The Pecan Park Eagle

George Springer
The Spirit of The Houston Astros

The 2017 World Series Champion Houston Astros may be in the process of witnessing a club coming together that they would not have wanted to face from Day One last season – and that’s themselves in the still beefing-up version of the 2018 club. The additions of Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole, plus the transformative presence of Game 7 hero Charlie Morton in the starting rotation – all lend evidence to the belief that Houston now sports one of best starting five in baseball.

The age spread among the current 38 members of the 40-man roster also suggests a nice balance between seasoned veteran excellence, current superstar stature, and youthful promise of cons-in-the-making. In the long roster chart that follows first, here are the 38 men in balance by age. 14 are slated for birthdays in the 30-35 age range in 2018; another strong core 14 are slated for the 26-29 age bracket; and a mixed bag of good to excellent ability describes most of the comprises the 10 members who make up the 30-35 older statesman group.

The 2018 Astros barn bears no long time space for lame horse runners, bats, or arms. And the question for outside players looking in to the organization is no longer “do I want to play for the Astros” and has been replaced overnight by the one that now wants to know “how do I get there to play for the Astros?”

It’s all about winning the World Series – and in the way the Astros did it. Even other MLB players became Astros fans as a result. Maybe giving rise to a new truism in baseball:

“Losing woes. Winning woos.” ~ The Pecan Park Eagle.

As to the specific list of oldest to youngest players on the current 40-man roster, here’s what we have, as rank-ordered by the ages they each will achieve at any point in 2018:

Here’s a select chart on the five men who currently project as Astros starters in 2018:

And here is a chart reflecting the same age information the eight probable position starters and main DH in 2018:

Given the age spreads we see, it helps to remember why long-time multiple seasons winning via the Luhnow method really benefits and depends upon deals like the Gerrit Cole trade with Pittsburgh the other day. The Astros had to give up value for value in the trade, of course, but they avoided trading either their top pitching or position prospects in the process.

Good work, Jeff Luhnow. – Keep it up.

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Tags: Age Balanced Astros Take on 2018

This entry was posted on January 16, 2018 at 3:02 pm and is filed under Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.