Dana failed because of the Burrow's trade, the Walker signing and because Crane wanted Correa back and to break into the Asian market by signing Imai. I still think Imai is going to be good. Dana also struckout on the Sanchez bat trade and Cam isn't as good as some here think he is. Most of all Espada was a big fail and he's Dana's guy.
Snachez has been fine this season, he only traded him because he had to slash salary to stay under the tax line that Crane put him up against. Same as Dubon. Walker was a Crane signing. The Burrows trade looks like a huge fail, but he only had to try and force a deal like that because he had zero money to spend on a proven MLB starter. That money went to project Imai who has been a disaster (I don't care if he MAY be good, he has absolutely killed the team so far) This team had no money to spend on decent players so we get journeyman scrubs all over the place. Crane builds his team like a top heavy NBA roster, like the 10th-30th players on the team don't matter...get me STARRRRS.
Crane is a victim of his own success in 2 ways: He raised the bar for what is expected of the Astros. After 2017-2022 anything short of a deep playoff run is considered complete failure. Thats not really a fair standard but it is what it is. He probably has come to believe he is competent in areas he is not. “I’ve have two World Series rings! Clearly I am an expert at building a Major League Baseball roster.” Give Dana Brown the money used on Hader and Correa (and maybe Imai) and I’m pretty sure they’re in a lot better situation. He’s been by far the best owner in Houston history. But he shares at least equal responsibility for Houston’s current mediocrity with the GM.
The Astros have a leadership issue and that starts at the top with Crane. When he first bought the team and hired Lunhow, they had a clear direction in that they were going to be innovative, sell off any assets, “tank” for a few years, and build the team from the ground up. And it worked but along the way they lost the innovation and excitement that it brought. Blame the scandal, blame whatever but this is now a team with no direction and if Crane wants to make player decisions then he needs to accept fault that they have been playing under .500 for a year now and fix the problem. The Gm and coach just add to the leadership problem, after Dusty left it obviously got worse. Someone has to either step up and provide some direction or Crane needs to bring in someone in who will. Or just sell the team. I’m just tired of watching the team go through the motions with zero fire.
The fans here are spoiled AF. Crane brought unprecedented success. We had two years of no good draft picks and got hit with lots of injuries. Our stars aged out. ,This season's pick was the highest draft position since 2017.
They had money not much but they had some. He signed the wrong overseas pitcher.Foster Griffin He made bad trades and hired a liability for a manager. Nook told us Walker was a Dana hire or at least he had a say. Now you can definitely say that Hader a signing I like, and Correa were Crane deals. What's killing Stros is Espada blewout Hunter/Hader's shoulders, bad trades and FA signings. You can blame Crane if you wish but didn't have these issues when Luhnow/Click were GM's. Now all of a sudden Dana isn't responsible signing Ryan Weiss, trading for Burrows, not finding an avg MLB OF and yrs he could've found the money to keep Sanchez if he wanted too. (I was all for letting Sanchez walk) What killed them in addition to this is they got very little out of Correa/LMJ and also Altuve in addition to having a AAA OF. Some of this if not most of this falls on Dana. With this said, it seems like Dana is slowly but surely building up talent in the lower minors. That makes DAana a good scout, but certainly a below avg GM. You cant make the kinds of mistakes Dana's made on a tight budget. A budget past GM's have had to work within the margins also.
Do you think the Stros would be in this position if Luhnow was still GM? If not then Crane needs to find a GM who learned Luhnow's methods, has the connections available to keep mining the Caribbean/Cuba and is ruthless when it comes to dealing with other clubs ownership/GM's. A GM that doesn't give a crap what others think about his methods and only cares about putting a team with championship level talent on it's roster. The GM doesn't trade a Wilyber Abreu for a backup C.
Yes. This is late stage dynasty. In Lunhow's era, he had young stars for cheap, a deep farm system, and just had to find complementary pieces with a limitless budget and prospects to trade. He also had no timeline and no pressure - if his prospects took a year or two longer, no big deal because the Astros had no previous standard to maintain. In Click's era, he had prime stars at fair or cheap contracts, a good farm system, and just had to find complementary pieces with a limited budget and decent number of prospects to trade. He had pressure to keep the train rolling. In Brown's era, he has aging players at expensive contracts, a hollowed out far system, and has to find *high level talent* with almost no budget and limited prospects to trade. He's not allowed to rebuild by his owner. In this latter stage of a dynasty, you're going to fail a lot more because you have to take more risk and have a very compressed timeline to squeeze the most out of it. You're not trying to find Odorizzis or Reddicks or McCanns or Dubons to fill out your roster. You're trying to find #1 pitchers and top tier hitters - and you're doing it with limited assets to work with. To do it, iyou have to take on much riskier acquistions like an Imai or a Burrows and hope they work out. And they mostly won't so you get what the Astros have. There's nothing Lunhow or Click did that showed they could have handled this situation any differently - they had the easier scenarios.
It’s just time. Time to do a reboot and reload. This is how it works for the teams with limits to what they can spend. Sell off the players with value and start over. I’m not afraid of a rebuild. Rebuilds can actually be fun and exciting.
I think they did show they could have handled it better just by track record, because they whiffed way less on their marginal acquisitions. For example, Click built a hell of a bullpen by acquiring arbitration year guys like Maton, Montero, and Stanek. He also signed Neris. His only bullpen whiff was Baez...that's a way better success rate than Dana's disaster acquisitions. For Luhnow, I will go as far back as 2015 when they still weren't spending a lot of money. Will Harris, Neshek, Gregerson, Peacock. Then you have guys like Gattis and Conger, Rasmus... not big money splashes but improvements to the team. It's about identifying and acquiring talent. Dana sucks at it.
I don't think you can say Luhnow had an easier scenario. We can't know what would or would not have happened if he was still the GM, but saying it was easier discounts the success he had. It was simply a different challenge than the one Brown has been presented. And Brown's tenure could look very different right now if Blanco, Walter & Wesneski don't get hurt. We probably make the playoffs last year, and we likely never trade for Burrows or sign Imai (less sure about the Imai signing as we still would likely be looking for a top end starter next to Brown). His tenure has been hit hard by injuries.
