Regardless of what you call Brantley, since he was a free agent and eligible to sign with any team at the time he signed with Houston, he was a free agent signing. It would be an extension if he was signed while still under contract to Houston.
Why not bring back Luhnow. All the good players on this team are players he got. He was obviously very good at his job. He served his year. AJ and Correa got their jobs back time to bring him back.
It would be extremely surprising if Luhnow became a GM again. But I suppose it’s plausible that Click flops, and Crane and Luhnow patch things up in 2 years.
It’s all speculation, but I wonder if Luhnow would even consider coming back to the Astros in the event that we sought his return. Probably incredibly unlikely to begin with, but at the same time you have to wonder If that bridge has been burned. I don’t know how many ousted GMs in any major sport have ever been brought back.
It sure seems like MLB and the owners have black balled Luhnow. Certainly (as others have said here with some inside information) that the MLB front office and Crane had a handshake agreement that Crane would fire Luhnow (in exchange for the MLB front office not giving the Astros grief about cheating their way to a World Series). Maybe a new owner would give Luhnow another shot at GM.
Funny thing that Click did not do a major front office shake up, when he came in. I suspect that Luhnow got Crane's buy-in as he built the Astros's front office and that Crane hired Click on the condition of keeping most of the organizational structure in place. While others tend to give Luhnow credit for all of the personnel moves during his tenure, I tend to give the organization that he built the built the credit.
One of the reasons I'm not too afraid of Click as GM for the next few years. Losing Oz may be the biggest loss for the short term. Though, I give Luhnow a lot of credit for the team whether directly providing input or indirectly by hiring smart people.
I think he's got to be black balled or someone like the Diamondbacks would have jumped at him as soon as he became available. I think that's part of the reason why he's so bitter about what happened, along with Crane trying to screw him out of the money left on his contract.
It wasn't a GM. but I remember a certain Manager named Billy Martin who was fired five times by George Steinbrenner.
Dude! Everybody knows how you feel about click, why are you just randomly saying the same thing? What purpose does it serve to always crap on Click. This team was not a cadillac when Click took over, especially after Verlander got hurt. How could it be a cadillac when you lost 3 of your top 4 pitchers. It's bizarre that you continue to bash Click at every turn and then ignoring the facts and using your own interpretation. It does not matter if Brantley was not an extension he went on the FA market and it was still Clicks choice to resign him. Give it a rest my guy.
The Astros are on pace to win 92-93 games. Given that the Astros have an easier schedule to finish the year, 95+ wins is a real possibility. How many here seriously thought that the Astros would win more than 90 games at the beginning of the season?
I pegged the Astros at about 90 wins prior to the season so winning more than 90 games was a 50-50 thing to me.
So in 2 years Click has taken a multiple years 100 win team and turned it into a team that will be doing well to win 95 games.
If they didn't sign Brantley they would've had the money to sign a comparable FA. Bottom line for me was they were going to bring back 1 of Springer-Brantley. Bringing Brantley back wasn't some great accomplishment. IMHO
