LET’S MAKE A DEAL
Anybody remember Bob Weinhauer? Didn’t think so. But the largely forgotten Weinhauer was the Rockets’ general manager when they won back-to-back NBA championships. That means he was the GM who presided over the 1995 Valentine’s Day trade with Portland in 1995 that brought Clyde Drexler back to Houston, putting the Rockets back on track to win their second title, which also happens to be the most recent claimed by any of Houston’s NBA, NFL and MLB franchises.
Thank you, Bob Weinhauer.
Anybody remember Gerry Hunsicker? Sure you do. Hunsicker was the Astros’ general manager who orchestrated the 1998 trade with Seattle for Randy Johnson that would have given the city its first World Series if the Astros’ bats hadn’t gone silent in the postseason. But Hunsicker kept trying and was responsible for assembling the team that did finally play in the Fall Classic in 2005, although he had moved on by then. Thank you, Gerry Hunsicker. And of course most of you remember Bum Phillips, the folksy Oilers head coach who also was the folksy general manager who made the 1978 trade with Tampa Bay that turned Earl Campbell into an Oiler, thereby making possible two near-miss Super Bowl seasons, the only times Houston’s NFL teams have reached the Super Bowl’s doorstep. Thank you, Bum Phillips. By early July, two of the city’s three current general managers, the Texans’ Rick Smith and the Rockets’ Daryl Morey, had made trades they too hope will eventually earn our undying gratitude. Following Phillips’ long-ago lead in landing the Heisman Trophywinning running back Campbell — his was a pre-draft swap that sent tight end Jimmie Giles to the Buccaneers in exchange for moving up 17 spots to No. 1 overall — Smith leapfrogged 13 teams in the first round of the 2017 NFL draft to snare Deshaun Watson, the national championship-winning Clemson quarterback and hoped-for future face of the franchise.
Morey, for his part, pried nine-time NBA All-Star Chris Paul away from the Los Angeles Clippers to give a highprofile helping hand to James Harden, the GM’s signature acquisition in his decade in charge of the team’s basketball operations but one that hasn’t paid off in a big way come the postseason.
Spotlight on Luhnow
Jeff Luhnow? As Texas Sports Nation went to press, the Astros’ general manager was on the clock, trying to decide who, if anybody, could become his roll-of-the dice Randy Johnson. These Astros, much like Hunsicker’s
1998 team, which still holds the franchise record with 102 victories, have viable championship aspirations and might be only a single marquee acquisition from bringing Houston’s 22-year title drought to an end.
Coincidentally, should the Astros win the American League, their presumptive World Series opponent will be the Los Angeles Dodgers, an organization Hunsicker has served as a senior adviser since 2014. This Dodgers team is also on track to set a franchise record for wins.
When Luhnow was hired away from the St. Louis Cardinals in late 2011, he became Houston’s 32nd GM and the Astros’ 13th since their inaugural season in 1962. The Oilers went through 11 in the 37 AFL-NFL seasons they spent here before decamping to Nashville. As for Smith, having replaced Charley Casserly, the Texans’ first general manager, in 2006, he now ranks as the city’s secondlongest tenured GM behind only Ray Patterson, who ran the Rockets’ front office from 1972 through 1989 before handing the reins to his son, Steve. Patterson père’s lengthy reign is why the Rockets have only had seven GMs since moving here from San Diego in 1971.
Patterson’s 18 seasons produced two NBA finalists but no championships. Smith’s 11 with the Texans have yet to see them escape the NFL’s divisional round. Hunsicker’s 10 seasons remain a record for an Astros GM, understandable given the role he played in the Astros reaching the playoff six times. He presided from 1995 until, having grown weary of butting heads with owner Drayton McLane over pretty much everything, he resigned following the 2004 season on the heels of the team’s first first playoff series triumph and coming within one victory of the World Series.
That came six years after he thought he’d sealed the deal by landing Johnson, arguably most surprising and inarguably the most productive in-season acquisition ever by a Houston team.
The big payoff with Drexler occurred in the playoffs, as it did with Carlos Beltran, another Hunsicker coup in 2004. Alas, neither Johnson nor Beltran — who has, of course, returned for a final Houston hurrah and will be integral to whatever the current Astros can ultimately accomplish — were able to deliver even a World Series berth. And both were gone by the following season, having cost the Astros significant young talent in exchange for their one-and-done contributions.
Landing the Big Unit
Regarding the Hall of Famer Johnson, Hunsicker admitted to MLB.com, “I knew in my heart we were overpaying.” But, because, as he pointed out, “it was a unique time in the history of the Houston franchise — we had an exceptional team” and Johnson presented “a once in a lifetime opportunity,” we’d all do both deals 100 times over.
In 1998, Hunsicker believed he had a good enough chance to make some kind of roster-improving deal on the last day trades could be executed without the waiver process being involved that he decided not to travel to Pittsburgh with the team on Friday, July 31, asking an equipment guy to retrieve his suitcase from the team bus, which left without him. But he was never optimistic he could pry the Big Unit away from the Mariners until it had happened.
At 9 p.m. on the evening of the deadline, after several “discouraging conversations led me to believe it wasn’t going to work, I actually went home and sent everybody home thinking this thing was dead. But, about an hour or so before the deadline, I called (Seattle GM) Woody (Woodward) again” and the deal got done with Hunsicker sending
WE FIND OUT VERY QUICKLY THAT, THE OVERWHELMING MAJORITY OF THE TIME YOU MAKE A TRADE, IT DOESN’T GET YOU THERE.” GERRY HUNSICKER, FORMER ASTROS GENERAL MANAGER
pitcher Freddy Garcia, an almost certain star in the making, an outstanding young shortstop in Carlos Guillen and another starting pitcher, John Halama, to the Mariners.
“I called Nancy Cross in the National League office and Woody had to do the same with the American League office,” he said. “It was literally a minute before midnight. She told me, ‘I’m looking at my clock right now and the second hand says it’s about 55 seconds to midnight. We’d have a big problem if you’d called any later. I couldn’t have okayed the deal.’ It turned out to be a pretty agonizing and intense night, but it was also the most exhilarating night that I’ve ever had in this business.”
Two days later, on a Sunday afternoon, Johnson made his first Astros start in Pittsburgh. The script proved prophetic. In a 6-2 victory, he pitched brilliantly, as he would over 13 subsequent starts (he went 10-1 with a 1.28 ERA for the rest of the regular season) through the NLDS, but the Astros scored only one of their runs while he was on the mound. That would be their downfall in the shortlived postseason when Johnson, despite allowing only three San Diego earned runs in 14 innings, was beaten twice as the Astros managed just a single run on his behalf in both games.
Johnson then signed with Arizona over the offseason and helped them win the World Series in 2001. Garcia and Guillen, shocking no one, turned into
major attractions for the Mariners, although at least Seattle never parlayed them into a championship, either.
“We did everything we could to put ourselves in a position to get to the playoffs and win the World Series,” Hunsicker said. “It didn’t work. But in our situation, if you didn’t try to make a trade like that, then you shouldn’t even consider making any kind of trade in any scenario. The cards were aligned for us. We had a great team. And the excitement it created, not only in the clubhouse but in the city, was worth making that trade.”
Beltran bonanza
Coincidentally, Beltran got his first major-league at-bats during that 1998 season and, by 2004, he was a proven pro with a huge upside who, as a free agent, wasn’t going to be affordable for the Kansas City Royals. Hunsicker didn’t wait until the trade deadline with him. Beltran debuted with the Astros on June 25, having cost them an outstanding young reliever in Octavio Dotel and promising rookie catcher John Buck. Beltran proved a solid if unspectacular addition for the rest of the regular season before going on a crazy postseason tear, hitting .435 with eight home runs in his first nine playoff starts as the Astros finally fought past the Atlanta Braves, then took St. Louis to a seventh game in the NLCS.
Subsequently, though, Beltran then left the Astros dangling deep into free agency before signing a mega-deal with the Mets (well after Hunsicker’s departure from the Astros). Dotel stayed in the majors for nine more seasons, although he was never again as overpowering as he had been as a young Astro. Buck had a solid 11-season career, batting .281 with 20 homers for Toronto in 2010, when he made the AllStar team.
Coming full circle
Johnson and Beltran notwithstanding, the most favorably lopsided trade in Astros history — Larry Andersen for Jeff Bagwell, executed by Bill Wood on Aug. 30, 1990 — was only modestly newsworthy at the time but will come up frequently in conversations this weekend with Bagwell being inducted into the Hall of Fame.
Bagwell had yet to take his first cuts at the major-league level, while Andersen, whom the Astros sent to the AL pennant-chasing Boston Red Sox straight up for Bagwell, was a dependable middle reliever in his 16th season. Anderson posted a sparkling 1.23 ERA for the Sox, but they got swept by Oakland in the ALDS and he moved on to San Diego before finishing his career with the Phillies in the strikeshortened 1994 season.
Right, the same year Bagwell won National League Most Valuable Player honors. Today, the Astros are in Boston’s shoes, just as they would be in 1998 and 2004, needing a boost to help get them where they want to go. But Baggy’s big weekend in Cooperstown seems perfectly timed to serve as the consummate cautionary tale.
“In this business when you’re trying to put yourself over the top,” Hunsicker said, “we find out very quickly that, the overwhelming majority of the time you make a trade, it doesn’t get you there.”