A critical look at the last two years
“I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” — William Shakespeare
I should begin with a simple explanation of why these columns have the same name. Most of them will involve the HOF Index, but there is a spirit behind the index and everything I do in sports analysis. A lot has been said about analytics and certainly fans will wind up on both sides of the debate. I prefer to call it “evidence based decision making.” It is a lot more accurate and appropriate to the situation. There are any number of types of evidence. Analytics is just one of those. There is historical evidence There is observational evidence. All of this gets integrated into solid decision making.
James Click was let go in early November of 2022. That was the day the dynasty died. Was he the best general manager in baseball at the time? I suppose one could argue that, but I’m certainly not arguing it here. His team did win the World Series, but you could credibly claim he did with Jeff Luhnow’s guys. I’m not here to dispute that.
What I will dispute is the idea that this team didn’t need him or someone like him at the helm. Let’s look at the major decisions he made and whether they worked. He engineered two major deals as the general and a couple of minor ones. He brought in Phil Maton and Yainer Diaz in exchange for Myles Straw. Straw is currently languishing in AAA for the Guardians with a sub .220 average. We know what Diaz is currently doing and we know what Phil Maton did.
He also engineered the trade for Kendall Graveman and Rafael Montero for Joe Smith and Abraham Toro. However you feel about the Rafael Montero’s contract, we can simply look at the performance on the diamond for those two. The Montero extension was not on him and I seriously doubt he would have gone there. Graveman pitched well while in Houston even if he is out for the season.
It’s a result based business. I usually evaluate trades and signings based on the available evidence at the time, but we can’t ignore what happens after. The biggest decision came down to who to prioritize in center. He chose Jake Meyers. He essentially gave up Jose Siri and a lower level minor leaguer for both Christian Vazquez and Trey Mancini. While we could question those results we can also say that both played an integral part in the second ring.
We also know that Click engineered a trade for Willson Contreras involving Jose Urquidy. It looks like Urquidy is out for the season and Contreras would have almost certainly would have been better than either Christian Vazquez or Martin Maldonado. However, let’s look at the numbers for Jose Siri and Jake Meyers and you tell me who ended up being right.
Jose Siri: .168/.259/.272
Jake Meyers: .290/.362/.508
Now, as fans we will make more emotional decisions. I am fan. I’d like to think that I’m a prettu dialed in fan. I know a little more than the average bear, but I am still only a fan. So, the question is not what I would have done in the 2022-2023 offseason. The question is what James Click would have done if given the power to do his job.
Would he have signed an aging Jose Abreu to a lucrative three year contract? Would he have given Rafael Montero a lucrative extension? Would he have re-signed a broken down Michael Brantley? Unfortunately, we don’t have an answer to those questions because Jim Crane and company wouldn’t allow him to make those decisions. They thought they could do a better job on their own. They were wrong.
Fans and non-baseball people make emotional decisions. Sometimes those decisions work out but they almost never work out as well as evidenced based decisions. Those emotional decisions include Jose Altuve’s extension. They include Cristian Javier’s extension. They include the Josh Hader contract. Again, this isn’t about whether I would have done those things. I am not the general manager and I never will be.
This also doesn’t mean that the team will not experience any success from here on out. Much like the Dallas Cowboys in the NFL, the team has enough good players in place and enough resources to be more successful than most teams. Like the Cowboys, they aren’t likely to experience the kind of sustained success they had when they were making evidence based decisions.
This includes not playing Yainer Diaz and Chas McCormick in 2023 when they had things rolling. It includes decisions like bringing Jose Abreu back despite any reliable evidence that he was actually ready to play. It includes sending Joey Loperfido down to AAA when he is hitting .333 and playing a reasonably good outfield. It also includes the absolute refusal to try him at first base because of concerns over his defense. Do they honestly think they are replacing Keith Hernandez out there?
Three regular first basemen have a worse defensive rating according to defensive runs saved than Jon Singleton. One of those has fewer than 100 innings at first. Six have lower rating than Jose Abreu. Exactly what did they have to lose? So, did Jose Abreu cost the team the last two games with his glove? In comparison with the average first basemen in the big league universe the answer is likely yes. If compared with just Jon Singleton the answer is likely no.
Bad and average teams make emotional decisions. The Astros aren’t a dumpster fire like the Angels or Rockies. The Rockies and Angels aren’t the bar. The bar is seven consecutive ALCS appearances. All dynasties die and they die for any multitude of reasons. Usually it is because great players aren’t great anymore. There aren’t great players in the pipeline and so the dynasty must die.
We’ve seen it happen with the 1960s Yankees. We’ve seen it happen with Oakland Athletics in the 1970s. The Mets in the 1980s died even before they could really get started. Those same Yankees died after the late 1990s and early 2000s. All of those dynasties also have one thing in common: management starting making some questionable decisions. They started feeling infallible. Things other than evidence based decision making starting creeping in.
Some of them fell off the table (1960s Yankees, 1970s Athletics) while others were still good but not great (Mets and Yankees). The Astros are likely in the second category. They could turn this around with some forward-thinking moves. They could easily rebound this year or next year with a few shrewd moves. The question is whether there is anyone in the building that will be empowered to do it.
Is it Dana Brown? We don’t know what he is capable of because we’ve never really seen him do it. How many of these moves have been his? Right now he feels like a glorified scouting director with the title of general manager. This feels like the old boys club that throw out pithy sayings like, “look at the back of the baseball card” without any regard for what is actually happening. Fans do things like that. They gravitate to big names and easy answers. This team is beyond big names and easy answers.
They won in 2017 and 2022 because they made shrewd moves that most fans wouldn’t consider. Did any fan really peg Charlie Morton as a good reclamation project? Did any fan really think Mauricio Dubon would become a super sub? It’s time to stop worrying about what a casual fan or former Hall of Fame player might think. This team needs adults in the room and I’m not certain there are any right now.