Window to title officially open
Astros’ brass knows this is a winter to make significant upgrades.
BOCA RATON, Fla. — If you’re the Astros and you’ve been waiting to push the big red button on a free agent or two, this seems the winter to do so. It’s blinking and making that annoying alarm clock sound.
Contention has its stresses. There are expectations to meet, but the player you’re investing in has to be a help, not just a showy expenditure.
“We’ll take our time and make sure that we add the right pieces,” Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow said.
Good news: There is a lot of top-tier talent at certain positions, particularly starting pitcher, an area the Astros want to upgrade along with the bullpen and first base potentially. Even if the Astros don’t want to spend on the most expensive ace (one could argue they should), a market full of arms makes it a prime time to invest.
But it’s a prime time for reasons beyond that. The Astros have young players under team control who won’t remain as such forever, so they’re climbing through their proverbial window to win.
The brass knows this. They know the time to make real upgrades is now.
Still a mystery
How they will do it is a little more mysterious at this point, even to themselves. There’s an openended air to the Astros’ winter.
“There’s some free agents that we like. We’ve already started conversations, and there are also some in the trade market,” Luhnow said. “I don’t know which way it’s going to go.”
Agents at the general managers meetings have been wondering just how the Astros will move. The Astros are set at certain obvious positions — that, is unless they decide to be creative and trade from a strength, and the opportunity may arise.
Trade talks are heating up faster than usual.
“There’s been a lot of discussion,” Brewers general manager and former Astros assistant GM David Stearns said. “Guys are still in the feeling-out mode a little bit. Maybe there’s been a little more conversation over the first couple days of this GM meeting than I can remember in past years.”
Brian Cashman, the Yankees’ general manager, said he has been busy talking to other clubs but quipped, “I just feel like I’ve got a lot of pieces people want.”
Stocked or not, Cashman’s not an outlier.
“Any time there’s a possibility of a trade, it changes your roster, not only bringing someone in but maybe sending someone out,” Luhnow said. “We are exploring different possibilities. I won’t say we’ve gotten too far, but we’ve had a number of conversations with clubs here at these meetings. … Now it’s just a matter of seeing if there’s a match on both sides.”
Some things are obvious for the Astros, like Gold Glove winner Jose Altuve playing second base.
Getting creative
But creativity doesn’t come only through trades. Jed Lowrie, who was pushed from shortstop to third base last season by Carlos Correa, could potentially be moved to multiple spots, maybe even first base. That’s the position where there’s the most uncertainty for the Astros, and it happens to be the position that allows for the most creativity on the field.
“He has a chance to be a very versatile player,” Luhnow said. “But right now, the position that makes the most sense is third.”
There are a lot of choices at first beyond Lowrie and Chris Carter, who could be non-tendered.
“(Luis) Valbuena can play first base,” Luhnow said. “Carter we need to make a decision on. We’ve got (Jon) Singleton. We’ve got (A.J.) Reed and (Tyler) White coming. Maybe we won’t know until spring training’s over and even not until the season’s underway. We do have a number of guys that we like that can play that position, so we’ll have to see if there’s an opportunity.
“We’d have to think about it. But I’m not sure it makes sense given the depth that we have.”
The closer trade market has last year’s trade-deadline suspects: Craig Kimbrel (Padres) and Aroldis Chapman (Reds). And now Ken Giles of the Phillies is drawing interest.
The Astros went after Kimbrel and Chapman last July, talks that might help push a deal along this winter. The expectation heading into the offseason was the Astros would have to re-engage the Padres and Reds or any other team that had a big back-end arm if they wanted to make a big upgrade in the bullpen because free agency doesn’t have the same caliber of talent.
Luhnow said, in general, the difference between trade talks now and last summer about the same player primarily is rooted in the shorter amount of time the Astros would control the player.
“Our willingness to pay was higher than it was now,” Luhnow said. “That doesn’t mean we’ve got to start over, but also, our perception of our own players has changed, and the other team’s perception of the players they were interested in has probably changed. It gives you a starting point, but typically, the deals change enough where they look different.”