No GM hits a homer with every move, but so far going into just his second offseason: Moves I liked that worked out well: Re-signing Brantley, trading for Maton, Yimi, and Graveman, re-signing Maldy, Lance extension, Yuli extension, bringing back Castro as a backup Moves I liked but didn't really work out: Odorizzi signing. That was the right move at that time, he was the best available FA starter at that point in time and Framber was possibly out for the season. Nobody knew he would suck, and if his ego was more in check he would take his two trips through the order, be effective, and STFU. Moves I thought were bad and were indeed bad: Baez, Pruitt. The good far far far outweighs the bad. He also hit the international market hard when he didn't have 1st or 2nd round picks to work with. We've known for awhile retaining Correa was going to be difficult, maybe even impossible. I will not blame Click or Crane if he ends up taking a $300m deal elsewhere. Of course we all miss Luhnow, I wish he was never fired, but we have to remember even he made some mistakes: releasing JD Martinez, Gomez/Fiers trade, trading Teoscar for a LOOGY. Also people forget that Luhnow inherited Keuchel, Altuve, Springer, and Marwin from Wade.
Outside of the player evaluations/trades, there were also some significant issues with Luhnow’s management overall which is ultimately the responsibility of the GM.
Wasn't casting blame as much as saying that Click lost 4 top draft picks which limited his trade capital in the last two years.
Pretty crazy how much the Mets had to spend to convince Scherzer to come there. There still seems to be a very high demand for quality starting pitching. The Astros are sitting better than most teams in that area. The Toronto rotation looks pretty damn stiff with Gausman, Berrios, Ryu, Manoah, and top Prospect Nate Pearson. Outside of Correa, not sure how many “big name” free agents the Astros are currently targeting. I think the trade market is where they are looking to possibly upgrade. I’m at the point where if we don’t keep Correa- perfectly fine with rolling with Jeremy Pena as long as we can upgrade CF Or catcher
Would still rather spend big time free agent money on position players or pitchers on shorter term deals... basically what the Astros could end up as when its all said and done. Pitchers still carry the game to game injury/overuse risk that is built into the position. Scherzer has been one of the rest exceptions where a long term deal for a pitcher worked out... but all arms do give out, eventually.
Agreed, of course it would've been great to have all of the draft picks. I look at Leon as Click's #1 pick two years ago and last year they paid the price. But this shouldn't stop any moves Click wants to make in the future. One of the things Click does best is draft well. Yet Click had the trade capital to trade for bullpen upgrades after screwing up the declining velocity Baez signing.
So signing 2 catchers that cant hit .200 to multi year deals is a good move? Agreed with the rest of that part of the post. Luhnow released J.D. as a favor to J.D. who asked to be released. Looking back it was the wrong move. But helping guys out builds goodwill around MLB. I wish Luhnow would've kept Teoscar, but atleast Liriano got one of the biggest outs to help win a WS. That's a tradeoff that's acceptable. The Gomez/Fiers trade was simply a bad move.
Care to expound on what these issues might have been? I know he made Crane alot of money and brought a championship to H-Town. Aren't those the main responsibilities of a GM?
Castro had an 0.800 OPS this year and a 0.900 OPS when used properly (against righties). If postseason performance matters, he had an 1.150 OPS there.
I'm hoping he plays more now that his incentives from last season set his salary for 2022 and Astros don't save money by sitting him anymore.
I think the only way the Astros can substantially upgrade their lineup through FA is to move Odorizzi, but I can't see teams lining up to trade for a guy with a 4.7 xERA last season and a projected ERA/FIP well into the 4s and who will be owed >$10M should he pitch 150+ innings. I think we would need to attach a prospect to move him and is that something Click would be willing to do? Like the only way to get value out of Odo is for him to eat innings because he's not good on a per inning basis, but if he eats innings he just gets more expensive.
A general manager is responsible for the overall operations of their part of a company. So hiring, training, management of staff, culture, etc. The cheating scandal, situation with Osuna, McKinsey / consultant view of personnel. Those definitely hurt the reputation and finances of the organization and made it harder to attract and retain different types of talent. They all happened under his watch and resulted in Crane needing to clean house. Could he have made Crane money without some of those things? Would the organization be in a better place? You can argue whether any of that stuff was fair or not, but it happened under his watch and had the results it had. If we're judging on results only, you can't ignore that.