MLB teams
Scott Spratt, Special to ESPN.com 8y

How the Astros have recovered to become the best team in the AL

MLB, Houston Astros

When GM Jeff Luhnow joined the Astros in December of 2011, he began one of the most comprehensive rebuilding efforts in recent memory. Since the Astros had lost in the World Series in 2005, the team had been stuck in baseball purgatory, winning between 73 and 86 games per season for the rest of the decade. That was too few wins to make the playoffs but too many wins to land impact draft talent. Luhnow allowed the team to bottom out. He traded away their veterans for prospects, which allowed their young players a chance to play and develop in the majors. They won just 55 and 51 games in his first two years (2012 and 2013), which landed them top draft picks and a larger draft spending pool.

Luhnow's plan followed a similar blueprint to the one the Rays used to become successful in the late 2000s and that the Cubs followed recently to become the best team in the NL. It can be a painful, five-year rebuild, but once it's finished, teams are set up for sustained success. So it's no surprise that the Astros developed into a really good team under Luhnow, but it's a little surprising that it happened so quickly. In just his fourth season with the team in 2015, the Astros made the leap to 86 wins and a playoff berth as several of their elite prospects like Carlos Correa and George Springer became impact major leaguers.

Following their recent hot play this season, the Astros have climbed within three games of the AL West-leading Rangers and just half a game out of the wild card. Given their talent advantage and improved trajectory, the Astros appear poised to take control of the West and win their first division crown since 2001.

Luhnow's plan has worked, but a couple of months ago, the team's outlook could not have been more different. To start this season, the Astros quickly fell to 10 games under .500. The kind narrative would have been that the Astros' young stars had entered sophomore slumps; the cruel narrative would have been that the Astros' success in 2015 was an extended hot streak, and the team was not ready to have sustained success. However, both of those narratives fall victim to the common fallacy of baseball fans to over-inflate the importance of the first month of the season.

Over the course of a 162-game season, many excellent teams will have extended periods of poor performance. However, when those slumps happen at the beginning of the season, they form an impression of teams that can be difficult to reshape, even after their play and results improve. The Astros are a perfect example of this. Their 7-17 start to the season was the second worst in the AL, but since May 1, they have the best record in the league at 48-29.

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