Dana Brown's may be under more fire than Espada ... though Espada is a Brown hire, so if Brown goes so might Espada.
The early performance of Matthews, Janek, and to a lesser degree Frey are pretty damning of Dana Brown, but it is still early. Combine it with the inconsistent hitting from Smith, and the dreadful performances of Imai, Burrows, and Weiss, and there’s certainly a case to be made for firing him. But I still don’t see anyway he’s fired before the end of the season. There is simply not enough time for a new GM to come in and execute the draft and trade deadline effectively, even if Crane knew exactly who he wanted to hire.
When he was hired we did a pod where we didn’t bash him or anything, took a wait and see approach and said the biggest rationale for hiring him was nobody was going to actively dislike him. I’m sure that’s still true. He bring nothing to the table though and the guys aren’t exactly playing hard or smart for him. Hes got to go.
QFTT. Hunter Brown should be back soon, giving the Astros a likely win each time through the rotation. When Hader gets back and healthy should help settle the bullpen issues. I really want to see 10 starts each for the offseason pitching acquisitions (Imai, Burrows, Weiss, Lambert, Teng), before grading them. Most of them do not have much of a MLB track record, so my expectation is that the new starting pitchers will need time to make the adjustments to the higher level of competition. There are reasons to believe that the pitching will get better as we go forward. A 500 record by the all star break is a real possibility. Given how weak the AL West is, this may be enough.
What annoys me is Dana and Espalda shoving Matthews down our throats when it's clear he's not close to ready for the majors if he ever will be. He belongs in Sugar Land.
Wasn't Cora knee deep in the Astros "trash can scandal"? Crane fired the GM and HC over that. I don't see Crane wanting to bring Cora back into the org atp.
After hearing how Cora got drunk and went after Blum on the plane, I don’t care to ever have him back either. Very immature behavior.
Cora had an altercation with Geoff Blum and AJ Hinch because he was playing his music too loud and was drinking too much when the team was trying to travel during Hurricane Harvey.
Cora has a ton of enemies. Blum also has his fair share of enemies. Both still drink a lot. Blum probably more than Cora nowadays as Blum can do his job semi-inebriated.
All that being said… back in 2011, the organization already had (via pupura, Wade, etc.) Altuve in the big leagues, Springer was just drafted, and Keuchel in either AA or AAA ready to be called up as a late bloomer. Those were likely the three BIGGEST factors for eventual/future success between 2011-2015 (with Correa/LMJ being drafted in 2012 being the other major components that kick-started the golden era), and that had nothing to do with Luhnow (minus him not trading Altuve, Keuchel or Springer). I would take any of those sorts of minor league call-ups now. Those were shitty minor league systems then and they basically stumbled upon those guys by accident, let alone having a heavily touted scouting director/draft guru at the helm.
I wouldn't say Luhnow had nothing to do with Altuve or Keuchel's success given that both of them were completely retooled as players under Luhnow's FO. No guarantee that happens if Wade or someone else had been in charge.
