CHICAGO – On the surface, the Astros’ initial 18 months under owner Jim Crane and general manager Jeff Luhnow have been a baseball failure. The club is 18 games below .500 after Saturday’s win at Wrigley Field and own a lopsided 84-154 overall record since December 2011, when Luhnow took over the baseball-operations side of Crane’s top-to-bottom organizational rebuild. But immediate failure was expected for the Astros, who many believed possessed the worst pro team and farm system in Major League Baseball two years ago. The big league club remains a long-term work in progress, utilizing a multi-stage plan with a soft 2015 launch date. The farm system is what [...]