Matthew Roberson: What’s next for the Astros?

In the aftermath of the Braves thoroughly outplaying the Astros to win a championship as earned as it was unexpected, Houston players were confronted head-on by their team’s baseball mortality.

On paper, the Astros of the late 2010s and early 2020s rivaled perhaps only the turn of the century Yankees as the most talented core of the last 30 years. Those Yankees won four titles though and played for two more. This version of the Astros has just the one trash can-aided championship and two World Series losses, and it will look significantly different next season. Even after making five consecutive American League Championship Series and becoming the defining team of an era, the Astros won’t have much hardware to show for it as it begins to splinter.

Carlos Correa has already started talking about them in the past tense.

“To the fans, I want to say thank you for your support,” Correa told reporters as a National League team tore up the visitors’ clubhouse at Minute Maid Park for the second time in three years. “My time here was amazing.”

There’s one tentpole that is already coming down. As for the rest of the circus — and it was a circus before Dusty Baker’s steady hand arrived — the questions abound. Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman will each collect at least $26 million per year before their contracts run out in two years. Even with their up-and-down postseasons, pitchers Framber Valdez and Luis Garcia give the Astros two battle-tested arms to slot in the rotation behind Lance McCullers Jr. for years to come, assuming they don’t get traded. That is where the certainty comes to a screeching halt, though.

One of the league’s oldest teams is at a fork in the road. The Astros can make a concerted effort to get younger and probably worse, or they can try to shoehorn a few veterans onto this aging roster for one or two final win-now pushes. First they must address the members of the 2021 club who, as of Tuesday night, are no longer employed.

Justin Verlander and Zack Greinke are free agents; Yuli Gurriel has a team option. Importantly, all three are 35 or older. Both Verlander and Greinke have become accustomed to the lifestyles of the rich and the famous. The pair of right-handers each commanded more than $33 million in salary this year. That figure stands to be much smaller on their next deals, which raises the question: Would either of them return to the Astros for less money, or would they rather explore their options and try to coax one more payday out of a desperate GM? Above all else, do the Astros even want them back?

The smart money probably says no to the latter question, as this is Houston’s best chance to hit the reset button on their starting rotation. Hard throwers Kevin Gausman, Anthony DeSclafani and Robbie Ray are all free agents now too and fit the Astros’ organizational philosophy of letting it eat. Their fastballs alone will likely earn them calls from the Astros, who were at the forefront of the velocity boom and elevated fastball revolution that revived Verlander’s career and turned Gerrit Cole into a world beater. Courting one of them is a much more practical approach than betting on Verlander’s surgically repaired arm, and their usage of Greinke in the postseason makes retirement look more likely than a return.

On the position player side of things, the 2022 squad will be led by Bregman, Altuve, Yordan Alvarez, Kyle Tucker and a host of unknowns. With a farm system that MLB.com ranks 29th out of 30 teams, with no individual players on the Top 100 prospect list, there are no immediate reinforcements coming. Two of their more promising players on the minor league circuit (23-year-old Jeremy Peña and 22-year-old Pedro Leon) can play shortstop, potentially making the Correa wound sting less if either of them pop. Outside of that, though, the team may want to start hoarding hitting prospects.

That will be a tall task for several reasons. Chief among them is the fact that the Astros don’t have obvious candidates who can be flipped for youngsters. Outside of blockbusters that would offload Bregman or Altuve, trading McCullers would probably scoop up the prettiest return. McCullers signed a 5-year, $85 million extension in March, though. Michael Brantley will be playing on an expiring contract in 2022 — catnip for teams that want to reinforce at the trade deadline — but Brantley will also be in his age-35 season with no true defensive position. The going rate for a player like that is rarely a franchise-altering prospect.

George Springer’s departure was the first protective wall on the Astros’ empire to crumble. Correa’s fleeing, which feels inevitable given his comments, will topple another. Even their pitching coach announced he’s out. While we won’t know the full scope of the Astros’ face lift until they set their roster for the 2022 season, it doesn’t take too much strength to close their competitive window. Within their own division, the Mariners are fresh off a 90-win season with the second-ranked collection of minor league talent and a payroll that could definitely find room for a big-time free agent this winter. The Angels are always liable to make a big free agency move as well, even if all their recent non-Ohtani decisions have famously gone awry.

When the Astros secured the final out of their 2017 championship, their fans daydreamed about more coming down the pipe, led in part by Springer, Correa and Verlander. Springer and Correa never agreed to long-term partnerships with the team, and while Verlander inked a two-year extension, both of those years were wiped out with injury.

That’s how we got here, with the Astros suffering another World Series loss, but this time without the widely agreed upon safety of knowing they’ll be back.