Crane had to fire these guys, but I blame him as much as Hinch and Luhnow he deserves some blame for letting this happen. His punishment is the draft picks, money, and having to fire the manager and GM who won him a world series.
He's likely going to hand over the reigns to somebody hand-picked... just like he hand-picked Luhnow... but probably has to play a bigger role in the baseball ops going forward, given all that has transpired over the last few months (even though this particular scandal was over 2 years ago).
So mad at the Astros brass for making this decision. Luhnow was the best GM we've ever had. I'm not saying he didn't deserve punishment but this was over the top, in my opinion, and I have no confidence that the team is going to continue in dominance, longer-term, with others at the helm. The players loved Hinch, now they'll have less inclination to stick around when contract negotiations come up. Unbelievably stupid, knee-jerk of a reaction to fire them over this.
I dont think he's gonna make himself the GM and run the operation like Jones. But if Crane hires another GM that turns out to be great, suddenly he's the one who looks great at his job.
If I'm a rebuilding team right now I am already talking to Aj and Luhnow about coming as a package to fix my team in 21.
I think we can all understand that there are some things you can’t recover from and even if it’s an employee that you absolutely LOVE, you have to let them go. Both of these guys will and should go on to other MLB jobs and that’s going to hurt again.
Baseball is built on cheating in some form or another. You could put an asterisk next to any championship.
