HOUSTON — His bumbling team was 40 games under .500. Eleven times, the Houston Astros had pushed a game into extra innings. Eleven times, they had lost. This was an August morning in 2012, and few fans would show up to Minute Maid Park later that night. The Astros would be shut out and lose for the 25th time in 28 games.

From his office beyond left field, in a converted train station on Crawford Street, the team’s new architect made no excuses. Jeff Luhnow, the general manager, had inherited the worst team in baseball. Fixing it would take time. He didn’t have much else, but he had that.

“A lot of clubs get into a situation where you know in your heart that the team needs to rebuild, but at the same time you want to put a product on the field that gives the fans some hope for the present,” said Luhnow, who had been hired from the St. Louis Cardinals the previous winter. “You end up getting stuck in the middle.”

The Astros wanted no part of the middle. Baseball had just enacted a new collective bargaining agreement that greatly incentivized losing, giving the worst teams the most money to spend on amateur talent. The Astros had picked first in the draft that June, and would do so again in each of the next two seasons.