The Fat Lady Sang: Now it’s time to take inventory — Manager, coaches, front office

Our last two posts covered the current status on the Astros’ positional players The Fat Lady sang: Now, It’s time to take inventory – The position players – ALL THINGS ASTROS (chipalatta.com) followed by a look at the Astros’ pitchers The Fat Lady sang: Now it’s time to take inventory – The pitchers – ALL THINGS ASTROS (chipalatta.com)

The third component in looking at the organization is a leadership review.

The Owner: Jim Crane

The bad news is that Jim Crane decided to head in a different direction after letting GM James Click walk. After giving him an offer that he could undoubtedly refuse, Mr. Crane chose to head in a different direction. That direction included leaving the GM job empty as a committee consisting of Crane, the assistant GM’s, Jeff Bagwell, Reggie Jackson and Craig Biggio were performing those duties. This resulted in some poor decisions being made including the signing of Jose Abreu (3 yrs/$58.5 MM) and the extensions of Rafael Montero (3 yrs/ $34.5 MM) and Michael Brantley (1 yr/ $12 MM).

The good news is that Crane has been willing to spend money big time on the team, including buying into some reversal of the above decisions. This included swallowing large amounts of money. He approved the release of Jose Abreu, which cost about $32 MM and for Rafael Montero which could cost about $18 MM if he does not earn a spot on the roster in the spring. He approved the team going over the luxury tax for the season and did not balk when they added the salary of Yusei Kikuchi at the trade deadline.

Key Questions

• Has Jim Crane moved away from the Svengali influence of his Hall of Fame trio led by Jeff Bagwell, who may know baseball well, but are not front office gurus?
• The flip side of this is: Is Dana Brown in charge, taking input from several sources but having the final say except when Crane has to approve big dollar moves?
• What is his long-term plan for the team? How long does he see himself as the man running the show?

The GM – Dana Brown

Brown inherited a World Championship club that looked great from the outside but had some challenges in the area of sustaining success. This included:

• A farm system weakened by big trades for top talent, the punishment of lost picks from the scandal and being moved down the pecking order in the draft due to their success.
• Having those decisions mentioned in the Owner’s section above – weighing down the roster.
• Having to face tough decisions on which players to pursue for re-signing among Jose Altuve, Framber Valdez, Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker.
• A steadily increasing payroll limiting his flexibility in making moves.

His scorecard since taking over is a bit of a mixed bag….

• Biggest signing was Josh Hader for 5 seasons / $95 MM.  Hader overall pitched well, but we will remember him giving up the huge hit to help end their Wild Card hopes. Perhaps (as friend of the blog Daveb opined) he will be more effective as a one inning closer going forward. But there is still the feeling that the team should have used that money and gotten multiple relievers.
• Well maybe his biggest signing was the five-year extension for Jose Altuve.
• He pushed to move Ronel Blanco from relief to the rotation and that paid off in spades as Blanco was All-Star good (without the award) in 2024.
• He did not trade to fill the giant hole at first base after Jose Abreu as the Astros used practically everyone with a glove after Abreu’s release in June.
• He picked up help for free in the persons of Tayler Scott, Kaleb Ort, Ben Gamel and Jason Heyward who all helped the Astros to varying degrees during the season.
• He did not make any moves for months to bolster the rotation that kept sustaining blow after blow.  Cristian Javier, J.P. France and Jose Urquidy were all lost for the season plus, Lance McCullers Jr. and Luis Garcia never returned from the IL and Justin Verlander went on the IL for two months.
• When he did make a move at the deadline for Yusei Kikuchi he was hounded by everyone for both trading for the wrong pitcher and for trading too much for the wrong pitcher.
• Yusei ended up being the right pitcher and “everyone” had to eat crow.
• He tended to talk about injured players publicly and what he said did not always match what his manager said.
• He tended to talk a bit too much about making offers to Kyle Tucker and Alex Bregman with it not seeming to match the reality of the situation.
• He aggressively promoted prospects who showed well in the minors as he attempted to elevate the farm system.

Key Questions

• Is he in charge? Were the Hader and Altuve signings his or were did they have big pushes from Jim Crane and his cronies?
• What is his short-term plan and long-term plan to keep the contending window open?
• Will he attempt to make any trades to shed age and payroll for youth and cost reduction?

Manager. Joe Espada

Probably the most controversial person to talk about here. Let’s do a frowny face / smiley face comparison.

Frowny Face

• He was the Astros’ manager as they fell out of the playoffs in two Wild Card games. They had not fallen short of the ALCS since 2016.
• He was outmanaged in the Wild Card by former manager A.J. Hinch, who seemed to bamboozle the Astros in two quick Tiger wins.
• Like his predecessor and former boss, Dusty Baker, he was questioned frequently about his lineup choices throughout the season. His seat-of-the-pants choices often seemed to ignore the obvious statistics with some of the matchups.
• He was questioned about the over-use of the bullpen, especially the back end, with Bryan Abreu ending up second in the AL in appearances and Josh Hader making 10 more appearances than ever in his career.
• Gave statements about injury situations that seemed to vary from ill-informed to deliberately false, as though he was the President’s press secretary.
• He was super optimistic even after the worst played games of the season.
• Continued a tradition of poor play in extra inning (6-10) and one run games (18-27).  

Smiley Face

• Helped the club survive being 12 games below .500 and 10 games back at different times to end up AL West division winners by 4 games.
• Kept the team calm and producing even while having a very good rotation (Javier, France, Urquidy, McCullers, Garcia and at times Verlander) on the IL.
• Weathered having to utilize underachievers like Jose Abreu and Rafael Montero during the early season.
• Did not panic with slow/bad starts by Josh Hader, Bryan Abreu, Ryan Pressly, Hunter Brown, Spencer Arrighetti and the king of bad starts Alex Bregman.
• Held the lineup together even while doing patchwork usage at first base and centerfield, even with Kyle Tucker missing half the season and Chas McCormick being missing in action.
• Integrated new parts into the mix (Kaleb Ort, Caleb Ferguson, Ben Gamel, Jason Heyward, Shay Whitcomb, Zach Dezenzo) as needed along the way.
• Never threw anyone under the bus publicly or deflected responsibility for problems.

Key Questions

• What has Espada learned from his first season as the head man? What can he apply to his job going forward and will he?
• After having the least successful season since 2016 (when Hinch was the manager) is Espada on any kind of hot seat?

Coaches

We will take a quick look at the pitching coaches and hitting coaches…..

Pitching Coaches. Josh Miller and Bill Murphy

This is mostly going to be a praise-a-thon….

• Most of the makeshift starting pitching staff improved during the season
  • Framber Valdez – 3-3, 4.34 ERA thru May – 12-4, 2.38 ERA June to the end of 2024
  • Hunter Brown – 0-4, 9.78 ERA thru April – 11-5, 2.51 ERA May to the end of 2024
  • Spencer Arrighetti – 0-4, 8.44 ERA thru his first 5 starts – 7-9, 3.86 ERA in his last 24 starts
• Ronel Blanco went from “who’s he” to “how can we survive without him”. After going 2-1 with a 4.78 ERA in 24 MLB appearances before 2024, he was brilliant in 2024 going 13-6, 2.80 ERA and a no-hitter in his first start of the season.
• Took Yusei Kikuchi, who was 4-9 with a 4.75 ERA with the Blue Jays, taught him a new grip for his slider to increase the drop, made him throw it twice as often, drop his curveball from the mix and voila…. he was 5-1 with a 2.80 ERA and the team was 9-1 in his starts.
• Were involved in bullpen improvements over the season
  • Josh Hader was 0-2 with 1 save and a 9.39 ERA in his first 9 appearances – 8-6, with 33 saves in 36 chances and a 3.13 ERA the rest of the season.
  • Bryan Abreu was 1-1 with a 6.00 ERA in his first 9 appearances –  2-2, 1 save, 2.73 ERA the rest of the season.
  • Ryan Pressly was 0-3 with 1 save and 5 blown saves and a 5.40 ERA after 27 games – 2-0 with 3 saves, 3 blown saves and a 1.99 ERA the rest of the season
• Took Tayler Scott (lifetime 0-1 6.27 ERA in 39 MLB games) and squeezed a fine season (7-3, 2.23 ERA) out of him.
• Took Kaleb Ort (lifetime 2-4, 6.27 ERA in 47 MLB games) and cajoled (1-1, 2.55 ERA) out of him.
• And on the other side…
  • Could not get Rafael Montero back to his 2022 excellence (or even some 80% version of that)
  • Could not get Justin Verlander back on track after his return from the IL (though this may have been JV pushing to come back too soon).
  • Saw Seth Martinez go from a dependable bullpen arm to untouchable towards the end of the season
  • Have to wonder if all of the pitching injuries are in some way tied to whatever coaching / pitch mix/ spin rate is going on here. (Or is it the time clock, lack of tacky grip, etc. related?)

Key Questions

• Is there any reason so many of the pitchers started so slowly this season? Is it tied to lack of usage in Spring Training?
• Are there any changes that could be made to put the pitchers at less risk for injury?

Hitting Coaches. Alex Cintron and Troy Snitker

As a team, the Astros offense was performing in the top third in the AL.

• 4^th in runs / game with 4.60 r/g
• 1^st in BA with .262 BA/ 2^nd in OBP with .322 OBP/ 3^rd in OPS with .741 OPS
• 2^nd least with 1176 Ks / 13^th most with 448 BBs/ 5^th with 190 HRs

The biggest difference in this team from 2023 is in the area of walks as they were 4^th in the AL in walks in 2023 with 550 BBs and 13^th in 2024 with 448 BBs.  This 19% drop in walks was significant and meets the eye test as the Astros were not using the walks as much as a weapon this season.

It was obvious that in many games the Astros were jumping on pitches early in the count and often it seemed like they went to the second inning and the opposing pitcher had thrown less than 10 pitches.

The number of pitches the Astros faced on the season dropped from 23,916 to 22,359 – about a 6.5% drop in number of pitches forced upon the pitcher. The MLB had a very small drop in pitches faced in 2024 (0.16%) and if you took the Astros drop out of there – the rest of the league had a small (0.28%) uptick in pitches faced.

Even though the Astros were 4^th in the league in scoring, they had dropped a half a run a game from the 2023 season when they were third. The AL teams had dropped an average of .28 runs per game and the Astros drop was almost twice that of the other teams.

The hitting coaches (and likely the nerds feeding them data) need to go back and reconsider their strategy here. Yes, the Astros lost Kyle Tucker for a significant amount of time in 2024, but their run production should not have been down from 2023 when they were without Jose Altuve and Yordan Alvarez for significant time and when they were giving a lot of at bats to Jose Abreu and Martin Maldonado.

Key Questions

• Is there a better strategy to apply to the hitters to increase their walk rate and hopefully their run per game rate?
• Is there a better construction of their lineup and what does it look like if they no longer have Alex Bregman? Can they put anyone in the last three spots to help flip the lineup offensively?
• Can they get Chas McCormick (2022/2023) back? Is there any hope for an improved Jake Meyers?

Well, these were my thoughts – what are yours?