second round in 2015 by Houston. He has a career 5.77 ERA with the Orioles and it’s remarkable it’s not higher given that Statcast data says he’s only thrown a fastball of at least 90 MPH twice in his career.
It’s also notable that not a single pitcher on the World Series roster was drafted. Instead, the only homegrown pitchers were acquired through international free agency. Game 1 starter Framber Valdez joined the Astros from the Dominican Republic in 2015 and Game 2 starter Jose Urquidy entered Houston’s system from Mexico in 2015. Meanwhile, Luis Garcia provided 28 starts and over 150 innings coming from Venezuela, demonstrating that the Astros were able to successfully identify MLB talent from multiple countries.
The Orioles, meanwhile, have only just begun to make real progress in their international efforts. This includes breaking ground on a new Dominican academy this month, but everyone knows that’s just the first step. The July top 50 prospects list from our prospect experts is a good way to demonstrate the current lack of international talent in the organization. Of the top 25 on the list, only one is an international free agent signed by the Orioles: shortstop Maikol Hernandez, ranked #21.
It’s easy to point out the value of young international talent when looking at superstars like Vlad Guerrero Jr. or Juan Soto, but it also has plenty of value for providing depth. Houston had Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander in the 2019 postseason, but now Cole is a Yankee and Verlander is injured. However, the presence of pitchers like Valdez and Urquidy allowed the Astros to find internal replacements without skipping a beat.
So we’ve explored the draft and international free agency, now let’s focus on trades. Nine of the 26 members of the World Series roster were acquired through trades, making up 34.6 percent of the roster.
The obvious trade acquisition to highlight is Yordan Alvarez, this year’s ALCS MVP. Alvarez was acquired in a relatively common trade situation: giving away a reliever for a young lottery ticket. Alvarez joined Houston in 2016 when the Astros sent reliever Josh Fields to the Los Angeles Dodgers on August 1 to help their bullpen in another pennant chase.
A seemingly mundane trade to help LA’s bullpen looks much different now for both teams, but it’s certainly not the kind of thing the Orioles can look to repeat. The Elias regime has traded some veteran pitchers for lottery tickets like the Andrew Cashner deal, but banking on Elio Prado or Noelberth Romero becoming feared sluggers isn’t a reasonable expectation.
The Alvarez trade is certainly an anomaly, but the rest of the deals made by Houston for this roster seem like a much more repeatable process that the Orioles can follow. Kendall Graveman is a perfect example, with Houston sending a 24-year-old utility man who never got meaningful playing time to the Seattle Mariners in exchange for their 30-year-old closer. Getting Ryan Pressly at the 2018 deadline didn’t require flashy prospects and since joining Houston, he’s provided a 2.21 ERA and a WHIP under 1.000.
I don’t know if the Orioles will be aggressive enough to be willing to do their version of trading for Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole, but I see no reason why they wouldn’t look to make deals for solid relievers in the future, which is clearly an area of need.
The last thing to highlight is that while certain parts of the Astros core have remained the same from 2017 to now, there’s still been plenty of differences between the 2017, 2019 and 2021 World Series rosters.
The Astros used 12 pitchers in the 2017 World Series and none of them will be seen in an Astros uniform during this World Series. Lance McCullers Jr. and Justin Verlander both started two games in that series, but now they’re injured. Meanwhile, Dallas Keuchel is now on the Chicago White Sox and Charlie Morton was in the other dugout with the Atlanta Braves and started Game 1 on Tuesday before leaving with an injury.
The 2019 roster featured Gerrit Cole but he didn’t stay with the Astros after that. Of course, George Springer also needs to be mentioned here. He won the World Series MVP in 2017 and had a 1.108 World Series OPS in a losing effort in 2019, but he opted to head north with the Toronto Blue Jays after the 2020 season.
The Jose Altuve, Alex Bregman, Carlos Correa and Yuli Gurriel quartet have been part of all three World Series rosters but otherwise, the Astros have won three pennants in five years with a different group of players each time.
The takeaway in all of this for the Orioles is that building a roster capable of sustained success requires more than just success with draft picks.
Adley Rutschman becoming Johnny Bench and Grayson Rodriguez turning into the best Orioles pitcher since Jim Palmer won’t single-handedly win the Orioles multiple pennants. They’ll need to explore every avenue of acquiring talent and they’ll need to be able to figure out how to build different rosters around their core.
There’s no guarantee the Orioles will come close to Houston’s current run of success but if it happens, it won’t be as simple as accumulating successful draft picks. Regardless of how strong the farm system is right now, many more moves will need to happen for Camden Yards to host the World Series for the first time.
BSL Analyst
Rose Katz is a recent graduate of the University of Maryland’s journalism school, where she worked for The Diamondback as the online managing editor and a sports blogger. As a student, she spent almost all of her time on campus in The Diamondback’s newsroom or at Xfinity Center, Ludwig Field and Maryland Stadium. Rose gained intern experience with the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network (MASN).