Even before the last out was made, Carlos Correa proposed to his girlfriend and the Houston Astros poured their champagne a serious question had to be asked in the front offices of nearly every other Major League baseball team.

Who needs the big free agent?

By now it should be clear the tear-down-and-rebuild model works in baseball. The Astros’ championship proves you can gut the roster, play several dreadful seasons while slowly building a winner for the future. To get to Wednesday night’s celebration at Dodger Stadium, Houston had to be bad, really bad. Their 104 regular season wins in 2017 were born from losing 106, 107 and 111 times in each 162 game season between 2011 and 2013.

They endured being the worst team in baseball so that they could collect high draft picks. They then selected well in those drafts, choosing the nucleus of a club that came to dominate the American League this past season. It’s a formula loosely used by last season’s World Champions the Chicago Cubs and 2015’s winners the Kansas City Royals. Even the team that nearly won this year’s World Series, the Los Angeles Dodgers – who have baseball’s highest payroll – constructed a winner on homegrown players and bargain acquisitions they turned into stars.

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A few years ago this was not the case. A few years ago the thinking in baseball was you had to load your team with the best players you could find, regardless of cost: spend big to win big. But the Astros have proven you can create a winner on your own. The old New York Yankees’ model of rounding up the best free agents and rolling them out for a trophy chase is over. Grabbing everyone else’s superstars might still work in European football (although Real Madrid aren’t having it all their own way) but it doesn’t anymore in baseball.

The Astros’ championship is significant because baseball teams are about to face the ultimate test of economic willpower. Over the next two winters a handful of gifted but exorbitantly expensive players will become available. They are among the game’s biggest names and will come with guarantees of home runs as hitters and strikeouts as pitchers. Their acquisition will excite fans – but are they fool’s gold? Will chasing them be an empty pursuit?

The first of them should come available in days. That is when the Miami Marlins start taking trade offers for their slugger Giancarlo Stanton. The Marlins, who are attempting their own tank-and-rebuild strategy under their new owners (a group that includes Derek Jeter) wish to trade Stanton before the biggest payments of his $325m contract come due. Stanton, who hit 59 home runs this year, is just 27. He is the kind of player a franchise should want to build around, but trading for him will mean giving up several elite prospects and taking on annual salary payments between $25m and $32m for the next decade. Is that a good value for a player who missed 131 games to injury in 2015 and 2016? Stanton is not expected to attract many suitors, no more than four or five teams. It is not as robust a market as one would expect for a player like him.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Giancarlo Stanton, pictured at the 2016 All-Star game, has a $325m contact with the Miami Marlins. Photograph: Jake Roth/USA Today Sports

The real test will come the next winter when several top stars become free agents. They include Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Josh Donaldson and the Astros’ best starting pitcher, Dallas Keuchel. The Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw and Boston’s David Price have the ability to opt out of contracts that already pay them more than $30m a year.

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It is a massive class of free agents still in their prime, all of whom could expect deals in the range of $30m a year or more. And yet what kind of industry will greet their arrival? Will someone commit $40m a year to sign Harper who will only be 26 with seemingly hundreds of home runs left in his swing? Do teams commit the $200m or $300m or more over seven or eight years that many of these stars will want? Should teams spend? Will they?

The Yankees, long baseball’s most-reliable buyer, have embarked on a plan of building from within, creating their own superstars such as outfielder Aaron Judge and catcher Gary Sanchez. Even the Dodgers, who have baseball’s highest payroll at around $265m, have resisted $100m contracts in recent years as they shed old high-priced players in favor of developing their own players, like Corey Seager and Cody Bellinger or finding cast-away gems like Chris Taylor and Justin Turner. The buy-to-build concept may be fading from the game.

Yes, the Astros splurged on Justin Verlander trading away promising young players to take on one of baseball’s top pitchers and the $40m they will have to pay him over the next two seasons, but they could afford to do so. Their payroll of $149m is 17th in the league. Eventually they will have tough decisions to make as their young players approach free agency. They will have to choose between spending and building. If they opt for building there might be some more bad seasons down the road.

But Astros fans would say Wednesday night made all that losing worthwhile. Others in baseball may well agree.