Fire Baker

great post. Thank you

 

I don't see Dusty being fired midseason. It would be a bad look for a respected baseball guy. But the organization needs to force its hand on Dusty's lineups. If Maldo is playing 5x/week, the lineup is automatically worse than it could be. We need offense. His defense has fallen off and his whispers seem to have become mute. He makes Julks @ DH sound awesome with Diaz catching most games and swinging his good bat. Even still, injuries and bad offseason decisions may have derailed this season before it began. I'm not sure I prefer mortgaging the future and trading prospects for upgrades. The players we have just need to play better. But the easiest upgrade is stop having Maldy on pace for 120 GP. The defense can go ahead stop throwing the ball everywhere except the intended target too

 

We let go of a general manager after winning a World Series. Just have to look down on Kirby to understand why a coach should never win a power struggle against a GM...

 

Wouldn't have to fire him, just crack the whip Dana. Make him wish Click was back.

 

Baker didn’t fire Click, Crane did. Crane didn’t like Click’s passiveness in moves. Crane allowed Bagwell to basically sign Abreu and signed Montero. No GM hurt players moves. Combined with the injuries, WTF is Baker supposed to do? Brandon Bielak and Blanco are in your pitching rotation. Tucker, Bregman, and Pena are underperforming. Abreu and Pressly are pitching like ****. Of course, no Yordan. Astros keep losing Free Agents with really no replacements. At some point, it catches up with you. Now it has…

 

Crane hearing about the whines from Baker about no lefty reliever, protesting about a potential catcher acquisition, and unloading Straw still played a role.

 

But did acquire a catcher and the Straw deal produced Diaz and Maton. Sounds like a win to me.

 

But saying that Dusty had no influence in Crane letting Click go is simply a pipe dream.

 

This team is moving away the analytics that got them their success with Dusty and Bagwell having more free reign. Click and Dusty butting heads was probably the best thing for the team..a good equilibrium of analytics and old-school baseball "gut feeling".

 

I agree that they had to evolve.

Once all teams were using analytics, then they no longer had any advantage. And their best people were moving to other teams.

To keep an advantage, they needed to incorporate different variables.

Adding the old school philosophies and evaluations makes sense.

Dumping analytics or making them secondary does not make sense.

 

I disagree. Adding old school does not make sense. Analyzing and measuring what the old school evaluations were looking for makes sense. The best teams will look for new things to measure and find it in different places. Luhnow was amazing at finding talent and measuring character from Latin America. That is why this team is where it is. Giving guys like Altuve, Framber, Javier, Garcia a chance.

The next big thing in scouting is psychological and mental evaluations.

 

The problem with that is somebody will insist on hiring a psychologist to do those evaluations and those guys are nuts.

 

What is the breaking point? When is enough enough? I think losing the next two games will do it for me. Two series sweeps in a row should be enough to force a major change if there is any hope of getting back into the playoffs this season. If we lose these next two games and nothing happens I will take that as a white flag and I will expect the Astros to be sellers at the deadline.

 

Certainly being 10+ games out of the division and WC would be a point of no return for me. At that point there'd be a <10% chance of making the playoffs and any moves should be geared toward 2024 and beyond.

 

I think the bigger problem with mental evaluations will be cries of racism. The Wonderlic test was eliminated from the NFL for this "reason". If they could come up with a test to evaluate athletes' 1) Competitive Drive; and 2) Work Ethic then they'd really have something. These types of psychological tests exist in the business world and are used extensively -- particularly for high end leaders. They can tell you whether you are task oriented, a visionary leader, creative, willing to be coached... and all types of behavioral aspects that are relevant to a role. It's amazingly accurate. I use them frequently when deciding on personnel/leadership additions to my various industrial pursuits.

 

After meeting him at Specs... let's keep Dusty around forever... just not making lineups

 

what?

 

Dusty is now 1-0 since I met him.

 

Give this man his booze... also-- what was Dusty buying? I'm almost confident it was either some good whiskey-- or straight gold rum.

 

if he just sit in the dugout and sip, don't make any decisions, I'm good with that.