I don't think your point about some players being here before Luhnow is wrong, but I will say that Luhnow's strength was developing new ways to find competitive advantages, which definitely moved the bar (sign stealing not withstanding), and no reason to believe that would have stopped. Rather it would have been a continuing process. Doesn't seem to be true with the current regime.
Intercepting the frequency that pitch com runs on? How hard can that be? Doubt that they have top notch security experts devising those devices that seemingly rolled out overnight (as opposed to the ABS system that went through years of testing/evaluating and then a full year of implementation at the minor league level). Apparently the Red Sox woes also attributed to re-location of coaching boxes that now impairs their innate ability to relate pitching grips/possible tells.... so much gamesmanship.
Jim Crane firing Jeff Luhnow was ludicrous. Though it feels that Luhnow was getting all the credit, while Jim Crane who started the master plan was being left out of accolades. Hence could it have been a way to get rid of someone taking his thunder? Jeff Luhnow stepped on baseball royalty’s toes and he didn’t give a flipping care about it. Which is way different than Crane style, a fella who is very proper to do things. Crane has high society social etiquette, meanwhile Jeff Luhnow was a “take no prisoners mentality”, tech fella. Much like Bill Gates, Elon Musk, etc. prototype nerdy gents that might have gotten hurt by the world and are now much less empathetic than your average person. I absolutely agree and support with how Luhnow built the team for the Astros. He didn’t play nice with the established juggernaut teams that always; he was fair, but never a doormat. Which brings us to Espada. A very flawed manager, whom Luhnow would not have made his coach. But Espada was beloved by baseball establishment circles, and Crane seems to want to play nice with his peers.
Wrong, I know Luhnow isn't coming back and I'm certainly not jaded. I'm just hoping that one of the people that worked for Luhnow will comeback and use the principles used by Luhnow to do a soft rebuild.
But that’s the main issue. Those “principles” are now even further widely adopted (from draft slot manipulation, to high stop motion camera work, to automating a lot of the minor league developmental process with databases upon databases, to continued ways to steal signs/pitch grips/tells), and no team truly has much competitive advantage in those realms. You need visionaries who come up with the next untapped resource or the next undervalued commodity. We hypothesized some of those earlier (eyesight enhancement, arm injury prevention, AI algorithm breakdowns of pitch sequencing). Also teams probably not sharing all the proprietary stuff that seemed to be more publicized in the early 2000’s to mid 2000’s. If Elias can’t find ultimate success, theres not a lot of others who were directly under him that are in those power positions… and the ones that are (like Elias) aren’t yet having the same sustained level of success.
Stearns had great success with the Brewers on a limited budget. I believe he would be successful here with the right resources. He's not cut out for success in New York. I read somewhere that Luhnow said being able to reduce the amount of injuries was the new frontier. BTW, notice how Luhnow's soccer team has really improved?
The excuse for not firing anyone just yet is the excessive injuries. Josh Hader starting the season on the 60 day injury list was a tough way to get things kicked off. Abreu completely falling in his face to start the season, even through now doesn’t alleviate any of the bullpen problems. And getting your ace Hunter Brown getting hurt in his 2nd start has been tough too…. with Hader and Brown, this team would near .500
Luhnow has been black balled - he isn't getting back anytime soon, and I would be shocked if he is ever involved in MLB activities. Luhnow is largely viewed as a problem by MLB. They were upset with him over the Brady Akin situation, they blamed him for the Taubman situation, they were not happy about Osuna and many other things before the sign stealing scandal. Then when the news broke about the scandal, Luhnow refused to communicate or cooperate with the league office. They wanted him to do like Hinch did and he refused.
Jeff Luhnow was fired because MLB told Crane to fire him -- and now Crane resents that he was told how to run his ball club and blames some of that on Luhnow. Jeff Luhnow is gone and won't be back in the game.
Akin was a situation that was created by MLB. Taubman was an azz, but if every GM was fired because one of his employees was an azz there would be no GM's. The media didn't like Luhnow because he kept receipts from the rebuild. They were further pissed off because Luhnow didn't care what the media thought when he traded for Osuna. He was all about winning and could care less about what the media thought. I like my GM to be like this. The media talked the Rat into doing what it took to create a scandal to get rid of Luhnow. Manfred didn't like that Luhnow was unapologetic and was unwilling to fall on his sword. Luhnow was also bad for MLB's bottom line because the Dodgers/Yankees couldn't beat the Stros and this is ultimately what lead to Luhnow's downfall. Although Luhnow did himswlf no favors in some instances. It's ironic that several other orgs have been caught cheating and nothing happened to their GM's. This speaks volumes IMHO. What I cant figure out is why Crane didn't just promote a guy like Putila?
You don't have to defend Luhnow to me, he is a Hall of Fame executive IMO -- he was the best in the sport when he had the job. As for Akin, the league went in and fixed the situation --- Luhnow got ahead of himself and was in the wrong. He rebounded well with his pick though. The media around MLB is designed to be controlled by MLB -- they were used to things being handled a particular way, and everyone kind of fell into line. Then some newer activists were in the media, and felt that they were Upton Sinclair, and Luhnow and Crane were not having any part of that. In hindsight Luhnow should have handled it differently, but literally 5 years earlier and things were different. As for Manfred-- he didn't like the leak, he was pissed it happened.... he knew teams were pushing the limits of legality.... once it broke, he did everything he could to cover up for the league and then the owner of the Astros. The premise was that Manfred would downplay the scandal through MLB media, and Crane would act oblivious and fire Luhnow and Hinch and bring in people that MLB thought were better representatives for the league..... the expectation was that Luhnow and Hinch would admit to some level of guilt and act sorry and take their punishment until the league could back door them back in.......... problem was that Luhnow didn't play ball, and the MLB media blew up the story, and the MLB players association didn't have control of their players that openly discussed the scandal.
I still maintain this is the actual grave sin in the eyes of MLB: Astros defeated Red Sox, Yankees, and Dodgers in the same postseason. That's not supposed to happen
The problem wasn't Taubman being an ass. It was the Astros' and Lunhow's response to the situation, essentially calling the reporter a liar. Even Lunhow admitted he f*ed up that situation. That's all fine - but there are consequences to being an ass. You have no friends or allies when you need them. Lunhow suffered those consequences. It was an easily solvable problem but arrogance was one of his few weaknesses and it came back to bite him.
