San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Brown another cog in rolling Astros machine
This is unorthodox.
Does it matter?
This isn’t how the rebuilt Astros, in 2015 and ’17 and ’19, were supposed to operate at the top in 2023.
Who cares?
Winners win. The Astros keep winning more than anyone else in Major League Baseball. And as long as brand new general manager Dana Brown doesn’t trade away Jose Altuve, Yordan Alvarez, Jeremy Peña, Framber Valdez and Hunter Brown during his first year on the job, it’s already almost impossible to imagine the 2023 playoffs without the participation of the reigning world champions.
We all know that Jim Crane, Jeff Bagwell and Reggie Jackson have the final say on blockbuster trades, anyway, so it’s difficult to envision the new guy single-handedly ruining the third chapter of this golden era.
Ex-GM Jeff Luhnow built these Astros.
Former GM James Click (remember him?) polished away the tarnish and made them sparkle again.
Dana Brown is a couple weeks away from starting spring training with a list of names that would make every other first-time GM in baseball history envious.
Alex Bregman, José Abreu, Michael Brantley, Kyle Tucker, Altuve, Alvarez and Peña.
Lance McCullers Jr., Cristian Javier, Ryan Pressly, Ryne Stanek, Héctor Neris, Rafael Montero, Bryan Abreu, Valdez and Hunter Brown.
Those names could win 95 (or 106) games without a GM.
Throw in Dusty Baker, Craig Biggio, Enos Cabell and everyone else in orange and blue pushing Houston’s greatest athletic product toward a modern baseball dynasty, and the fact that Dana Brown instantly felt like more of a figurehead than MLB’s next brilliant GM really doesn’t matter.
Crane and the Astros did it their way back in 2012 and ’13, when losing was winning, an empty Minute Maid Park was simply the cost of doing business and a billionaire owner kept insisting that he was saving all his powder for when he really needed it.
Since then?
Boom. Boom. Kaboom. Crane, by far, is the mostaccomplished owner in Houston sports.
The Astros, without question, are currently the most important and loved team in this city.
A.J. Hinch and Luhnow are long gone. Click won a World Series trophy the right way, then was impolitely pushed out the door. Carlos Correa, Justin Verlander, Gerrit Cole, George Springer, Charlie Morton, Dallas Keuchel and many more are now former Astros.
And it’s still boom, boom, boom inside Minute Maid, with Crane running his show the way he wants it run and the rest of MLB trying to keep up with the franchise that keeps doing things it way.
Welcome to the big show, Brown.
And don’t forget: It is a show. Bagwell sat in the third row and observed everything Thursday while Click’s replacement was introduced to the local media.
Coincidence?
Of course not.
There was a time in the nottoo-distant Astros past when Bagwell was missing in action inside Minute Maid Park and hard to pin down.
Now?
He’s everywhere and in the middle of everything.
Is that a bad thing?
Well, he’s in the National Baseball Hall of Fame, he loves his Astros, he knows more about baseball than every fan who buys a ticket and every media member who asks a question. He was also increasingly present last season while the Astros won 106 games, swept the Yankees out of the American League Championship Series in New York and then turned a 2-1 World Series deficit to a hot Philadelphia club into a triumphant world championship.
Most teams, in MLB and the NFL and the NBA, are run this way: Manager/head coach, general manager and owner, with the skipper/HC and GM mostly running everything.
The Astros started subverting the system at the end of
2011, when they plucked Luhnow away from St. Louis soon after the Cardinals won another World Series.
When the Astros went too far toward the dark side, they veered the other way when the rest of MLB wanted them to fall apart.
Baker was the perfect answer and unifier as manager during a time when the rest of MLB thought it was too smart to hire the veteran leader. Click applied some of the Tampa Bay Way to Minute Maid Park, beefed up the bullpen and helped guide the Astros toward a shining trophy that validated everything.
Now, it’s Crane, Bagwell and Jackson. And Brown, who has a ton of baseball experience but none as a GM. And one of the best rosters in MLB before the new guy even has to think about signing a lefthander or finding financial middle ground with Tucker.
The GM won’t make that big-money call, by the way. That’ll be Crane, just like it was when Click was winning 106 games.
“We want to get greedy about winning,” Brown said as he shared a stage with an owner who couldn’t work anymore with a World Series-winning GM.
Greedy. Winning. Sounds like the new guy might fit right in.
Bagwell, sitting by himself, watched from a few rows away.
Minutes before the Astros’ new GM spoke, an animated conversation about a dynasty filtered through the room.
Winning 86 games, then 101 and 107 and then 106 isn’t unorthodox during an era when the grand ol‘ game has been defined more than ever by cold, hard numbers.
It’s the dream of every team in baseball.
Under Crane, the Astros have been doing it their way for more than a decade. For the past six years, they’ve lived in the ALCS, despite change after change.
Welcome to Crane’s big show, Brown.
It might not be normal. But who cares?
It’s how you win over and over again in MLB.