I actually think the Astros farm is reasonably well regarded amongst the teams and @Snake Diggity and @Wulaw Horn would likely echo that. It lacks the kind of well scouted, high end talent that tends to be an easy lay for Baseball America and their ilk, but teams have their own internal evaluations and there’s definitely major leaguers currently developing.
Despite Luhnow’s absence, for example, they appear to be doing a pretty good job of developing the late arriving but solid big leaguers (at least for a few years) that was kind of the hallmark of those central division winning Cardinal teams. I think we tend to downplay the value of that because we’ve had studs like Correa, Springer, Bregman, and McCullars that were all top 50 prospects before they hit the majors and default into it’s the only way to do it.
What might be more problematic is that we just don’t have any depth at all to deal from, which is why people like @Wulaw Horn pushed adding free agents in the off-season and making an outfielder or two superfluous. Our willingness to spend is potentially the last thing we have available to trade away.
Also, Bowden sucks and no legitimate GM would ever tell him anything of merit.