"One of new Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow's guiding principles is that baseball is a zero-sum game.

One team's win is another team's loss.

One team's championship is everybody else's regret.

Under the circumstances, don't look for Luhnow's 25-page plan for rebuilding baseball's worst team to appear anywhere outside the Astros inner sanctum. Luhnow is looking for a way to catch up to teams that that have smart, capable people in charge. Showing them his exact blueprint for doing so wouldn't put him in line to be valedictorian of the current class of GMs. In 2013, the Astros will join an American League West that features savvy GMs such as Jon Daniels of Texas and Billy Beane of Oakland as well as free-spending Angels owner Arte Moreno.

"We have to develop a competitive advantage in Houston in order to win consistently," Luhnow said. "How do you do that? You figure out what your competition is doing. You figure out where you might gain an edge. You develop the capabilities to gain that edge, and you invest in it.""