Oh I agree that he is good enough he should have offers, it's just been my opinion for a while that part of the punishment the commish and MLB levvied against the Astros/Luhnow is an unofficial lifetime ban. I think the fact that Luhnow wiped his phone clean before handing it over to the league let them know that he knew more than he let on but they couldn't prove it. So the message went out to all owners that he is not to be hired. I have very little to back that up. That's just my guess as to why he isn't back in the league yet, because I believe he wants to be.
What does he have to gain by making that up? And yes, if he’s being asked to rebuild the Pirates, A’s, or Rockies (teams that are permanently hamstrung from having any sort of long-term consistent success), he may not jump at those opportunities just yet.
Baseball has officially banned or temporarily banned figures for violations. Its one of the few leagues that will try and enforce things (vs. the NFL and NBA where everybody gets at least 5-10 chances… sometimes more… Josh Gordon will still get another job at some point).
1) People lie simply to save a little face all the time. 2) Putting that into the ether could also be an attempt to help a team feel like they COULD explore that offer
I don't think MLB even needs to send out any sort of unofficial warning to teams about hiring him for teams to know it could be problematic for them. I don't KNOW how he is perceived by the league office and the other owners/GMs, but there were absolutely reports that the other owners wanted MLB to eviscerate the Astros. It's definitely possible that he became the avatar for that hatred and anger and no other team wants to risk bring that toxicity to their team.
Save face? Sort of impossible to do that in his position. I just don’t think he’d take “any” job just to get back into baseball. He’s smart enough to recognize no-win situations vs. situations that can lead to sustained success. The key is that more and more Luhnow disciples continue to get interviews/GM jobs in baseball.
As we know, success cures a **** ton of hate/anger and even toxicity can be tolerated to an extent when the team is dominating. Front offices still hate the Astros… because they continue to have sustained success and don’t necessarily elevate the game further with that success on a national stage.
I'd take him back in a heartbeat. His level of involvement in the sign stealing was on the periphery at most. He's a generational talent as a GM -- the guy built a juggernaut. He's paid his debt to society, should be free to return, imo.
Just seems like his way of keeping a finger on the pulse out this way. He's extremely cunning at the least.
This. Give a huge middle finger to the commissioner and everyone involved in the league. Oh and the fans too.
Hire him back. Best GM in MLB history. No one else has his track record in terms of the draft (Correa, LMJ, Bregman, Tucker, Pena, Hunter Brown), international signings (Framber, Luis Garcia, Urquidy), and trades (Yordan, Verlander, Cole, Greinke). We should do it for our city and ignore any grumbling that the bigwigs over at the MLB league office, MLBPA, or BBWAA might have over this. It's always been Houston vs everybody, so let's keep the success in-house and all the haterade outside by continuing our standard of excellence by bringing him back.
He also drafted Brady Aiken and Mark Appel, traded for Carlos Gomez, Mike Fiers, and Tyler Clippard, and extended the likes of Jon Singleton.
Yep, and despite that he still won a World Series and set the franchise in a favorable position for years to come. Still quite an achievement despite the occasional gaffe.
The challenge for any team that hires him, but especially the Astros, is who is going to trade with him? I suspect even Click has some challenges because teams don’t want to be seen helping the Astros improve … between actual dislike and fear of backlash, no FO would make a meaningful trade with Luhnow if there were ANY remotely competitive offers.
He is black balled because he was unapologetic and didn’t roll over for the investigation. Hinch came out and basically bent over and spit out the line MLB wanted to hear, so he can manage again. Kevin Goldstein (sorry buddy), shut up and look a super low profile. Someone had to be a figure head for easy blame and the league wouldn’t let it be Crane and they meant the defiant Luhnow. It is too bad, because objectively it is hard to find a better baseball executive this generation when you consider the totality of the circumstances.
He also had the balls to refuse to over pay Aiken when he saw the injury issue. He took heat from the league office over it and negative press- but he was right to not over look the injury as Aiken never healed. For all we know, Aiken could have been Kershaw. The evaluation wasn’t flawed, an injury they found after they drafted him was the problem. The money he gave to Singleton was minor and he didn’t have anyway to know Fiers was a pedophile and would decide to destroy his career by ratting on the Astros. Gomez was a bad trade, no way around that. As for Appel, he didn’t pan out but he was the overwhelming choice for where he was drafted. No one is perfect but Luhnow was awesome at hiring the right people and making the right baseball decisions.
Luhnow was ( is) not perfect but it's really tough to deny how well he rebuilt the entire Astros organization. And I know this will never happen, but he deserves to be in the hall of fame for how much he revolutionized the game.
