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Joe Espada: 5 focus areas

New Astros manager Joe Espada has a wide and varied background in baseball that leads to doing almost everything but managing teams. He was both a college and a minor league player, spending most of his time in the minors with Oakland, but also playing for St. Louis, Colorado, Florida, Kansas City, Texas and Tampa Bay.

After his playing days were done, he coached in the minors for the Marlins, moved up to major league third base coach and was about to manage for them in the minors, when he grabbed a job in the Yankees front office. He coached for the Yankees in the major leagues and finally did some managing in the Puerto Rican winter league.

He joined the Astros as their bench coach after Alex Cora left after the 2017 World Series victory and he held that spot under A.J. Hinch and Dusty Baker until being named Astros’ manager this off-season.  Ironically, he was part of a managerial controversy leading into the 2023 World Baseball Classic, not of his making. Eduardo Perez, the GM of the Puerto Rico team resigned when Yadier Molina was chosen to manage the team instead of Espada, who was his choice.

This is all a long way around the corner to say that Espada, while not having a ton of management experience has a nice diverse spread of experience. He’s been a long term minor league player, coached in the minors, been in the front office, coached his country’s national team,  coached in the majors and was the second in command for six seasons in Houston, which included six appearances in the ALCS, three appearances in the World Series and of course one championship.

But this is his first time to be THE MAN. What will be important for him in 2024 and of course important to the fans of the team.

Being THE MAN

Most of us have gotten a promotion before – sometimes out of the blue, sometimes after an extended wait. Joe Espada has been looking to move up for a while, as he had interviewed for manager positions after the 2018 and 2019 seasons before finally getting this shot. If he thought he was ready back then, he certainly is positive about it now after the additional time he spent as the #2 for the Astros.  Will there be any problems with the players going “oh we knew you when you were just an assistant”? There should not be, this team has a lot of internal leadership and on top of that, he was the bench coach which is farther up the food chain than a base coach or hitting or pitching coach. He knows he can do the job and they should know it too.

What Do You Keep

Espada has been the right-hand man to AJ Hinch, a younger sabermetrics savvy manager for 2 seasons and in the same spot for Dusty Baker, a very “seasoned” seat of his pants manager for 4 more. He’s seen how each of them ran their ships, faced adversity, handled veterans and rookies alike. He needs to be his own man, but he must hold on to what he’s learned that fits his vision (and probably Dana Brown’s vision) of the team. As a player he was exposed to how a diverse set of organizations are run and then this was expanded further in the majors as a coach.  He should have a lot of tools at his disposal.

About That Lineup

One of the major jobs of the manager is playing mix and match with the lineup. In this case, Espada will have a bit of a spotlight on him as the lineup was the biggest complaint against Dusty by us bloggers and tweeters (oh and most everyone else who was paying attention).

Dana Brown may have made the job easier as he let Martin Maldonado go (opening the door for Yainer Diaz to play more) and announcing that Chas McCormick should be starting almost every game at LF or CF. Those were the two main areas of concern for the local fans with Dusty.

Though let’s face it we will find things to complain about – whether it is how he configures his lineup, when he gives guys a day off or how he handles lefty-righty situations. That is what we do.

Handling the Bullpen

This will be a more interesting job for Espada after the signing of Josh Hader. He will have to work on how to configure those high leverage innings between Hader, Ryan Pressly and Bryan Abreu including who closes when. He will need to figure out who to trust beyond those three (Rafael Montero, Parker Mushinski, Seth Martinez) and how to work in the younger options from within (Hunter Brown, J.P. France, Forrest Whitley) and without (Dylan Coleman, Declan Cronin).

Rotating that Rotation

How will he juggle his starters and who will be the next man up? As is typical, ten different pitchers started games for the Astros in 2023. This is not just the likely starters from the start of the season, Justin Verlander, Framber Valdez, Cristian Javier, Jose Urquidy, Hunter Brown and J.P. France. It also includes how to handle Luis Garcia and Lance McCullers Jr. when/if they finally arrive.

And if injuries strike, who will he ask to be pulled up from the minors (or, more likely, have thrust down upon him).

In the end there will be a lot of decisions made by Joe Espada in these and many other areas. Is he up to it? It says here, yes.

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16 responses to “Joe Espada: 5 focus areas”

    • James Cameron should hire this guy to write stories for the big screen.
      A whale of a tale! I am a big Bregman fan but this is pretty far out, with the $300 million being science fiction lore.
      They could name it “The Way of 315′ Fences”.

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    • He’d have to have a year far and away better than any other guy in the league. Some people simply would not vote for him.
      It will not happen.

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    • A few years back we had the question of whether Bregman could ever hit .300 in a season. I think his consistency is too erratic for that. If he put together an entire season without the dips I absolutely think he could be in the MVP discussion, but he’s going to lose support because of numbers posted by Altuve, Alvarez, and Tucker barring injuries. Still, looking at the top 10 from last year, I’m not putting money on Seager or Semien repeating those seasons, Julio Rodriguez could be a monster but his team looks a lot weaker, we know about Kyle Tucker, Yandy Diaz will decline, Bobby Witt, Jr., is going to be hurt by poor OBP and high K’s catching up to him, the two kids from Baltimore have to repeat and improve their season(s) without stealing votes from each other, and Jose Ramirez somehow ended up at number 10 despite not having a better year than Bregman. So outside the names I mentioned, I think we have to expect Manfred will engineer a run by Aaron Judge and you probably get a historic, eyebrow raising season from someone like Bichette or Vlad, Jr.

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  3. I think Espada’s focus should be on winning every one of the first six series of the year:
    Yankees for 4 games, followed by 3-game series with Blue Jays, Rangers, Royals, Rangers, and Braves. Play your best players in their most advantageous positions(Yordan at DH!).
    Five man rotation and wait to rest your players in the following 8 days, which include 3 off days.
    Go for being in first place in the AL West after this, the toughest part of the schedule of the season.
    Tell your team that your goal is to show the entire league that the Astros are the best team in baseball, right out of the gate.

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  4. Joe can pretty much rely on the nerds to show him what the best lineups are. I suspect he’ll go more with statistics ignored by the last guy.

    I don’t know why other teams did not hire him, but my guess is that maybe the thought is/was that he’s not the most dynamic guy around. That’s fine for me. Give me consistent. It’s a mature group of players. Mutual respect will go a long way.

    The pen might be a real challenge. He will have to listen to his pitching coaches, but not be afraid to overrule them. If the pen does not work out, it’s ultimately on Joe and Dana Brown, even if Dana Brown had little to do with bringing in Hader. We never got a story on that, did we? Not even from Chandler Rome.

    Use advanced stats for the rotation. Don’t try to squeeze another inning out of a guy if your pen is fresh. Use those stats. Don’t let anyone throw too many innings throughout the season. And don’t be candid with the press, especially if the opinion is different than your employer’s.

    Be happy. Win games. Home games! Win extra inning games.

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    • Perhaps Joe didn’t get those other jobs because Joe didn’t want those other jobs and it showed.
      Perhaps Joe has been waiting for this job and now has it.

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    • My best Jimy Williams memory – went to a game against Arizona with my boys in June 2002. We are losing 4-3 in the 9th and Jose Vizcaino leads off with an infield single, except the ump makes a terrible call (pre-video review era) and calls him out. Jimy goes nuts on him and will not leave the field until he’s tossed.
      The daytime crowd, which had been pretty quiet is now really riled up and it seems to affect the reliever. We are not in our seats – we had moved down to field level and are standing on the concourse behind 1st base, so we had a great view of the blown call.
      The heart of the Killer B’s order (Biggio, Berkman, Bagwell) load the bases. Darryle Ward just misses a grand slam – pulling it foul to right and then strikes out. Gregg Zaun pinch hits for the pitcher (Dotel) who is in the 6th spot because a double switch took Hidalgo out of the lineup. Zaun works it to a full count and hits one deep to right center that lands about 6″ over the right fielder’s glove and the Astros win 7-4.
      Blummer was on deck.

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      • There are two walk offs I remember so well – that was one and the other was in 2016 against Tampa Bay – Ken Giles gives the Rays a one run lead in the top of the ninth – Correa leads off and ties it with an opposite field homer. Up comes Evan Gattis. I might be off by one pitch, but it is like an 11 pitch at bat and finally he squares off the last one (a fastball probably above the strike zone) and rips it against the glass in deep left field. He comes around third base and tears his jersey off himself. We were going nuts.

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  8. I’m seeing reports that the Yankees offered Snell 6/150, and he countered with 9/270. Thats a lol contract. I probably would have spit out my coffee when Boras said that.

    In 2018, en route to that first Cy Young, he finished 16 games over .500. For his career, he is 16 games over .500. Go figure.

    It’s hard to win a lot of games even with great ERA’s if you have 5.1 innings a start. You hand a lot of games off to middle relievers that aren’t paid to be high leverage, and sometimes your offense just hasn’t gotten it going. 191 career starts, 71 wins. 37%. Verlander is at 50.4%. That is what hall of famers do. Snell is no hall of famer. Sure wants to be paid like one though.

    It wouldn’t surprise me if Snell ends up around 7/190 from the Yankees. I think they are only bidding against themselves in this though, and they know it, so maybe it stays at 6/150. There doesn’t appear to be another team making offers.

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    • Blake Snell and Carlos Rodon are only a couple weeks apart in age. Snell has gone 30+ starts twice in his career and Rodon once. Neither has pitched more than 180 innings. Why wouldn’t the Yankees want to give either of them Gerrit Cole money? If their plan was to spend $100M on bullpen arms it would make sense to have more starters like Snell, but the fact Cashman hasn’t signed him makes me worry he’s getting smarter.

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