Admittedly, it is early in the season; HOWEVER, the Astros have all the marks of a poorly managed team. Who hired the strength and conditioning coaches? Who hired the medical staff? Who is responsible for the personnel acquistions? And trades? And releases? Signs and no signs? Replace them. They are failures. I understand bad luck, but this is a pattern of poor to awful decisions. Time to make some changes or just waste another season.
This is one area where it’s fair to potentially blame Dana Brown. The risk of hiring him was that he might be a great scout but a poor organizational manager. He would have been where the buck stops on all those decisions so it’s fair to say he deserves the blame, if indeed this series of injuries is more than just awful luck.
Any team that trades Dubon for Nick Allen is not serious about winning. Horrible trade. The Braves gave each other high fives over that pathetic trade by Dana. Fire Espada!!!!
The pitching coach didn't forget how to do his job. Espada letting Hunter throw 102 pitches in his 1st start was criminal. Hader is hurt because of how Espada used him Joe you gotta go.
There is a chance Dana fires Joe to give himself time. Usually it's GM/President OBO decision as long as owner gives the green light. If Crane would be planning cleaning house totally (I don't think he is yet) would be silly to greenlight Espada firing and then fire Dana right after. Would't be suprised to see Espada managing next year still cheerleading younger cheaper team. Kids would be laughing at this silly fun uncle and going for basics stuff outside the org if they have drive to improve and learn. Crane sells at deadline and then looks for new owner which requires shedding lot of payroll first. Also league has many terrible managers who have jobs for whatever reasons. Cardinals Marmol is horrible manager with horrible results with horrible attitude but he is friend of retired boss Mozeliak who when pressured to fire Marmol extended him befire retiring. Dude almost gave FU's to media when starting and some petty ****. Well atleast he cared and showed some fire but he is not leader of men. Mets Carlos "Boone taught me everything I know" Mendoza still has a job prob. because only working as puppet to Stearns as is Boone to Cashman. If Im betting man I will say Espada stays until end of a season. Hire and staying with Joe until now shows Dana does't believe manager matters so would he hire real manager to bump heads with or will he stay with Joe and keeps his own faith in his own hands.
Its time. Something must change and this is the move regardless of whether Espada is at fault or not. The injuries are out of hand and how much of it is just bad luck? How much is players not having confidence in their current ability to succeed ( slump) and using it as an excuse or the team's ability to keep them healthy when they would normally play through something? Or just worry manifesting into something? I honestly don't know. But I do know this team is spiraling and change needs to happen now. Its still so early that they likely aren't giving up on this season so a 2004 Phil Garner type hire would be best for that route. This hire will be hugely important in whether or not Brown gets a new contract. If they decide the injuries are simply too much then promote Omar Lopez to interim mgr and make a decision on Brown. Either tell him the improvement this team makes between now and October will determine if he gets a new contract, or fire him letting the rest of the front office handle the draft and rest of 2026 while finding the next guy. I think I prefer lighting a fire under Dana than not having a GM to reload and handle this very important draft.
You absolutely cannot fire Dana Brown before the draft. That would be monumentally stupid. It’s probably stupid to fire him before the trade deadline. There’s NOTHING to gain by going without a GM (we’ve seen how that goes) so really it doesn’t make sense to fire Brown before the end of the season. Firing Espada is fine but I think giving him until the end of May is more appropriate. As much as I see plenty of fault in Espada’s performance, replacing him now is very unlikely to turn things around enough to make the playoffs. I think promoting Lopez is really the only way to fire Espada without causing significant issues among the players; from what I have seen Correa and Altuve have been big supporters of Espada, but they also both love Lopez.
Espada won't be fired until he is absolutely made the scapegoat without question and this team has decided to blow it up because of it. Astros front office most likely doesn't see him as the problem as they knew this was going to eventually happen with their team. That's why they didn't go out and find a more established coach when they had the chance or even more established players this off season to surround him with. It's a slow burn season, one that will not end well, and the front office expected it. They just needed to keep the hopes up for the fans to still fill the seats one more year.
I understand the logic of this but I disagree. Crane wouldn’t have signed off on $50M+ guaranteed for Imai if he intended to rebuild. He also wouldn’t have ok’ed the trade for Correa. The most likely scenario is that Crane and Brown (like most of us) thought Houston could contend if they added pitching and a good LH bat. Houston thought they addressed the pitching with Imai and Burrows and the bargain bin, and thought their lineup was good enough even though the market didn’t cooperate with adding a bat. In hindsight, they appear to have overestimated Imai and Burrows, then that error was compounded by injuries and bad luck. The Astros have dug themselves a hole, and this may very well end up being the first season of a new rebuild, but I really don’t think that was the intention/expectation back in March. Very few teams can lose their ace and have their era outstrip their xFIP by 2 runs and expect to contend, no matter how good their roster might’ve been.
Imai and Burrows still have almost a full season to right the ship. Saying on April 18th that they were mistakes is foolish. the Astros look like absolute dog **** but everyone needs to relax. We knew Crane wasn’t going all in this year but it’s still very early. Injuries and slow starts are the reason we are 8-13. Also, the lineup wasn’t expected to be as good as it has been, and it probably won’t be much longer. Already seeing signs of it slowing down. As usual, the pitching will have to pull the Astros outta the bad times. Hunter Brown going down has hurt us and will be a big problem going forward. We were thin at SP to begin with and we aren’t going to slug our way to the postseason.
Imai brings in revenue from the international market and can opt out after each season. If he performs then Astros would be out of his contract most likely and the Stros got what they wanted for this year. If he doesn't then the $50 mil still brings in money while he's on the roster. I think this deal pays for itself. Correa coming back last year also keeps the fans engaged and got a discount to do so. Both of these moves are genius in keeping revenue flowing in whether they pay off on the field or not. And I'm not saying it was truly planned to fail, only that they didn't expect this team to be true contenders... and if somehow they overachieved they all look like guru gods.
Imai is not Ohtani. What kind of money do you think he magically brings in? If he paid for himself, there would have been endless teams beating down the door to sign him.
We got three coming up in Cleveland with an off day after...if we lose that series I can't see Joe making it back home.
