Click adds 3 to office
around the sport for their small baseball operations staff, the Astros added two new assistant general managers and a trailblazing director of player development to bolster James Click’s front office.
On Wednesday, Click announced the hiring of Scott Powers and Andrew Ball as assistant general managers along with making official the addition of Sara Goodrum as Houston’s director of player development. The trio are Click’s most influential hires since he came to the Astros in February 2020.
Powers and Ball join longtime Astros executive Pete Putila as assistant general managers. Click worked his first two seasons in Houston with Putila as his lone assistant general manager. Many teams around the league have multiple assistant general managers.
Powers spent the last three years as the Los Angeles Dodgers’ director of quantitative analysis. His role with the Astros will focus on research and development, performance science and “other departments that will continue to move the Astros forward in analysis and innovation,” according to a team announcement.
Ball and Click overlapecutives ped in Tampa Bay, where Ball served as an assistant director of professional scouting. Ball spent the last five seasons as the Los Angeles Angels’ director of baseball operations. With the Astros, he will primarily focus on the major league roster, “which will include rules compliance, contract negotiations and roster composition,” according to a team announcement.
Putila, who served as the team’s director of player development before his promotion in September 2019, will expand his role as assistant general manager in 2022 thanks to Goodrum’s hire.
Multiple outlets, including the Chronicle, reported Goodrum’s impending hire in December. Finalizing it makes Goodrum one of the highest-ranking female exKnown in baseball. She is believed to be the first female director of player development in major league history. Goodrum spent the 2021 season as the Milwaukee Brewers’ minor league hitting coordinator.
In her new role with the Astros, Goodrum will oversee all of the organization’s player development staff and “spearhead the formation and execution of coaching philosophies as well as the formation and execution of the player development goal process.”
Houston also promoted minor league hitting coordinator Jason Kanzler to its major league coaching staff for the 2022 season. Kanzler is the only new addition to manager Dusty Baker’s 10-person staff.