The franchise is in really bad shape right now. They have a flawed MLB roster, limited options in the minor leagues and a manager and general manager who are lame ducks. Why are we here? I think the responsibility of this mostly lands on Jim Crane. Aside from deciding that once they won their second World Series in 2022 that they were moving away from an analytics based team building approach, their organizational structure is flawed. Here is the biggest on-going problem- Crane sets a budget for Dana Brown. Fine. It is limited because so many of their pitcher got hurt. Fine. I understand that. Here's where Crane handicaps Brown- Jim Crane doesn't stick to his own budget. Just as the team is recovering from the lousy Jose Abreu and Montero contracts Crane decides to pick up Carlos Correa. Does this address the most pertinent needs of the team? Nope. Is giving Josh Hader a $95 million contract at 30 years old a good idea for a team on a budget? How has this worked out? Christian Walker at $20 million a year at 33 years old? All of these were Jim Crane signings. Brown has had less options to build the roster. He was essentially given a bunch of Luby's gift vouchers and we are complaining about the meal he returned with. Good luck trying to find a talented front office person who will take a similar position with the Astros under these circumstances.
The Hader contract isn't a problem. Correa isn't even really a problem. I do think Crane is a problem though. I think early success plus MLB's reaction to the Luhnow era Astros has made him be more involved in decisions then he should be. Not retaining Click was a mistake, IMO. Not that Click was going to be a great GM, but he had done well enough to get an extension and the time between GMs was a disaster.
Jim Crane has been a really good owner for this franchise, but his decision to fire Click and go a whole offseason without a GM has turned out to be a disaster. Everything since that moment has been a downhill slide of bad contracts, tight budgets, mishandling of finances, and terrible luck with injuries.
The analytics departments under Luhnow and Click were elite. The organization once had a competitve advantage in the front office. Crane moved away from that.
Why do we need to blame ? I do agree that crane has precipitated moves that haven't worked out . Abreu and the like .... He also brought our spending higher that it had ever been and allowed a risky tanking strategy that had fans staying at home I will say, the further you get from our bottoming out point and the infusion of talent , the harder and harder it gets to keep building the team . Lunhow could trade from our minors , whiff on picks , not sign the number 1 overall pick .... And because of our situation he had time and options. Click could let springer and Correa walk without having to trade them early to try to capture value ... Thus letting us compete with them their final year. Click still had some farm system left from unpunished drafts ... But he did have constraints and our payroll was already high . Brown took over with a high payroll and no farm system, with limited picks his first few years . Even the big boys have a hard time sustaining success just because of the natural timeline of things . To contend you need top players at their position ....naturally over time , guys become (for example) a top 5 2b then decline and become a top 15 2b etc .... The problem is that you have them under contract and either need to move them , or balance the team elsewhere. Furthermore performance is somewhat swingy and has elements of randomness . Imo we've run into some bad luck/karma . Maybe next year will be better
No they didn't. Lunhow had zero bad legacy contracts to worry about. He could sign $15MM 0.600 OPS DH's and it didn't matter. Click had payroll restrictions but didn't have any bad/aging contracts to deal with - his stars were all in their primes. Lunhow cost the team a bunch of draft picks and Click didn't leave the Astros with a deep minor league bench of stars. Crane's increasing involvement came all after two were gone (outside of maybe Verlander) and when the minor league system was hollowed out.
Agreed - they are 10 years into a dynasty in a league where dynasties can only be sustained with endless money. No one has done a better job than the Astros and their core is aging out. The fact that it lasted as long as it did is impressive and I'm not sure what people expected exactly. Astros fans used to make fun of Yankees fans expecting nothing less than perfection every year. Now they've become the thing they hated.
I wonder how much our downer last season is impacting our feelings this year . Imo if we got a bit better injury luck last year we could have at least won another playoff series . That makes a step back this year seem more like a potential retool year vs the steady downward decline
Not a villan at all. But when leadership was the envy of MLB and now it's subpar then it's time for changr
I'm not sure if Dana Brown is the guy to run an MLB organization, but as long as Crane is gonna constantly go over the GM's head it really doesn't matter. I don't really know whether spending on the farm and scouting talent has dropped, but I know the results there have. All the money we are spending on Correa, Hader, Walker and Imai would have been better spent filling out this paper mache thin roster. Would Dana Brown have been able to do it well, I have no f**king clue, but he really wasn't given much of a chance to fail at it. Guys like Dubon and Sanchez would have helped instead of having to dump them to save money. Adding any proven arm to soak up some tolerable innings would have helped a ton.
The league / Crane decided the astros needed to move on from lunhow. Its not as simple as selecting a GM candidate with a high analytics rating .... every candidate is gonna tell you they all understand the stats. If you could ever get dana brown to be honest he would surely tell you about the great value of analytics . Establishing a competitive edge in an area everyone is trying to get a competitive edge is not so easy
