HOUSTON – High above left field at Minute Maid Park, hanging from a light tower in front of the stadium’s signature train tracks, there is a gold banner immortalizing the Houston Astros’ 2017 World Series championship.

On Monday, Astros third baseman Alex Bregman took aim during batting practice, spraying pitches with authority around the field.

Bregman, 25, is known for his hitting. One season after finishing fifth in American League MVP voting, Bregman is duplicating — if not besting — that season: Entering the Astros’ series opener with the Detroit Tigers on Monday, he was hitting .282 with 30 home runs and 83 RBIs.

Bregman is a maniacal hitter. When the Astros clubhouse opened to the media at 4 p.m., he pulled a couple of bats out of the bat rack and wasn't seen again until moments before a scheduled hitters meeting a half-hour later.

Perhaps that's why it was so easy to wonder Monday how the Tigers' rebuild would be different had they acquired Bregman at the July 2017 trade deadline, sending Michael Fulmer to the Astros and possibly altering Justin Verlander's path forever.

Bregman and Cubs shortstop Javier Baez were offered to the Tigers in separate deals in exchange for Fulmer — the 2016 AL Rookie of the Year and a 2017 All-Star — and lefty reliever Justin Wilson, the Free Press reported Aug. 4.

The Tigers turned down both offers, kept Fulmer but still traded Wilson to the Cubs, and a month later, at the August waiver trade deadline, they shipped Verlander to the Astros in a last-second deadline deal that put Houston on a championship collision course and kickstarted the Tigers' rebuild.

The Tigers (37-84) arrived in Houston with the worst record in baseball, mired in what promises to be a lengthy rebuild. Since declining that trade, they've watched Fulmer undergo two right elbow surgeries — including Tommy John surgery in spring training — while their offensive output has grown progressively worse (the Tigers have the second-fewest home runs in MLB this season).

[ Detroit Tigers have top pitching prospects but here are the issues ]

Bregman, meanwhile, has blossomed into one of baseball's premier third basemen, Verlander has regained his Cy Young Award form and the Astros, who entered Monday 79-46, first in the AL West, are a baseball juggernaut with one of the deepest rosters in the game.

It's impossible to know how each franchise would have been impacted had a trade been made. There are too many variables. Too much uncertainty. But in looking at how things have played out with the benefit of hindsight, the case could be made it was a pivotal moment for both teams.

It was early July 2017 when the teams engaged in negotiations. After the Cubs could not execute a trade for Fulmer, they went elsewhere, acquiring veteran lefty Jose Quintana from the White Sox for a pair of highly regarded prospects in outfielder Eloy Jimenez and righty Dylan Cease. The Astros, meanwhile, did not make any moves, drawing the ire of some players inside the clubhouse for not improving the team’s chances at the deadline.

On Aug. 29 in Colorado, Fulmer made his last start of the season, before hitting the 10-day injured list and undergoing right elbow ulnar nerve transposition surgery. His season was over.

The next day, Verlander made his final start with the team, two days before being sent to Houston for a three-prospect package of right-hander Franklin Perez, catcher Jake Rogers and outfielder Daz Cameron. (Of the three, only Rogers has made it to the big leagues so far).

It's hard to predict whether Fulmer would have been similarly injured with the Astros. And while it is also unknown whether the Astros would have pursued Verlander in August even after acquiring Fulmer, it's plausible to think Houston — known for holding on tightly to its prospects — wouldn't have been willing to match the asking price for Verlander after parting ways with Bregman.

As luck would have it, Bregman's meteoric rise started soon after the deal with the Tigers fell through. By Sept. 1, Bregman had rebounded from a subpar first two months of the season (On July 1, the second-year player was hitting .245 with eight home runs. In the two months that followed, he hit .339 with eight more homers, raising his batting average to .287).

Verlander also reclaimed his status as one of baseball’s best pitchers, lowering his ERA from 4.96 on July 1 to 3.82 at the time of the trade.

In a vacuum, it’s plausible that by trading for Fulmer, the Astros would have surrendered their top prospect at exactly the time he was about to break out, and that by doing so, it would have prevented them from acquiring Verlander.

Yet it’s hard to envision the Astros winning the World Series without Verlander, who, back on the big stage, went 4-1 with a 2.21 ERA in six postseason appearances.

And though Bregman hit .208 in the postseason, he delivered one of Houston’s biggest hits with a walk-off single against the L.A. Dodgers in Game 5 of the World Series. The Astros won the title in seven games.

Verlander finished that season looking night-and-day from the way he started the year with the Tigers, and given his status as Detroit's premier franchise player, perhaps the Tigers would have hung onto him throughout the offseason. At the time, Verlander, now 36, had $56 million remaining over the final two years of his contract. The Tigers paid Houston $16 million in the trade.

More:Justin Verlander's best Detroit Tigers moments

Acquiring Bregman wouldn't have changed the Tigers' need to rebuild, and it's possible they still would have been motivated to pare down payroll and send Verlander packing either that offseason or at the 2018 trade deadline.

But perhaps, if the Tigers had executed that trade for Bregman, they would have taken a different route in their rebuilding, one with Verlander pitching at a Cy Young level and Bregman headed toward an MVP level.

Perhaps, with the $88.5 million in salary relief they gained by shedding Justin Upton hours before the Verlander deal, the Tigers would have positioned themselves differently for the future.

Bregman had five years of team control remaining in 2017. This spring, the Astros signed him to a five-year, $100 million contract extension and Verlander to a two-year, $66 million contract extension.

Both contracts contrast with the Tigers’ efforts to shrink payroll. And entering a 2018 season in which they finished with the worst record in baseball, leading to the selection of righty Casey Mize at No. 1 overall, the team would have been decidedly better Bregman and Verlander had played together in Detroit.

But how much better is unclear. Though it's quite possible the Tigers could have avoided the most logical approach for a rebuilding mid-market team: bottoming out.

In some of Verlander’s final comments as a Tiger, after a mid-August start in Texas, he said, “I do know that there have been teams that have gone into a rebuild situation and before you know it, they have the right pieces, and a year later, they’re actually contending. … You get the right pieces and you get guys to click and you look at Mikie (Mahtook) this year, he’s been tremendous. You get another piece like that and everything meshes and you have a chance to win.

“It’s not so black-and-white as to say, ‘Hey, we’re transitioning,’ that we’re going to lose. It’s not automatic.”

Those words still ring true, even with all the caveats of hindsight analysis involved. If the Tigers acquired Bregman, they still might be at rock bottom. Bregman might be the hot commodity Fulmer was two years ago. Verlander’s career may not have been rejuvenated in Detroit the way it was in Houston. Mize might have ended up in Detroit, after all. Or not.

Either way, the Tigers didn't get the right piece. And we'll never know whether it would have clicked, or meshed, or helped the Tigers avoid this painful rebuilding process.

But, back in Houston, it’s worth it to wonder.

More:Tigers' public address announcer Jay Allen diagnosed with stage 4 cancer

More:Detroit Tigers top prospects: Minor league statistics for 2019

Contact Anthony Fenech at afenech@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @anthonyfenech. Read more on the Detroit Tigers and sign up for our Tigers newsletter.