The making of a GM
Chasing his passion to work in baseball, a driven James Click ascends to Astros general manager with a little bit of luck and a lot of intelligence
James Click, the Astros’ new general manager, has risen to the top with a mix of rejection and luck.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — James Click consumes history. He is a self-described dork who devours just about anything that explains the past. Twenty rejection letters linger in a folder on the back seat of his car, a collection of carnage he carries everywhere.
“I like to keep the history,” Click said. “You like to have the perspective. Just to remember where it all started, to appreciate it.”
When a Yale professor proclaimed four-vector derivatives had no practical use past the classroom Click was sitting in, the math whiz opted to obtain a bachelor’s degree in history. He accrued some student loans and left the prestigious university with little idea of his next move.
Passionate for baseball by virtue of a side job with Baseball Prospectus, Click mailed letters to all 30 major league clubs seeking some sort of internship. Twenty told him no. The San Diego Padres phoned back but with unfortunate news. The letter they received was addressed to the Houston Astros.
“You did want to apply to the Padres?” a man asked.
Click, 42, confirmed he did. An obvious question followed. “I’m not getting this job, am I?”
Click needed no actual answer. So many can commiserate with the comical scene — an overwhelmed overachiever trying to land his ultimate dream.
Humanity has not been a recent hallmark of the Astros. Their new general manager oozes it. Click’s been trained to place more emphasis on people than the baseball team’s performance. His will to win is unquestioned but will not overtake an overarching goal of treating those around him well.
“He’s very brilliant, and he’s really good at what he does,” said Carlos Rodriguez, the Rays’ vice president of player development. “He’s extremely witty. There’s a high level of snark there at times, but overall just a really genuine and authentic person. That authenticity will translate to just about any crowd. He can connect with just about anybody.”
Click spent 14 seasons within a Tampa Bay Rays organization that exuded the same values but operated with far fewer financial resources. He rose from constructing an ultimate frisbee website on a whim to shepherding the Houston Astros forward. The journey is, in a best friend’s words, “unreplicable and so serendipitous.”
“We had those conversations in the dorm room that every kid who realizes they’re not going to be a pro has,” said Mike Gordon, Click’s college roommate. “We both talked about wanting to be a GM someday.”
Click actualized it. He must contend with the disgrace provided by a previous regime and repair an image left in ruins. His is the new face of a now-hated franchise, one Click promises will put its people first and promote sustainability as it attempts to regain much of what has eroded.
“Any time you’re taking a job like this, any time one is available, it’s not because everything is perfect,” Click said. “It’s because there’s something that needs to be addressed. Usually, it’s on the field. But in this case, it wasn’t.”
Chasing the dream
There’s a tradition among Yale seniors who survive four years at one of the country’s most prestigious institutions. Between the end of final exams and graduation, most of the departing class embarks for a weekend in Myrtle Beach, S.C. College kids act the fool, relishing a final weekend of freedom before adulthood arrives.
Click and Gordon got a beach house with a few other friends. As freshmen, they bonded over Click’s hometown of Durham, N.C. Gordon attended a summer program there. Click remains obsessed with the town’s basketball team.
“The day after Duke loses, you have to tiptoe around James,” Red Sox president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom said. “I imagine that will not change.”
Click and Gordon lived together for three of their four Yale years. Both men played on the school’s ultimate frisbee team. By 2000, Click was a team captain who had an idea.
“James got the idea that our college club ultimate frisbee team should have a website,” Gordon said. “It was just something cool to do and maybe make communication or publicity a little easier. He didn’t have a grand vision. He wasn’t trying to be a web developer. It was just sort of a fun project.”
Click purchased a book from the “For Dummies” series — Gordon believes it was “HTML For Dummies” but can’t be entirely sure. Click studied it and constructed the website. He maintained it throughout his senior year that ended in Myrtle Beach.
Click caroused alongside his classmates. He met a girl named Ann-Catherine whom Gordon befriended earlier in his college career. All called her “Ace” for short. She and Click had a connection. Click was smitten but still traveled back to reality that next week.
He graduated with no job and a history degree. Gap interviewed him for a training program in San Francisco. Click did not get the job but was enamored with the city and one of its occupants.
“It also happens to be where Ace is from and where she was going back to after college,” Gordon said. “James looked at that and was like, ‘Well, I don’t have a job. I don’t have anywhere particular that I’m dying to go. Why not go to this cool city, chase this girl, and I’ll find a job?’
“That was the plan. It was kind of nuts. But that’s what he did.”
A baseball passion
Andrew Friedman fell ill with the flu, and his first winter meetings as the Tampa Bay Rays’ general manager came to a halt. He suffered in solitude inside a Dallas luxury hotel suite and started sending regrets. He tried to postpone meetings. Most around the sport were understanding.
“It did not deter James,” Friedman said. “That wasn’t even a speed bump.
“He said, ‘If you’re good with it, I’m good with it.’ He likes to retell that story, but it did show how committed he was to landing with the team.”
Click could not allow the opportunity to pass. He stood on the precipice of a baseball internship, five years after departing college without a job or many prospects.
In San Francisco, still searching for a concrete path to prominence, Click joined a tech consulting firm to construct databases — a job he received almost solely with skills he honed building the ultimate frisbee team’s website.
For the first few months of his tenure, he lived in Ace’s parents’ basement. The family were huge baseball fans. Click spent his childhood summers at Durham Bulls games, although boys who grow up in Durham, N.C., typically gravitate toward basketball.
“It could have been either one, but for whatever reason, it was just baseball for me,” Click said with a caveat.
“If Mike Krzyzewski is looking for someone to come help out, I’ll pick up my phone.”
A baseball passion persisted. Baseball Prospectus was headquartered in San Francisco. At the time, the publication had a vast but scattered collection of files on specific players with corresponding identifications. It required help constructing a more comprehensive database, one that later became known as PECOTA.
Click jumped at the meticulous work — all of which he accomplished outside his full-time job.
The files often had repeat names that didn’t match with a correct identification. Players with the same name were always challenging.
“I spent nights and weekends going through this file and making sure the Alex Gonzalezes and the Randy Johnsons and whatever were lined up correctly,” Click said.
“While I was doing that, I just started writing some articles on the side and sending them into the editors. … I kept sending in articles, and they kept writing back saying, ‘This article's terrible. Please try again.’ But then eventually I came up with one or two that got on the website, got some traction and, you know, just cut my teeth there.”
Click has 79 articles still available on Baseball Prospectus’ archives. Among the topics he analyzed: what effect extra-inning games and doubleheaders had on teams, park effects on defensive metrics and baserunning, and how much difference a batting order makes.
“James was a full-fledged writer there who was doing some really great work that was, I think, advancing the ball where analytics were at the time,” Bloom said.
In 2005, he filed a World Series prospectus, breaking down the Astros and White Sox from every conceivable angle.
“These teams are incredibly similar — mediocre offenses, topnotch run prevention, and a heavy reliance on right-handed players — and picking between them is nearly impossible,” Click wrote in his final line.
“But let it be said that at Baseball Prospectus we never shrink away from a challenge: Astros in seven.”
The White Sox swept.
Shaky predictions aside, Click grew to gain a cult following. When Friedman hired Bloom from Baseball Prospectus as an intern in 2005, the new general manager asked whether anyone could assist the Rays in building a database.
Bloom mentioned Click. Click saved the email Bloom that first mentioned the job — with a subject line that simply read “Tampa Bay Devil Rays”
“Maybe it’s the history major in me,” Click said.
Friedman set an interview that Click would not allow to be canceled.
“Obviously, (he’s) incredibly bright, and he had an uncanny ability to kind of systematically go through what we were doing, where we wanted to get and the best path to get there,” Friedman said.
“It was an overwhelming undertaking at that point in time. … James quarterbacked a lot of those initiatives.”
Leaving a comfort zone
Fourteen years in one place creates comfort. Click came to Tampa Bay when the team was still the Devil Rays. There was no research and development department. Analytics or advanced data within the sport was in its infancy.
Click oversaw the franchise’s total transformation. He built the research and development team from scratch. After one year of consulting in 2005 — the job for which he interviewed with Friedman — Click became a full-time employee in 2006.
“When he was building out the R&D department there it wasn’t just about finding good analytical talent so we could do good work,” Bloom said. “It was also making sure that he — as the head of the department — took responsibility for the career progressions of all those people, that he gave them feedback, that he helped them to succeed and accomplish their goals.
“He worked to build relationships in every area of the organization and really cared about how the organization was taking care of its people, even if they were people not under his direct supervision.”
The Rays appeared in five postseasons during Click’s tenure. He worked under two future baseball operations heads — Bloom and Friedman — standing out among a throng of fast-rising industry stars.
“He is very good at being a leader,” said Peter Bendix, the Rays’ vice president of player development. “He’s very good at inspiring people to believe in him, at promoting a vision, at just kind of taking a group of people and moving them forward in the same direction just by kind of uniting them toward one goal.
“I don’t know to what extent he is doing it intentionally or it’s just natural, but it certainly comes across as natural.”
Around the industry, their work in Tampa was heralded for its innovation. That the resource strapped Rays could rub elbows with the cash-flush New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox was a testament to the organizational intelligence, creativity and talent.
Teams poach Tampa’s personnel constantly in hopes of harnessing some of it. Rivals constantly try to copy some novel Rays tactic and make it mainstream. Infield shifts gradually became the norm around the majors. Several teams took to using openers. With the competition taking less time to mimic innovation, Click needed a new challenge. Friedman felt a similar urge in 2014 when he departed to runn the Los Angeles Dodgers.
“Part of the reason why I took
the job in L.A. was to throw myself in the deep end, challenge myself to think differently and recognize what discipline from a smaller revenue team would still hold and in what ways I needed to change my approach,” said Friedman, who grew up in Houston. “I imagine James is going through that process as well.”
Click resisted any theory that his role in Tampa grew stale. He speaks of the Rays with effusive praise and affords them almost all credit for his baseball upbringing.
“I think ultimately (I) wanted on some level to kind of shake things up,” Click said. “This is a very, very different challenge on many levels (than I faced in Tampa). And that’s exciting to try to sort of mentally reset or mentally shake up your reality and see what kind of falls out of it and see if that generates some new ideas, new challenges and some new ways to approach things.”
The Astros interview
The first call to Click about the Astros job came from Tampa Bay.
Major League Baseball rules required the Astros to request permission from the Rays to interview Click for their general manager vacancy. Already reshuffling after Bloom bolted for Boston earlier in the winter, the Rays gave their blessing to Houston owner Jim Crane and then let Click know.
Click came to Houston for his first general manager interview. The franchise had a loaded roster but sat in ruins. Fallout from the electronic sign-stealing scandal was enormous and only just beginning.
“I knew what I had seen publicly about what had happened here over the past five, six months and certainly over the last couple years in terms of the personnel and front office,” Click said. “I had a lot of questions I needed answered, and so, ultimately, I took the interview knowing that if things lined up, it was something I’d consider. But I had a lot of questions, and they obviously had a lot of questions for me.”
Click’s foremost concerns were about the people. The exodus in the Astros front office wasn’t limited to Jeff Luhnow and Brandon Taubman. Some of Luhnow’s trusted lieutenants —Mike Elias, Sig Mejdal, Mike Fast and Oz Ocampo — all departed during the last two years for other franchises. Click had to ascertain the ability — and mentality — of those who remained.
“It was hard to know why what happened here happened,” Click said. “That’s what I needed to get a feel for. Ultimately, I got very comfortable with the personnel that we have, got very comfortable with Jim, got very comfortable with the front-office group — having some very open conversations, some tough conversations. I came in, and I had some questions that I needed answered. I got them answered and ultimately felt comfortable we were going to put this all behind us and move forward.
“You have to know what you’re getting into. The last thing that I could have happen was to come in here and then find out there were additional skeletons in the closet that needed to be dealt with.”
While declining to specify how quickly he was hired in Houston, Click noted that Crane constantly reiterates he’s “in the overnight business.” The shipping mogul introduced Dusty Baker as his new manager Jan. 30. Click came aboard four days later.
‘Here to win’
They put people first in Tampa Bay.
“This is a game, right?” Rays general manager Erik Neander said. “It’s a business, and it’s an entertainment business and all that, but it’s a game. I think we recognize that, and we took it for what it is, and we applied the appropriate perspective to that.
“Taking care of people, enjoying it and making the most of it is huge. (There are) challenges and all that comes with it … you can do those things and still treat people the right way and still care for them and make sure all the reasons that people want to work in this game and this sport and make a living out of it, you don’t lose sight of those things and you don’t turn it into something that’s cold and calculated and not humane.”
Click must now transfer the thinking to Houston, where Major League Baseball’s brutal assessment of the baseball operations culture still lingers. In his sign stealing report released in January, commissioner Rob Manfred called it “very problematic” and “insular.”
Click hopes to cultivate a culture similar to the one he just departed. Tampa Bay’s front office is far bigger than Houston’s was under Luhnow. Luhnow, according to Manfred, manifested a culture that “valued and rewarded results over other considerations.”
Click comes from a completely different approach. His two organizations share analytical identities but could not be farther apart in day-to-day treatment of employees.
Click wants to push the envelope and continue the analytical advances for which the Astros were renowned. He wants a sustainable winner and acknowledged he isn’t afraid to “take a small step back in the present when other people are really fighting tooth and nail for that and to build up that value.”
“That’s something you have to do in any of these jobs. If people recognize that they don’t have to try to do everything they can in the moment to win right now and that they can take a long view of it over time, you can build up real value,” Click said.
His love for family is evident. Click married Ace while with the Rays. Early in their marriage, Click worked for the Rays remotely from San Francisco to be closer together.
His main concerns when deliberating the Astros opening centered around uprooting them from St. Petersburg.
“His family means a ton to him,” Bloom said. “I’m sure more to him than anybody he works with.”
Click and Ace have two sons — 8-year-old Sam and 5-year-old Nate. The boys now know swimming pools, Little League and schools still exist in Texas. They’re much more open to the move than back in February, when Sam was curious why the Rays “traded” his father to the Astros.
Click thinks it’s to make history. “In all honesty, this may be the best shot I’ve ever had to win a World Series because of the division that Tampa’s in and the challenges they’re always up against,” Click said. “It feels very odd to me to have that happen, but that’s part of the appeal of the job. Because I’m here to win.”