Yup. He has to play CF and not be awful. McCormick has more experience in CF of late. One of them likely makes the team. Otherwise Tucker is your backup CFer. Plus, the very very small chance that Leon goes nuts and forces himself on the roster if Straw, McCormick, and Souza look awful.
You don't want to call him "great" fine, but to call him an avg/.500 GM is in fact CRAZY!! Yes he presided over a team that lost over 100 games three straight yrs? Why? Because the team was horrible and he stripped it down and started acquiring assets (he had a plan and that plan WORKED). After losing 111 games in '13 they won the WS FOUR YEARS later. He drafted Correa, Bregman, LMJ, Tucker and countless others. He traded for JV, Pressly, Alvarez, Cole and Greinke. He signed Morton and McCann and JRED and Brantley. What you're doing is like looking at Koufax's six yrs before he figured things out (he was 36-40) and calling him average for his career. He did what any GM aspires to do and that's build a WS team and a team that also was in position to contend a for a few yrs after that (and is still in a good position). Average GM's don't accomplish this. I see you on here playing GM (proposing trades and evaluating players) which is fun and your right to do HOWEVER it's just fantasy. What Luhnow DID was REALITY and reached the pinnacle in his profession and if anyone (other GM's, players, or fans like you) can't give him props for what he achieved than that's either out of hatred or just flat out ignorance.
Well obviously the media and the powers that be. I personally don't care but the reasons we got so **** on during this stuff is because we rubbed people the wrong way, it's not fair but life is not fair.
So would I. Which is why I suggested a few weeks ago to get Puig for RF and have a lineup that mashes. Use Straw for late inning defensive replacement after Brantley's last AB.
Don’t get me wrong, I was a big Luhnow supporter...but he was GM during the largest sports cheating scandal in, what, 50 years? 100 years? To call his tenure average—with all of the fallouts that occurred under his watch (of which there were many)—is not a crazy take. In fact, calling his tenure “average” is a huge compliment and testament to his success if you look at everything that happened under his watch. He had his fair share of mistakes that would’ve made other GMs abject failures. But he was able to piece together and field a very successful team... no one will ever take that away from him. But his style and imprint was also the root cause of a ton of interpersonal issues that lead to his inevitable downfall. I think his tenure was slightly above average all things considered, but calling it average is not “CRAZY” IMO.
Here’s another guy rejecting the idea of nuance (not to mention facts). Luhnow’s win/loss record as a GM is a cold, hard fact. It’s not the sole criteria for evaluation and I’ve never treated that way. That’s inconvenient for idiots who want to polarize everything. Luhnow did a lot of good/great things. You listed them all. He did a lot of bad/shitty things. Those have been listed in previous comments on this thread. Taken as a whole, my opinion is he was a good, but not great GM. Your comparison to Koufax is interesting, because Koufax figured it out, stayed in the majors and had a lot of success. Luhnow didn’t make it that far. He tanked, built a roster, won a WS, then got fired, and now no one will hire him. So a better hypothetical would be how would Koufax be viewed if he had blown out his arm in his 6th season. Because that’s essentially what happened to Luhnow. Anyone wanting to credit Luhnow for things that happen after he got fired must also be willing to take credit away from him for things that happened before he go there. That means taking away any wins that Altuve, Keuchel, and Springer contributed to, because he inherited those great players. It means taking away credit for Correa (Wade tanked for that #1 pick) and McCullers (Wade got that comp pick for Barmes). And the list goes on. Again, the constant insistence on pushing every opinion to the absolute extreme is ****ing ridiculous. Luhnow was good. He could have been great. But he wasn’t, mostly because he made enemies and let them get the best of him.
That would then suggest that Souza being able to play CF doesn't matter as Tucker could slide over. I have very little faith that Souza will be anything special on defense. Being able to hit, especially LHPs, will be the key for him to make the team as Brantley will be the OF that needs the most rest. Straw, love him or hate him, it really looks like he's going to be playing CF and that he's going to be out there almost every game as a young guy (until Astros have a better starting CF).
We don't know what the Astros think of Tucker being in CF so that would matter for Souza. Our opinion is irrelevant. Souza is a corner OF with 4 starts in his MLB career in CF. I don't expect him to be on the team. We know Castro and Diaz are locks for the bench. We don't know if they will carry a 3 man or 4 man bench. Someone has to be a backup CFer. So are they comfortable with Tucker doing that then yea Souza could make the team. Otherwise, I expect McCormick to be the guy to backup CF.
Our opinions are irrelevant. I think we have a pronoun problem. I thought you were saying "He has to play CF and not be awful." as a reference to Souza. I doubt Astros think Souza can play CF well and as such his ability to play CF is likely irrelevant to the Astros. His being signed to a minor league deal suggests that if he can hit, Astros will either carry 5 OFs or are comfortable enough with Tucker in CF (this is not a high bar, he could be awful and his bat would still play) to carry 4. Edit: Maybe Souza bounces back defensively to where he was 4 years ago or Tucker falls apart defensively such that Souza's defense in CF actually matters.
Depends on whether you care about the on the field product more or about politics. I enjoyed having three 100 win teams. I guess some didn't. If Click was exactly like Luhnow that would be a win IMHO. I really could care less what other fans or the media think. Give me a winner and Luhnow certainly gave us that.
Anyone whining about sign stealing is inherently not an informed fan of the game.... or they are blinded by bias for one reason or the other. Either way, those aren't the kinds of people that have opinions that deserve to be valued. Just my 2 cents.
Biggest cheating scandal in 50 years? Did you forget about the steroid and HGH use? Yeah to call his tenure average is crazy. How many times in the 55 year history of the franchise did the Astros make an ALCS/NLCS before Luhnow? Twice? How many did the Astros make with the team Luhnow built? 4? How many times in the nearly 60 year history of the Astros did they make the WS before Luhnow? Zero.... he had the Astros in two World Series in 8 years, won one and took the other one 7 games and had a lead deep in the game. How many GM’s inherit a 105 loss team with a middling farm system and 5 years later they win a WS? Then over the first 8 years running a team go to two WS, win over 100 games three straight years and set the team up to go to the ALCS and lose in 7 games the year he is gone? You don’t have to like Jeff Luhnow... you can be pisses he traded for Osuna (I didn’t like the move) but you better dislike Theo Epstein and Brian Cashman for fawning all over Aroldis Chapman. Yet I hear little about Chapman’s issues (who by the way is such a piece of **** he is disliked by his own teammates). You can be upset or disappointed about the trash cans.. regardless of the fact that other teams were doing similar things... however that doesn’t make Luhnow an average GM or a .500% one. It isn’t “nuance”, a lack of nuance as look at the fact he had two seasons of 100 loses and a third of 90 and saying “well he was about .500%”. How many Hall of Famers and all stars were on the Astros when he took over? How many did he draft? How many did he trade for? He freaking traded for possibly three Hall of Fame starting pitchers with Verlander, Cole and Greinke... the cost to the Astros? Almost nothing.... he signed an all star pitcher off the garbage heap in Charlie Morton... he drafted Lance McCullers and Jose Urquidy and Christian Javier and Framber Valdez. If 8 years he added to the pitching rotation: Verlander/Cole/Greinke/Morton/Valdez/McCullers/Javier/Urquidy
Did you mean win the World Series or win a game in the World Series? Or represent the AL in the World Series?
Ya it’s super bizzare to see an Astros fan talk about the “cheating” scandal as if it was something plenty of other teams weren’t doing before, during, and after. Are they choosing to purposely ignore reality? It’s no different to me from saying only one team had players taking steroids, just super bizzare to see
