I had a chance to listen to Evan Drellich and Ken Rosenthal’s podcast. I don’t plan to read the book, but I’ve read enough articles to get an idea of what this book is mainly about. Evan is a former disgruntled writer that covered the Astros and his podcast, articles I’ve read, and his interviews he has done recently reflect this. The title of the book is Winning Fixes Everything, but it’s really about the Astros. It’s everything negative that he could share about the Astros. He tries to throw in things like the Red Sox and the Dodgers for cover so that he can state it’s not just about the Astros. At the end of the day, his motivation for this book isn’t about integrity of the game. It’s a way where he can make money off sharing all these stories about the Astros and painting the Astros as some dysfunctional organization. He has his right to do so but own it. That is probably my biggest issue with him. Every fortune 500 company or organization have stuff that happens that would be bad press if it was shared with the public. Conflict is inevitable and **** happens. Where I have an issue with Evan is the fact that he tries to talk about how bad of an organization the Astros were up to the end of the 2019 World Series. If the organization was in so much conflict and disarray as he said it was, there is no way the Astros would have had so much success post Hinch and Luhnow. I don’t care how much talent that Astros had/have, this organization would have imploded if it were as bad as Evan tries to portray it. If locker rooms were divided, there is no way this team would have accomplished as much as they have. No one that we are aware of asked to be traded. It starts with leadership, and I will give Jim Crane credit for this along with the players. One last point I wanted to make was the fact that Ken and Evan shared how they wanted to get this right. Evan mentioned that sign stealing was a baseball issue that everyone was doing it. To me, getting a story right is by investigating it all. We will never know if there was another team that took it “too far” as others have stated the Astros have done. Their podcast acknowledged that there are some players sharing on social media that other teams were doing it. If they wanted to get it right, they shouldn’t have had tunnel vision solely on the Astros. What the Astros did was wrong, and many will not recognize the 2017 World Series. I’m glad they were able to win another one. But I will tell you who else was wrong. MLB was also wrong for letting the Astros hold the bag. Astros took one for the team.
The Athletic was on the verge of being out of business before this story hit and the readership ramped up. This was a game-saver for them, so they had every reason to milk it for everything it’s worth. Evan certainly had an axe to grind with the team… but had he not been such an ass-hat in his coverage/early reporting (criticizing the tanking, Luhnow, Crane, everything), they would have possibly treated him with more respect/professionalism. Instead he chose to go the low route with continuous cheap shots… and then when the team started to turn it around, not a single mea culpa voiced. Hell, I was vocally anti tanking originally… and questioned some of Luhnow’s decisions with his inexperience, while Crane was also embarrassing himself every time he spoke to the press (and that awful initial community leaders sign!)… and I fully ate crow on almost everything once the team started winning and Luhnow got more adept at making trades and aggressive with promotions (I would still disagree with the Springer delayed promotion decision… which seemed to influence his choice to eventually leave more than anything).
Honestly, I always wanted to know the real story around Springer. I know the delay was an issue, and from what I gathered the front office wanted Springer to sign a Altuve style contract before the Scott Boras deal Altuve ended up getting. I know there has been a ton of speculation around Springer leaving. I know @Nook shared some info before.
They offered a lot of really low ball extension deals to a lot of young players. Robbie Grossman, Matt Dominguez, Altuve, Springer, Singleton. In the case of Springer and Singleton, they specifically used the lure of getting promoted earlier if they’d agree to the extension. Singleton took the offer, Springer did not. There was plenty of speculation that Springer would still be called up after super 2 in 2013… but it didn’t happen. By waiting till late April 2014 (1 month after opening day), they did get to keep him thru 2020 but the most Springer negotiated anything with them was a buyout of his second to last two arbitration years. Also when Altuve did sign the low ball extension, he wasn’t with Boras yet. That soon changed when he almost immediately started outperforming the contract.
I don't blame Hinch or Luhnow. Should they have stopped it? They tried... at some point you have to consider what it does to the clubhouse if you create an us v them situation. I blame Beltran and Cora the most for having pushed it in the first place and any veterans that went along with it. I don't hold a rookie Bregman responsible for going along with it. That's a lot of pressure...
Drellich is a little prick. The Dodgers suck. The Athletic was rescued by a rat singing to a prick. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Luhnow claimed to not know. Hinch didn't really do anything to stop it. I think they deserve just as much blame as Beltran and Cora. Which is basically what happened with Hinch given he faced the same consequences as Beltran and Cora. Luhnow has suffered unfairly. I'll always hope he gets another chance to run an MLB franchise. He was too good and people are generally given forgiveness with time.
My guess is that happened in a game or right after a game where the offense stunk. Remember that season the Astros offense was much better on the road than at home. They had some offensive stink bombs at home in games they were supposed to be cheating in.
Doing something is talking to the team and coaches. Doing something is going to your bosses and expressing concern. Doing something is having the monitor moved. At best that was a tantrum with no explanation of why.
I’m not planning on reading the book but what bothers me in particular: Drellich’s thesis is that the Astros’ front office culture led to the cheating scandal (or a more ethical people-driven organization would’ve stopped it). I am with him on criticizing Luhnow to a certain extent but I really doubt he draws a clear line from the corporate management culture to the player-instigated cheating which came from other organizations. Is this an accurate summary? The Astros valued winning above all else and ruining the lives of various players and fans was an inevitable result of this culture?
The answer is no to your question. The Astros did something that they knew was rampant across the league and they were later scapegoated. By the 2017 playoffs every team was suspicious of every other team and multiple signs were used even without runners on base. Fast forward to 1:30 on this video...
The main 3 reasons are 1. The Astros being a dynasty costs MLB money 2. Luhnow remembered the media that treated him like crap while he was building the dynasty and them saying what he was doing would never work. When the Stros started winning he treated those media members like the POS they are. 3. He was changing the way franchises scouted players. Less scouts at the parks, more film and analytics.
#2 sure slants Luhnow in a rose colored light. I believe it to be true, but tones down the part where Luhnow's personality caused as much of this as anything else because he never was the typical "treat others based on the best, big picture, interests of the team now and in the future." Executive. If Luhnow was a guy who "played the game" and didn't piss on anyone who criticized him then maybe this would have been much smaller in scope and legacy.
Hinch showed a lack of leadership skills and a lack of good judgment. Hinch admitted that he didn't even ask Beltran to stop - instead he acted like they were not doing anything when everyone in that dugout knew he knew and he let them get away with it. That showed a certain degree of cowardice for a man who only had one job - lead. I still like Hinch, but this was a big screw up from a character stand point. I would have had more respect for him if he had just told his players it was fine - because at least he would be leading his dugout.