For your discussion: Jeff Luhnow is the Anti-Christ

Reading the recent verbal attack by former Speaker of the House John Boehner on Ted Cruz, calling him “Lucifer in the flesh”, makes one wonder if Citizen Boehner had been reading some of the comments here about Astros’ GM Jeff Luhnow for inspiration.

There is a lot of frustration with the Astros GM after a very slow start to the season for “his” team and a series of moves that have been far more negative than positive lately. Cooler heads will say that this town saw the results of an early season knee jerk change across town when the Rockets unloaded Coach Kevin McHale 11 games into the season. That was also 11 games removed from a very strong run to the Western Conference Championship series. The results of that change was a season long slow slog to a last game play-in to the playoffs and an almost defenseless slaughter by the same team they fought bravely last season, a playoff series where they played worse with NBA MVP Steph Curry on the sidelines than when he played.

But enough digression, here, where do you stand on the very polarizing Mr. Luhnow?

  • Are you happy that the team went from the dregs of the earth (2013) to the playoffs in 2015?
  • Are you hacked off that the playoff team from last year seems to be the team that takes plays off this year?
  • Do you praise the brilliance that allowed him to grab Carlos Correa at a discount and used the money to also sign Lance McCullers Jr.?
  • Do you scoff at the idiocy of someone who drafted high school pitcher Brady Aiken instead of Carlos Rodon and Mark Appel instead of Kris Bryant?
  • Do you like the velvet touch that Luhnow’s manager choice A.J. Hinch showed during the 2015 season?
  • Do you hate the ham handed approach that Luhnow’s guy, Hinch, is showing so far in 2016?
  • Do you love how Luhnow took one of the worse minor league systems and turned it into a showcase in a few years?
  • Are you pulling out your hair as the minor league teams seem to be mirroring the struggles of the big club this season?
  • Were you happy when Luhnow promoted Correa, McCullers and Preston Tucker in moments of need in 2015?
  • Were you unhappy when young talent like Vincent Velasquez, Domingo Santana, Brett Phillips, Jacob Nottingham and Josh Hader were sent packing?
  • Were you happy when the Astros made the playoffs with one of the lowest payrolls in the majors?
  • Were you hacked off when the Astros held deserving players back (George Springer and Correa) until they could be controlled for another season?
  • Were you joyful when so many minor league pitchers were given chances to start games?
  • Were you unhappy when so few pitchers were allowed to pitch more than 5 innings?

And this could go on ad nauseam…..

Where do you stand on Jeff Luhnow and how hot is his seat? And how hot should it be?

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235 responses to “For your discussion: Jeff Luhnow is the Anti-Christ”

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  1. For you late risers, there are some very interesting conversations between members of Starfleet being overheard and rebroadcast at the end of the last post. Some answers to Dan’s questions can perhaps be found between the lines of those conversations.

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  2. Someone help me out here How does a manager and a team that was young , fun, winning and gets to the playoffs and in the first month of the next season, with really on paper a better team, look so pathetic. There is no leadership, no discipline, no accountability, no team work.

    How does this happen, WTH??? I have never seen anything like this April melt down. I have never been a Uncle Jeff guy, even he cant screw it up this bad right?

    What the hell did they do in the off season and ST that created this whole embarrassing team and attitude?

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  3. I pretty well summed up my thoughts on Luhnow a couple of days ago. Not a fan. My mind today is on coaching and I have a question: Did Strommie break Ken Giles because he doesn’t know how to coach hard throwers? Is that why VV and Appel are flourishing in Philly? If that is the case, then it’s on Luhnow since Strom is his guy. Maybe LaRussa and Dave Duncan were on to something. I seem to remember reading that they didn’t get along with Luhnow/Strom.

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  4. I’m going to stick to Luhnow, because that is the idea of the post. I’m going to lay things out there that I never have before.
    I think the idea of hiring a cheerleader coach to inspire players is stupid. It reflects the high school mentality of the organization and the players. I want Morgan Ensberg to teach 3rd basemen how to play that position, only. A guy who tells the world that Andrew Aplin is somehow the Celine Dion of center fielders looks ridiculous when Aplin can’t hit anything.
    Rodney Linares is a high school coach. I have read the box scores of his teams for years and he is grooming players to play exactly like the Astros are playing right now. Out of control, carefree, wasting at bats, wasting bases, can’t pitch. That’s his teams.
    Trading Brett Phillips for Gomez was the work of a GM who had a plan and violated everything he stood for and then inserted Gomez’s third grade mind into a group of second graders. Disaster!
    I understand Luhnow’s trade of Appel and VV for Giles. He didn’t have a clue how to get Appel and VV over the hump because Luhnow doesn’t have a clue what to do with pitchers. He mistakenly thought that the Phillies had gotten Giles over the hump already and that he could now let Giles do his thing.
    Castro has mailed it in. The arbitration was the last straw. But it should never have come to that. Castro should have been gone long before that.
    I have so little inside information available to me that Luhnow has. How could he not see this disaster coming, know what he has access to?

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    • My thoughts on your last question OP, is he’s so full of himself he can’t see the forest for the trees. Haven’t you ever known someone that’s always right and never wrong. Someone who won’t take advice because they already know everything?

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      • Funny you say that Sandy I said a couple years ago he had the “I’m the smartest guy in the room Syndrome” I would love to hear how is spinning this disaster to Crane right now, I think we all are pretty intelligent people and can dissect all Lunhow’s screw ups. I’m racking my brain how to fix it, NOW

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  5. Luhnow’s one shining moment was getting Correa and McCullers in the same draft. Fast forward to this season, Correa is looking more average every day and LMJ is fighting shoulder soreness. The 2016 Astros are making the 2013 Astros look like contenders.
    So who’s to blame?
    If it’s on the players, why can’t the coaches control them? Why can’t the manager control the coaches? Why can’t the GM control the manager. Why can’t the owner control the GM…….
    All the blame has to go to the top. Crane/Luhnow put this team and the coaching staff together.
    They gladly took credit for last years success so why shouldn’t they take responsibility for the current failures.

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    • And wasn’t Bobby Heck still advising on the shining 2012 draft? With regards to Correa, he has always struck me as a mature, serious player. Did the “Club Astro” shenanigans break him? Does it need to be renamed “Cub Astros” because we are looking at >100 years of WS drought under this regime? Will we ever find our Joe Maddon/Theo Epstein combination and go on a tear? It is all coming back to the Crane/Luhnow “plan” or “failure to plan”. How much did Colby’s surprise acceptance of the QO screw up spending plans for this year? Why didn’t Luhnow recognize that possibility? Yes, I think Colby has earned every penny of his QO so far. But what impact did that have on the rest of the roster because of Cranes limited budget? Did that cost us a real FA starting pitcher instead of Fister? Is that why we still have Valbuena? Did that force a trade for a cheap closer instead of the best closer? It does seem to come back to money and that’s on Crane but if Luhnow had more baseball sense than computer sense, the outcome may have been better. Wonder what Nolan Ryan is thinking……haven’t heard a peep from him in a long time.is he even still advising? Or were the Rangers right to choose Jon Daniels in the power struggle? Or is there just a Houston Sports Curse that hasn’t been identified like the Chicago goat curse?

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      • Solid points Nance. But to me if budget is the concern you keep promoting from within and let a Velasquez start 10 games to see what he has.
        It is like Luhnow was trying to jump start a car whose battery did not need jumping.

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    • That wasn’t his only shining moment. Are we not high on A.J. Reed? What about getting Hader in the Norris trade? Yes, he traded him away, but getting him was a smart move. What about getting Devenski in the Myers trade or Musgrove in the Happ trade? Although Martes is struggling now getting him as a throw in was a shining moment. As I’ve said before his biggest flaw is acquiring major leaguers for prospects. He has set back the organization with those moves.

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      • I will be high on Reed when he is actually driving in runs in ML games. Same for any and all other prospects. Time to see results, not potential results. I’m tired of all the emphasis on what the computer says guys “should” do. I want to see posti even results on the only scoreboard that matters – the one at the ballpark. Actual runs scored by our team >runs scored by opposing team and I don’t care who does it!

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      • Tim, that’s a huge part of the equation. If you’re going to trade so much of our inexpensive foundation for major leaguers, you can’t afford to screw it up, especially when you want to run a team on comparative peanuts.

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      • Nance,

        So we want to fault Luhnow for trading away prospects that have high ceilings, but haven’t produced in the major leagues yet, but we don’t want to give him credit for acquiring prospects with a high ceiling, but haven’t produced in the major leagues yet. It’s good to know we are being objective in our criticism. 🙂

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    • The fish stinks from the head down. I’ve always thought that way about Crane. But even given that fact that this club made a surprise trip to the post season last year, Luhnow did not impress me with any of his moves. His mistakes are far more glaring today. His job is to build a winner. He has not done that. How long is he allowed to fail?

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  8. Last night the Astros top pitching prospect, Frances Martes, came into the game to start the sixth inning for Corpus Christi. He relieved #124 prospect Brian Holmes, who handed him a 3-2 lead, which Martes promptly lost. Chase MacDonald gave Martes a four run lead with a grand slam, which Martes blew, giving up five runs in the eighth to lose the game for his team.
    That should never have happened. Either Holmes or Martes should have started that game and gone as far as they could and then finished with relievers, just like real baseball. But here’s your best pitching prospect coming into the last half of a game. Totally senseless and I will tell you that every top prospect in our system absolutely hates this and always has. Hates it and hates the organization for doing it.
    The only pitchers who like it are the pitchers who shouldn’t be starting, but are. Those are the guys who end up starting in Fresno and are lousy pitchers in AAA who made it there because they should have been cut long ago, but the tandem system kept them in there, fooling the front office into thinking we had a ton of starting pitchers, thus convincing Luhnow he could trade some away, since we had so many others, when the truth is we have almost nothing starting for us in AAA.
    And we have no relievers, because we have starting pitchers relieving in the tandems in the minors.

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  9. Many thoughts here:
    – I thoroughly enjoyed the Star Trek banter going on at the end of the previous post – inspired!
    – We’ve all seen it over and over with certain organizations – they hire a player friendly coach and when that stops working they go with a disciplinarian and when the players stop listening they go with a player friendly coach and on and on. Great coaches have the players respect, they are not tying to be their friends and they are not their archenemies.
    – I don’t blame Crane as much as the other folks here or as much as Bopert does. This organization had put itself in a very good spot I thought, where they could feed long term success with tons of cheap talent from below. But they came off the rails two ways – they traded a ton of young controllable talent, especially pitchers and they traded them for mlb guys who have been poor or disasters. Yes, they luckily have picked up some prospects that may be of help later, but that does not undo the damage at the moment.
    – Their inability to coach up people bothers me. Well they have coached Giles up in the strike zone. The Appel and Velasquez situations could haunt us for a long time.

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  10. For the second time Giles refused to meet with the media last night.
    That is extremely telling. Either he feels like he’s above speaking to the press, or he is still a little boy locked in a grown man’s body, and would break down in tears if he had to talk about his pitching.
    When pressed about Gomez, Hinch said he came as advertised….he plays all out all the time.
    1. Giles has GOT to be sent to Corpus, or Fresno to let him work on his pitches. He says Brad Lidge coached him on throwing the “Lidge slider”…call Lidge, and pay him to work with this guy. We paid a hearty price for that arm….time for it to pay off.
    2. Carlos Gomez is a guy who plays only for himself….and he’s not very good at it.
    The only thing he hasn’t done this year, is to tick the other team off, and start a bench emptying brawl….. SO FAR. Time has come to bench him.
    3.I feel like someone just told me there isn’t a Santa Clause, and all that stuff I got for Christmas has to be taken back because the credit card has to be paid off.
    Last night’s game just made me sad……sad for the guys who are really trying, and sad for all of the fans.
    Like I said yesterday, so far Crane has put all his faith in Luhnow’s “plan”, and I don’t know if there is a baseball person guiding Crane through this ugly mess. Maybe Biggio is the one Jim Crane listens to……but it’s time to do something right now.
    I wish we had all the answers, but we dont.

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    • I don’t know Becky, what’s he going to say to the media? That the manager and pitching coach screwed up his mind. Apparently he was good in Philly last year so what ever happened, happened after coming here. Maybe he needs to go back to Philadelphia to work on his pitches.

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      • I was watching Gameday last night with no video coverage. What amazed me was almost all pitches were fastballs at 95-96. I did not see any other pitches inside the zone. No one can live in the Majors with only one pitch that he can get over the plate. Giles is just a worse version of Fields #2 at this moment.

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      • He was throwing a slider as well. The problem is that he is throwing 95-96. With only a mediocre slider, he needs to be 100 mile an hour Giles to disrupt timing. Everyone not pitching for Houston throws 95 these days…

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  11. I guess the things that bother me the most are how players flourish after leaving here and how good players come here to simply fall apart. These two things tell me something Is seriously wrong internally. Another bothersome thing is how they treat these players with such disrespect. No one will ever want to join this organization.
    What is the point of drafting good talent if you can’t develop it to it’s full potential.

    More importantly, were do they start to undo this mess.

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    • Which is EXACTLY why Cole Hamel’s did NOT want to come here. By the way, maybe it would be a good idea to ask Hamel’s what Giles was REALLY like in Philly.

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      • In two years Giles went 9 & 4 for Philly with an era of 1.56.
        One month in Houston he’s 0 & 2 with an era of 9
        What changed?

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  14. Firing McHale made no difference for good or ill. The Rockets were headed the way they went due to the so-called enmity between their so-called stars. Changing the coach was about as relevant to the season as Howard was (which is to say, not very).

    I feel pretty ambivalent toward Luhnow. It would help somewhat if I were better able to differentiate between he and Hinch vis a vis on-field decision making. Is Hinch really driving this clown car? That is to say, is Hinch the one who keeps putting Gomez’s name on the lineup card in CF, is Hinch the one telling guys to swing out of their shoes, is Hinch the one telling guys when to run, etc.?

    Although it occurs to me that even if Hinch is responsible for all those things (in addition to his “strategic” handling of the bullpen), Luhnow is still indirectly responsible, because Luhnow hired him.

    With the record the way it is currently, things certainly look worse than they did last season, but I’m not sure the two situations are all that different. After all, it’s not like the Giles trade was Luhnow’s first bad move.

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    • Also, no matter where you stand on Crane’s spending habits, the fact is that the opening day payroll in 2016 is roughly $24 million higher than that of 2015. Thus, Crane spent $24 million to get worse results through 23 games.

      Obviously, there’s more to it than just the dollar amount. But we can’t eliminate the likelihood that Crane looks at those figures and questions why he bothered spending more for an inferior product (thus far).

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  15. My stab at this whole mess is that Luhnow does not understand the human element. Everything he bases decisions on comes out of a computer. As an example, Mark Appel, for the first time, is pitching like a first round draft pick. Not everyone would have picked him number one, but all the experts agreed he was a great talent, an intelligent kid, with all the natural ability needed to be a front line starting pitcher in the major leagues. So how could an organization screw up a guy so badly? First of all, we pushed him into an overhyped, not proven, unfamiliar pitching regimen. And this is conjecture, but I’d almost guarantee that the computer also told him what his optimum pitch selection would be. Maybe we even screwed with his delivery and told him that he should be throwing his pitches to new places. The problem is though, you can’t handle everyone the same way. The computer does not acknowledge that. It does not include the human element in the statistics and formulas it spits out. Maybe for a reclamation project like Collin McHugh it worked. But it surely failed Mark Appel. Why do I think the Phillie organization simply handed him the ball and told him to go out and have fun again? And maybe for the same reason, Giles is such a mess today. And Velasquez has been so successful. Maybe it’s time to go back to some relatively old fashioned human relations concepts. Listen to the employees. Interact with them as the individuals they are.

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  16. Hinch said Gomez hurt his right side last night on Vogts double….and will be out “a few days”. I’m calling bull sh $T on that. Sounds like he needs a few days off to stop doing stupid stuff. ALSO….Hinch met with Giles this morning and told the press he was ” going to take the stress of the 8th inning off him for a while”……in other words he will be taking a seat, unless the team is getting blown out. Hoyt could use a seat in our bullpen…….but Luhnow didn’t give up the dang farm for Hoyt, so Giles takes up a spot on the bench. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!

    I hope Devinski does well today!

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    • So Giles who was a closer in Philly can’t handle high leverage situations after coming to Houston? Which genius broke him? The one who would not name him closer because they were afraid Gregerson would be mad? Or the one who thought they needed to change what was working for him? Who decided he needed to pitch up in the zone more? The computer or the pitching coach?

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      • There is a big difference inheriting the closer’s role on a team fighting with Atlanta for worst record in the division and spending three months of the off season being told you will be the closer for a world series aspirant that just traded away a ton of talent to get you.

        In fairness, I must remind everyone that Boston papers are righting “what’s wrong with Kimbrel” stories every other day. Relief pitchers are volatile. This offseason they were the hottest commodity going and GMs were praised for discovering a new market inefficiency when really it may have been a bubble.

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  24. The one guy I feel for is Altuve. He wants to win so badly. I know he’s as sad as we are. How do you fix a team with this much talent. *sigh*.

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    • I feel bad for Altuve too. He’s stuck here with a paltry deal on a bad team and still he plays the game with all his heart.
      Actually, I feel bad for all the talented guys that are stuck here. By the time they reach free agency they won’t be worth anything.

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  27. Even if this season just falls completely off the rails I don’t think Crane will fire Luhnow. I have to ask, though, is the bigger problem Luhnow, Crane or Hinch? We can’t blame Luhnow for the baserunning mistakes and shoddy defense, but we can blame him for the roster construction. Is the bigger problem the 25-man roster or the bonehead decisions the players are making?

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    • Why can’t we blame Luhnow? He hired Hinch and the coaching staff. I can’t believe these players all of a sudden forgot how to play a game they’ve been playing since childhood.
      And if it is on the players why can’t we blame him for not doing something about it.
      When you’re the man at the top you have to accept that responsibility and correct it. Even if that means admitting to some mistakes.

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    • The players have to play themselves out of this. No more giant, all-or-nothing swings. The coaching staff has to adjust. Up in the zone pitching not working? Maybe you need to increase the % of low and away…which worked for half a season last year. Too many TOOTBLAN? You go station to station and no one gets the green light to steal on their own. Also, watch some video of the opposing pitching to see what their tendencies and actions are with baserunners on.

      The FO needs to switch gears. The tandem is not helping us in 2016. Our milb hitting is abysmal. Don’t draft Nolan Fontana. Draft guys who can put the barrel on the ball and teach them some discipline.

      Ownership? They need to stay away and just work on their golf games.

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  28. Do we think some how in 7 months the coaching staff has forgot everything they now about baseball and coaching? That out of supposedly good ST, everyone has tuned out Hinch? There has to be something more to all this . I think Daveb7 hit the nail on the head, there is an organizational failure, a major dis connect between the players and the FO. Maybe there is a lack of trust, the crap under pay for Altuve, 15 million for 1 year Rasmus, Springer no deal, Puff Daddy’s 10 million to play AAA ball, trading away great talent and probably friends for what?

    I think Uncle Jeff got the Farm turned around, but maybe anyone could have with a lot of first round opportunities and the fact we were the worst team in BB.

    I just don’t see a fix in the Philsophies of this FO. Time for baseball people !

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  30. Watching the Rangers Angels game…….Garrett Richards is back y’all. And…..the Rangers are just a better team this year. Sorry…but it’s true. Yeah Kevin, Altuve looks like the only guy on this team that still wants to win.

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  31. Bases loaded *T W I C E* in one inning and all you get is a sacrifice fly. OH MY GOODNESS…..this team gets an F- today. There are allergic to hitting with guys in scoring position. J E E Z E.

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    • Well, for your information, the Astros have two hits in eight innings themselves, Buster! Take that! Even great baseball teams like Houston get shut down every once in a while, Mister! (This is where I’m supposed to put one of them there E-mojos, but I don’t know how they do that).

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  34. Ok…..you rubes, back to work. The bullpen won’t hold up with a 1 run lead. Gregersen hasn’t pitched in like a year, and I don’t trust anyone in that pen anymore.
    Daveb7— makes me sick to see those stats.

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  35. Good effort by Fister. Only 2 hits by the offense so far. Could use some insurance runs.
    Saw a fan in an Astros shirt. A Max Stassi shirt. Well he’d did come from Oakland….

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    • Agree – great job by Fister. Given the offense he is probably begging Luhnow to put him on the block.

      I’m enjoying Velasquez’ success. You all sold me on him as a legit, TOR pitcher. I hope be wins a Cy Young someday.

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  36. Clutch Castro soon will be hitting .095. I figure if he stays on this pace he could have 12 RBI’s this year.

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    • C’mon Kevin don’t get on Castro today – they have 2 hits and 2 runs and he got one of those hits and one of those runs plus a walk. Now the other 20 games….

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  41. Sunday speer was grilled cheese and Tomato soup…….and I almost spit my soup out when Gregersen got that last out!! *W H E W * !!!
    Keuchel pitches tomorrow at home….let’s hope he gets back on track for a win st home!

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  43. The Astros had two hits today and won, but they had good pitching and real good fielding.
    Oakland looked like a team the Astros would have swept last year.

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  44. Well, I’m glad a couple of guys can still pitch and hit.We have a chance to pick up things on this home stand so lets get with the program. Harris and Gregorson are doing well, Sipp is so-so. Alyuve is Altuve and Rasmus is earning his 15MM. Time for everyone else to step up. Time to go no worse than 7 – 3 on this home stand. I’m up in PA on assignment and I picked up a Philly station the other day running advertisements featuring VV wins. That could have been us.

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  45. Ya know…..Bud Norris had nothing good to say about this organization, but I hate to see him now on the skid. He has been replaced with Folty, another one of OUR guys that got traded away for Gattis. It makes me sad to see one of our former pitchers have such bad luck. Norris was built for the NL…his good slider has disappeared from him and he got REALLY hammered later week against the Red Sox. He had a tough time being in the AL, and I thought he would find success back in the NL but he hasnt. Kinda like when Roy Oswalt went from the NL to the AL, he just floundered. Oh well…….sorry for the rant, but I guess I get too invested in guys who played for us. I want them all to succeed…..and retire on THEIR terms.

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    • Baltimore was pretty happy about what they got in 2013 and 2014 from him. He was really bad last year (2014 version of him prob would have been enough to pass us for WC), but I seem to recall there being some injuries early in the year.

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      • I know……but to see how desheveld he looks now is just sad. I guess I see most people with rose colored glasses, and it’s the mother instinct in me that comes out when a kid has lost his “stuff”, and he bounces around for a year or so, and quits baseball all together. I was just thinking he was our “ace” just three years ago, and our opening day pitcher.

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      • Becky, I agree. I hope for the best with all ex-Astros and hate seeing things fall apart for them. He’s still young enough to turn it around.

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  46. Check this out……now I only use the Houston Astros in my video game……other than that I don’t care too much whether they win or lose…..BUT I have a different perspective…… What’s wrong with the Astros right now is they have TOO MUCH MINOR LEAGUE TALENT ……WAY TOO MUCH….. the players are pressing becuz they have heat seeking prospects locked and ready to fire……its easy to win when u r an UNDERDOG……NOW they are EXPECTADOGS …..Different pressure…….

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  48. On my book of faces feed this morning is a picture from yesterday captioned, “AJ Hinch gave a quick pep talk to Little Leaguers prior to today’s game”

    The criticism is harsh, but probably accurate given the play thus far.

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    • So a few weeks from now will we be hearing that the LL teams are on a losing streak and making a bunch of bonehead plays on the bases?

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  49. So the three guys we sent over to Milwaukee are all making a contribution. Just looking at OBP, they are at .344, .355 and .367. The .367 belongs to Becky’s favorite ballplayer. Are these just short sample April stats, much like Jake Marisnick showed us last season, or is there some kind of social disease here in Houston keeping guys from performing up to their real abilities? Those figures would be good for 4th, 5th and 6th best on the Astros.

    With our club doing so poorly, all these trades look so much more glaring, today anyway.

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  50. MLBTR is reporting that Peter Gammons has said that the Astros turned down a trade offer from Baltimore in 2013 for Jake Arrietta. Gammons pointed this out speaking in an article about the Astros’ woes with a pitching staff who can’t throw fastballs.

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    • I am somewhat conflicted, OP1. On the one hand, I am frustrated that our opponents consistently throw guys against us who throw up to 10 mph harder than our starters do – and except for Altuve our guys all look totally over-matched. But when it comes to our guys, the guy on the team who throws the hardest – though he has not been anywhere close to the ‘100-mile per hour Giles’ guy he was advertised by the F.O. to be – is the guy who is getting killed by opposing hitters the worst of all. The hardest thrower we have – Kenny Giles – has a WHIP of 2.00, an ERA of 9.00, and a BAA of .348. I’ve had batting practice pitchers who had better stats than that.

      Okay, so I have may have chosen to intentionally overlook the disaster that the two appearances by Mr. Feliz have been. But looking at what has happened with him only further complicates the issue. Feliz throws hard as well. It does not seem to help.

      I am desperately seeking a conspiracy theory to explain all this. Report at 11:00.

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