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MLB The Astros have been in contention for the past 12 years of Jose Altuve's career. Can Joe Espada and Dana Brown keep that run going? Illustration: Kelsea Petersen / The Athletic; Photos: Houston Astros / Getty, Tim Warner / Getty WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Championship windows are never supposed to narrow, this is according to a man who has overseen the widest one in Houston sports history. Jim Crane purchased the Houston Astros in 2011 and fueled their rise from doormat to dynasty. Amid the ascension, Crane insisted: “While I’m here, the window will always be open. ” Advertisement Those trying to carry out Crane’s command occupy some of the sport’s most pressurized positions. His standards are enormous and don’t often shift with baseball’s variables, be it a bevy of injuries or a few bad bounces. Former general manager James Click discovered that even winning a World Series sometimes isn’t enough to fulfill them. “With us, the bar is always high and we always get criticized, ” Click’s successor, Dana Brown, said this spring. “We get criticized because the bar is high and we want to win. ” This era is a metronome that Brown and his baseball operations department are expected to maintain. The Seattle Mariners stopped it last season, removing Houston from its permanent residence atop the American League West. The Astros’ eight-season streak of postseason appearances ended, too, offering the biggest threat to Crane’s eternal window of contention. “Any team that is on a long playoff run, the window can’t stay open forever, ” said starter Lance Mc Cullers Jr. “Just because maybe that window closed in that part of time, doesn’t mean you can’t retool and find a new window, a new time to be successful. ” “That portion of that run that we had kind of came to a close. We did miss the playoffs and there’s no one left. Hardly anybody left. ” Mc Cullers and Jose Altuve are the only two remaining Astros with ties to all eight postseason appearances from 2017-24. Carlos Correa contributed to five of them. He returned to the Astros last August after a three-year detour to Minnesota. The clubhouse he entered bore little resemblance to the one he left, but still must sustain the only standard he’s ever known. “I haven’t heard that narrative, maybe because I’m not on social media, ” Correa said. “That’s not something we talk about here. … That’s an impossible thing for us right now. I don’t think the window has closed yet. ” Advertisement The 2026 Astros must prove Correa’s point. If, as Mc Cullers mused, another window must open, this team must lay the foundation. Other clubs may call that a rebuild or step back. Both terms are treated like profanities around this organization. “We have a lot of guys that can do a lot of good things, ” Altuve said. “I’m just going to go with that as opposed to thinking, ‘Our window is closing. ’” Crane already endured one teardown and is not expected to entertain another. This season could test whether that approach is feasible. Houston has not won a postseason game since its last ALCS appearance in 2023. Its regular-season win total has decreased in each season since 2022. A fallow farm system, aging core and aversion to major free-agent spending have created questions Houston has not confronted during Crane’s ownership tenure. This season should offer some answers. Few in recent memory have felt more consequential for the franchise’s long-term future — and whether Crane believes Brown and manager Joe Espada are the right people to oversee it. “From the day I got the job, I put a ton of pressure on myself, ” Brown said. “One, being the only African-American GM, I put a lot of pressure on myself to try to open up doors for more guys coming behind me. Pressure is something that I’m used to. I’m a daily guy. Every day, I want to win and I put pressure on myself every day to win. ” Eight American League teams will enter the season with better odds than the Astros of making the playoffs, according to Fan Graphs. Within The Athletic’s Keith Law’s preseason rankings, only two farm systems ranked lower than Houston’s. The Mariners, who wrestled AL West supremacy from the Astros and came within one win of a pennant, have the third-best minor-league system. The Astros have no top-100 prospects in any outside publication’s list, either, preventing them from replicating the process that opened this window in the first place. The lack of impact talent in their farm system has long been a talking point among people both inside and outside of the organization. All of them pose the same question: How sustainable is this setup? Advertisement “I always tell our players that we are the ones who have the hands up holding that window open. It’s no one else, ” Espada said. “I always tell our team that the only team that can beat us is ourselves. When we stay within ourselves and we stay together and we do what we do best, we control ‘the window. ’” Brown handpicked Espada to succeed Dusty Baker after the 2023 season. Continuity and institutional knowledge from Espada’s six seasons as Houston’s bench coach appealed to him. Guiding the 2024 team to a division title after a 12-24 start showed Espada’s mettle. So did navigating last season’s slew of injuries. “At one point, we had the (Triple-A) Sugar Land team out there and we were still winning games, ” Brown said. “I think that’s a testament to Joe and him not panicking and keeping them focused and on course. ” Still, Houston hasn’t won a playoff game since Brown hired Espada, a fact that sits poorly with everyone and raises questions about the viability of this partnership. Crane carried the two highest payrolls in franchise history across those two seasons. Results have not matched Crane’s investment, even if the owner himself bears some responsibility for the trouble. After parting ways with Click, Crane oversaw the commitment of $93 million to first baseman José Abreu and reliever Rafael Montero, two men who combined for minus-2. 2 wins above replacement after signing those deals. Brown inherited both contracts and had to build rosters around the albatrosses. Each deal expired this winter, eliminating that as an excuse. “It’s my job in leadership to make sure that team is good enough to win and to make whatever necessary moves we have to make to get deep into the postseason, ” Brown said. “That’s how I see it. I see it as (Crane) is committed and so we have to commit as well in order to get back to the postseason. ” Brown is in the final season of a four-year contract he signed upon arrival. Espada’s three-year deal expires after this season. In December, Brown began to reiterate that they hope to “retire here, ” a phrase that’s now become common whenever their futures are broached. Advertisement Given a chance in January to offer both Brown and Espada a vote of confidence, Crane did not. Last week, Espada said “we have had conversations” about an extension, but he will manage on Opening Day without one. Earlier this spring, Brown said he had not asked Crane for a new contract. “I came up the old-school way, and the old-school way is get the job done and the extension will take care of itself, ” Brown said. “That’s what I believe. I’m an old-school cat. I was trained by old-school guys. And I believe if you get the job done, the extension will take care of itself. ” Click is evidence to the contrary, creating a compelling backdrop for an already critical season. Reaching the postseason or reclaiming the American League West would soothe some short-term concerns. Either outcome would lend credence to Correa’s claim that the window is still open. “It’s not something we talk about every day, like, ‘We have to go back to the playoffs. ’ But I think everybody knows a little bit in the back of their mind we need to get back there, ” Altuve said. “I think the coaching staff knows, we know, the front office knows. You don’t talk about it, but you know in the back of your head. ” For Crane, it may be a bare minimum requirement. “Jim has not given me any rules of saying, ‘Hey, if you don’t make the playoffs, you’re not going to get extended. ’ He’s never said that. I put that pressure on myself, ” Brown said. “I know that you have an owner that’s willing to spend, so money’s not a problem. You have to make good decisions to get that money to work for you. ” Upon his arrival three years ago, Brown sounded like someone ready to spend that money. He told Crane to “buckle up” and brace for a bevy of contract extensions for young players, much like what Brown had witnessed with the Atlanta Braves. Advertisement That braggadocio has resulted in two deals: one to ensure Altuve retires as an Astro and another for right-hander Cristian Javier, who has a 4. 47 ERA in 233 2/3 innings since signing it. A promise from Brown that Kyle Tucker would be “an Astro for the rest of his career” went unfulfilled. An attempt to lock up shortstop Jeremy Peña last fall fell apart. So did Hunter Brown’s aggressive pursuit of an extension during the spring of 2024. Front offices across the sport try and fail to extend players. That Dana Brown is among them is not an indictment of his acumen, but is magnified because of where he works. Crane has never guaranteed a player more than $151 million. The most lucrative free-agent deal of his ownership tenure is a five-year, $95 million contract for closer Josh Hader. Understanding those self-imposed parameters — and acting earlier with them in mind — would behoove Brown, but this is Crane’s money. Any expenditure of this scale must come with his approval. Tucker is now a Los Angeles Dodger, savoring the sort of payday Crane is loath to give. Trading him to the Chicago Cubs last winter — in part because of those aforementioned price parameters — will be one of the defining moments of Brown’s tenure. Developing the deal’s centerpiece, Cam Smith, is crucial to both the 2026 Astros and whatever window they are occupying. “Peña and (Hunter) Brown are two big targets for us right now, ” Dana Brown said. “You got the pitcher and you got the position player and those are our two pillars for the future. I think if you can get those guys extended, those are wins. We’re going to have some conversations with them, for sure, but it’s a goal to have those guys sign extensions here. ” Retaining either will require the type of commitment Crane has never given. Peña will be a free agent after next season, putting him in the same position this winter that Tucker was when Houston traded him in 2024. Whoever is running the baseball operations department will face a critical decision. Advertisement Both Peña and Brown are now represented by Scott Boras, who prefers his clients to test free agency instead of signing extensions. Dana Brown still believes that “if we put our heads together, there’s a chance we could get something worked out. ” More wins will be needed for Brown and Espada to feel any sense of security. Some may not even come on the field. Developing Xavier Neyens and Kevin Alvarez, the two teenagers who now top most Astros prospect lists, is a must. Both possess the top-end potential Houston’s farm system lacks. The Astros have four selections within the first 93 picks of this June’s draft. Their bonus pool will be one of, if not the biggest, in franchise history. The Astros hired Brown, in part, due to his decades spent in amateur scouting and overseeing drafts around the sport. Putting that proficiency to use this year is mandatory — maybe even greater than anything that happens on the field. Injuries so staggered the 2025 Astros that most within the organization view their playoff absence as a fluke. Brown called it a “one-off. ” No club lost more potential value to the injured list, according to both Baseball Prospectus and Fan Graphs. Slugger Yordan Alvarez played in 48 games. All-Stars Isaac Paredes and Josh Hader missed most of the season’s final two months. “If the injuries don’t happen, we’re not missing the playoffs by half a game. That’s a fact. That’s reality of the game, ” Correa said. “But how do we prevent those from happening? That goes back to our routine and the things that we can control. “There are going to be injuries in the season — hit-by-pitches, slides, things that are out of your control. But being warmed up and being ready to go for every day, that’s something we really have to attack. ” The team hired both a new director of sports medicine and performance, as well as a new head strength and conditioning coach. They promoted former assistant athletic trainer Eric Velazquez to the head role. Espada overhauled his coaching staff, too, hiring three new hitting coaches after acknowledging the team “got away from its identity” during an inconsistent offensive season. Advertisement Such an overhaul can often be a precursor to something bigger. Uncertainty creates urgency, which the Astros displayed this winter and, according to players, in spring training. “We hit the ground running a little bit, ” Mc Cullers said. “The tone from the coaching staff and everything has been a little more intense and I think everyone has played pretty well. ” Added Correa: “I don’t want to say urgency, I just want to say we know what we’re capable of and we know we’re so much better than what we did last year. ” Brown already operates with enough aggression, fast-tracking prospects and pouncing on any favorable trade or free-agent deal within hours of discussing it. He has vowed not to change with his job on the line. Ditto for his manager, but that’s easy to maintain in March. Players and front-office employees value that consistency, even if they’re all aware of what is at stake. “As a manager, as the leader of this team, I am here to serve and put these players in a position to succeed. I’ve done that since I first got here, ” said Espada, who is entering his ninth season in the Astros’ organization. “I’ve always done that as a coach. I’m not going to change based on my contract status. I have other, more important things, to think about, which is this team. ” One that will be more instructive than most about what lies ahead. “People may say, ‘Look, is the Astros’ window closing? ’ I would say no, ” Brown said. “As Jim Crane said, the window is always open. ” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle Chandler Rome is a Staff Writer for The Athletic covering the Houston Astros. Before joining The Athletic, he covered the Astros for five years at the Houston Chronicle. He is a graduate of Louisiana State University. Follow Chandler on Twitter @Chandler_Rome