Astros to pursue Edwin Encarnacion

This was probably unlucky. When you have separate parties, you could have EE's camp waiting it out like they did, while Beltran's agent may have said they were going to take the Yankees offer, if the Astros weren't willing to deal. Astros may have also said take it or we are moving on to EE, and I don't have a problem following through with that. Most of baseball was stunned with how the EE situation ultimately panned out. I've never seen such a reasonable FA period. Crazy to think of teams like the Yankees and Red Sox not coming in with a big offer for a guy that could replace Ortiz or Tex.

Abreu we were just beat. Miller wanted to be somewhere else and exercised his right. I think rebuilding like we did, and the incident with Aiken and the one with Vogelsong, helped cause us to miss out. I don't think that is unlucky, just how it goes.

We were successful in landing Beltran and Reddick who were high on our list and 2 of the bigger names on the market.

 

I understand that no GM is going to win every deal or FA negotiation they're involved in... just saying that compared to his draft/minor league rebuild track record/results... Luhnow's MLB deals/signings to this point hasn't separated himself in the same way.

Which is largely expected. He is still gaining OTJ experience on being an MLB GM. He has been hamstrung by payroll in years past, and is just only now getting some looser purse strings to go after guys.

Then again, there has been some flat-out debacles (Gomez trade, Rasmus signing, Singleton, Reed thus far, Giles thus far) that you can't just blame all on luck. The GM has to take ownership when those sort of moves backfire, especially if everybody is giving him all the praise for the development/promotion of several key players that he actually wasn't responsible for drafting.

Again, I love how Luhnow was able to rebuild the farm and stock-pile assets that may end up being consolidated into key MLB pieces... its exactly what he was able to do for St. Louis as the minor league director. I would love it even more if the MLB moves worked out at a similar rate, thereby fully making this front office the "smartest guys in the room".

 

Quick review of Luhnows highest impact moves:

2011:
Melancon for Lowrie

2012:
Myers for Devenski
Wandy for Grossman
Happ/Lyon for Musgrove/Wojo/Rollins/Perez
Veras for $2M
Drafted Correa, McCullers, Phillips, Ruiz

2013:
Lowrie for Carter/Stassi/Peacock
Altuve extension
Norris for Hader/Fisher
Veras for Paulino
Lyles for Fowler
Feldman for $30M
McHugh off waivers
Drafted Appel

2014:
Released JD Martinez
Cosart for Martes/Marisnick/Cameron/Moran
Harris off waivers
Gregerson for $18.5M
Lowrie for $23M
Drafted Aiken, Fisher, Reed, Nix
Signed Franklin Perez

2015:
Folty/Ruiz for Gattis/Hoyt
Fowler for Valbuena
Rasmus for $8M
Mengden/Nottingham for Kazmir
Hader/Phillips/Santana for Gomez/Fiers
Rasmus for $15.8M
Released Grossman
Non-tendered Carter
Villar for Sneed
Velasquez/Appel/Eshelman/Arauz for Giles/Arauz
Drafted Bregman, Tucker, Cameron

2016:
Fister for $7M
Gurriel for $47.5M
Released Gomez
Morton for $14M
Reddick for $52M
Abreu/Guzman for McCann
Beltran for $16M
Drafted Whitley

 

Bad moves:
Gomez trade
Releasing JD Martinez
Drafting Appel

Good moves:
McHugh off waivers
Drafting Correa/McCullers
Drafting Bregman/Tucker
Extending Altuve

Bad non-moves:
Not adding to the roster prior to 2016 (should have upgraded 1B and Fister was too weak of an addition to the rotation)

Good non-moves:
Not overpaying on $100M+ deals to free agents

Bad luck:
Rangers getting Hamels, Lucroy, and Beltran

 

I'd include Singleton as well... not because his contract was crippling, but because their scouting system suggested he was good enough to warrant that sort of gamble, and good enough to get promoted to the big leagues.

Not all touted prospects make it big... but it was a pretty big mis-calculation that hopefully won't be repeated with future portly 1B prospects.

I'd also add giving Rasmus the qualifying offer last year as a bad move.

Good non-moves: Not trading/cutting Keuchel when they were cleaning house with every other non-prospect prospect. Also, not overpaying for a free agent may not have been simply a front office call. They may not have even had the approval/ability from ownership to overpay even if they wanted to.

Also, they chose not to pay for Beltran/Lucroy with similar prospects. Thats not bad luck.

On the flip-side, they have had some good luck... namely Aiken not taking their token last-second salary increase, and them ending up with Bregman instead.

 

If you agree it's a gamble, then by definition the Astros determined there was a reasonable chance of success or failure. So whether he succeeded or failed doesn't mean their scouting was wrong. For example, if they determined he had a 70% chance of success and thus was worth that type of contract, then just because he performs in the other 30% doesn't mean the scouting was necessarily wrong - it just means he fell into the less-good outcome side of things.

 

By that definition, any decision that's not 100% is a "gamble".

Again, my main concern was not the contract... it was their previously thought-to-be infallable "system" that determined he was ready to succeed at the big league level.

No matter how you slice it, they mis-calculated both is baseball potential as well as his professionalism (him showing up out of shape last year, in a make/break spring, was pretty unprofessional).

 

The Singleton contract was pretty inconsequential in the greater scheme of things; 1 bust is not an indictment of the entire scouting system, and $10M over 5 years won't have any meaningful impact on their ability to make other moves.

I listed Beltran and Lucroy as "bad luck" not because Houston wasn't willing to pay the price to acquire them but because those players went to their division rivals instead. Had Lucroy ended up with Cleveland it would have been a lot better for the Astros. I know the statistics might disagree, but I fee that Hamels and Lucroy going to the Rangers are the single biggest reasons Houston didn't advance further in the playoffs in 2015 and didn't make the playoffs in 2016.

 

Again, that's not bad luck. The Astros were operating in the same trade vaccume as the Rangers, and could have also benefitted once the Cleveland deal fell apart.

Not that they should have made decisions based on what a rival is doing... but if the metrics suggest that the Rangers getting a player will be the single biggest difference maker in them finishing with a better record than you, and you also could benefit from said player, wouldn't that indicate that a move should have been made?

In the end, Lucroy wasn't the difference between the Astros not making the playoffs and the Rangers making the playoffs... wasn't he only there for the final 6 or so games between the clubs?

 

Well that's pretty much true to some extent.

No one - including the Astros - has ever claimed their system is infallible. If it was certain that Singleton would be a success, there would be a 0% chance he'd ever accept that contract. The entire purpose of a contract like that is to diversify risk. If he fails, the Astros lose out. If he successed, the Astros win out. The understood part of that is both sides have something to gain and lose because there is a real risk of failure.

You can't measure the decision-making based on whether one guy succeeded or failed - just as you can't measure a batter by 1 at bat. If the Astros give those kinds of contracts to people they think have a 70% chance of success, then you can only measure whether they are right by seeing dozens of those contracts and seeing if about 70% of them pan out. Being 0-for-1 or 1-for-1 is meaningless.

 

Houston can't control which teams are involved for players they cant/won't acquire (nor can they control who other teams trade their players to), and they could not have known for certain that the Rangers were going to be the team that got Lucroy once the Cleveland deal fell through. So yes, it is in fact bad luck for them that the player they passed on ended up in their division.

 

... and some say it will be plenty easy to make a deadline deal.

I'm not willing to cry about luck when it was the Astros who didn't really show much effort or interest in going after him.