Luhnow is Turkey of the Year
From mistreatment of female reporters to accusations of sign stealing, Astros prez gobbles up our lowly dishonor
It has been a tradition at the Daily News to use the occasion of Thanksgiving weekend to cite the 10 people in baseball who have most acted and/or played like turkeys during the course of the season, ranking them from 1-10 in the order of their malfeasance.
This year, however, because of the overwhelming transgressions of one person, we are going to deviate from the norm and select a single turkey to be carved up and served to the multitudes as Baseball’s Public Enemy No. 1. Nobody else was even close.
So to Mike Zunino, by far the worst hitter in baseball with a .165 average and .544 OPS, 98 strikeouts in 289 plate appearances as opposed to just 20 walks and 44 hits…and to Ivan Nova, by far the most hittable pitcher in baseball with the highest batting average against (.303) and hits per inning (1.203) and secondmost base runners allowed (281)… and to Mickey Callaway, who was a terrible Mets manager and did an especially terrible job in handling both his own and pitcher Jason Vargas’ altercation with a Newsday reporter in late July… consider yourselves pardoned this year. Your plane tickets to Virginia Tech are in the mail.
Now to the undeniably biggest turkey of all, Houston Astros President of Baseball Operations Jeff Luhnow. At last count he’s the principal in at least three MLB investigations: two into the Astros’ electronic cheating in 2017 and 2019, and a third into the Brandon Taubman situation, including a lack of conscience when it comes to domestic violence, mistreatment of female reporters, and an overall lack of accountability in the organization from the PR department all the way up to the owner, Jim Crane.
And all that doesn’t even cover why the Astros are the universally most loathed organization in baseball. They’ve fostered a culture of supreme arrogance, especially in regard to scouts. Everyone in the game — except for maybe a few franchises who hope their own sign-stealing stays under the radar — is rooting for Commissioner Rob Manfred to come down with the heaviest hammer and stiffest penalties possible against them.
As far as arrogance, all you need to hear are the words of Luhnow’s two top analytics disciples last year. Center of the whole Astro culture issue was Brandon Taubman’s remarks of defiance to a female journalist who’d been critical of the team’s decision to trade for closer Roberto Osuna, who was under suspension for alleged domestic violence against the mother of his child. After Taubman’s explanation for his remarks was ultimately found to be a flat-out lie, Luhnow reluctantly fired him. The team’s overall behavior in the affair, including the PR department initially putting out a statement excoriating another woman reporter’s accurate account of the incident in Sports Illustrated, is part of baseball’s ongoing investigation of the team.
Then there was Sig Mejdal, Luhnow’s top sabermetrics man with both the Cardinals and Astros, who moved over to the Orioles as general manager last year. He cavalierly fired 11 members of the scouting and player development departments. According to the fired scouts, Mejdal told them that he could do a better job evaluating players with stats, video and algorithms than they ever could. Nice.
Between Luhnow and his former disciples — Mejdal and Mike Elias in Baltimore, David Stearns in Milwaukee — over 70 scouts have been fired in the past couple of years. The Astros had 55 scouts in 2009. In 2019 they had fewer than 20, and zero pro scouts. And when the Astros won the world championship in 2017, Luhnow was front and center celebrating how analytic s enabled them to much better evaluate players, especially in the draft, and that their success is proof-positive that their way is the right way.
In fact, if you go down the rosters of the 2017 and 2019 Astros, it’s hard to make the case how analytics, or at least Luhnow’s sabermetricians, had anything to do with them. Of the principal players on the 2017 Astros, three — shortstop Carlos Correa, third baseman Alex Bregman and No. 5 starter Lance McCullers Jr. — were products of Luhnow’s drafts. But Correa and Bergsman were no-brainer No. 1’s, who didn’t need analytics to determine what kind of players they were. And according to Astros insiders, if Luhnow’s analytics people had had their way, they would have taken Stanford pitcher Mark Appel over Correa. There was quite a heated debate, with then-top scout Bobby Heck — who’d been the
point man in drafting George Springer and signing Jose Altuve for the previous regime of GM Ed Wade — pushing hard for Correa. Everyone except Luhnow questioned Appel’s desire, which doesn’t show up in the algorithms. Only when Appel rejected the Astros’ bonus offer of $6 million did they elect to pass on him and take Correa. Heck, one of the most respected scouts in the business who is now with Tampa Bay, was soon after fired by Luhnow.
Meanwhile, the Astros depended on Justin Verlander to win the World Series in 2017 and make it back there this year. And yet, when Verlander was available at the trading deadline in 2017, Luhnow’s analytics people were adamantly opposed to acquiring him, maintaining it was too much money for a pitcher, in their opinion, on the downside. It was Nolan Ryan, then a special front office assistant, who went over Luhnow’s head to team owner Jim Crane and told him: “If you want to win, we’ve got to get this guy.” Ryan left the organization last summer after his son, Reid, was demoted from team president for business operations, and good for him. Nolan Ryan had nothing to do with the cheating scandal and now he won’t have to be around when the pile of dung comes heaping down on the organization for its complicity in it.
And it would certainly appear that the Astros’ guilt is significant. Who knows how many games and teams were affected by their cheating? The exact number may never been known, but if it’s proven that the Astros illegally contrived the elaborate sign-stealing scheme and made prolific use of it, then they should be made to pay dearly.
Rob Manfred has to know this is his Kennesaw Mountain Landis moment. His game has been infected by what is potentially the biggest cheating scandal since the 1919 Black Sox. Mere fines and draft pick losses aren’t going to cut it. People are going to have to be suspended for significant periods of time. And if Luhnow was behind this — and it’s hard to imagine he wasn’t, as the top dog in the organization — then his sentence should be life. Cheating to affect the outcome of games is a whole lot worse than anything Pete Rose ever did.
In bestowing Luhnow with our one and only turkey this year, I would ask him: “If analytics is what made the Astros world champions, why would you then feel it necessary to cheat?”