Yeah, the injuries obviously play a big factor, that's probably the only reason nobody has been fired yet, but you can't watch this fall apart for much longer without making a move. I don't think Espada is a good manager, but he doesn't have much to work with either.
Jeff Luhnow was given 5 years to build a contender. We had wins of 55, 51, 70, 86, 84 before we started the dynasty. By tanking Luhnow was able to secure top draft picks and was never constrained by the league. Brown was saddled with a terrible minor league system, partly because of draft pick penalties incurred during Luhnow’s reign and minor league prospect trades to continue the dominance. Brown’s 1st 3 drafts have netted Brice Matthews, Janek, Neyens. Matthews is now playing in the major leagues and shows great promise. Janek and Neyens are rising up the prospect lists. Firing Dana Brown is a knee-jerk reaction by a spoiled fan base. Injuries (2nd most in major leagues history) and Brown this year, have derailed the team. In my opinion, the jury is still out on his recent trades and acquisitions. I still think Cam Smith is going to be a stud. Burrows may not end up the stud this year, but he has the stuff to be an effective MOR pitcher. Lambert looks to be a good find. You can’t expect draft picks from the bottom of the first round to be impact players in MLB in 3 years or less. He did hire Espada which was a mistake (although I don’t know how much Crane had to do with that).
I don't think I've ever seen a GM get a pass for overseeing a collapse like Brown has, Espada somehow takes all of the heat for him. Part of it was unavoidable, you don't win 100 games forever. But the team has gotten noticeably worse every season, and the farm hasn't taken any noticeable step forward either. Shrewd FA pickups and trades just don't happen all that much anymore. We don't fare well evaluating free agents, we don't turnaround pitchers anymore, we don't develop hitters, I don't even know WTF is going on with our injuries. In 3+ seasons I can't for the life of me put a finger on what Brown has done to put us in a better spot. "We have a few promising prospects", whoopty f**king doo, every team has a couple of promising prospects.
Espada sucks but he’s constantly being put into impossible situations by Brown with respect to his god awful roster management.
The Kyle Tucker trade was great. Paredes for 3 years is easily worth more than 1 year of Tucker. Cam Smith...his defense has been good enough that he's still providing positive value even if he's a below-average player. Abreu was signed before Brown became GM. Walker deal is slightly underperforming now after looking atrocious for most of last year. Imai deal..liked it at the time. Looks really bad now. Burrows,...looks like he's in a bad homer slump, but not sure the Astros gave up much for him. Hader got hurt. Overall, the Astros were a dying team with limited resources when Brown took over, and he was not able to pick his manager when the Astros were at their strongest with him as GM. Maybe a different GM would have slowed the Astros fall, better, but I don't put the MLB team's problems mostly on him. I do think his 1st two draft classes look weak. That said, I'm trying not to get too excited about Neyens. Stats line looks like pitchers have just stopped pitching to him so there is no reason to keep him in A ball. Lots of Ks, but a low swinging strike percentage. When he takes, it is a ball 68% of the time. Great BABIP and iso to go with extreme BB%. His contact % is probably below average, but workable for the thump.
There is a good chance that Dana Brown is let go at the end of the season. Having said that, a lot of the issues have little to do with Dana Brown. I get that a GM gets props when a team wins and criticism when they lose, regardless of how much or little they really played in their success. Dana Brown has had less actual control than just about any GM since he took over the Astros job. He inherited a bloated payroll and had very little maneuverability in that regard. He took over the job in 2023 right after the Astros hamstrung him with contracts/extensions for Abreu, Montero, McCullers, Brantley and Graveman. So, he had almost no money to spend and very locked in roster (for good and bad). Crane wanted Verlander and got him. Brown did get to push for which prospects to send out but was told that the Mets would get good prospects because they were paying part of the salary at the request of Crane. Crane also pushed to extend the young pitchers like Garcia and Javier. They extended Javier. In 2024 - Crane wanted Josh Hader. Brown needed a backup catcher and signed Caratini. He also had no money but needed a starting pitcher in the rotation and pushed to have Blanco in the rotation, who had a big year. He rebuilt the bullpen signing also rans that had big years, Taylor Scott, Bryan King. He got Dylan Coleman to be a set up man but he was hurt. He traded for Caleb Furgeson at the deadline who was mediocre. He did add Kikuchi as a starter who performed very well and none of the prospects he gave up have set the world on fire. In 2025 he traded Kyle Tucker for Cam Smith and a starter that the Astros really liked, and thought would be a #3 starter long term for them. The Astros ended up having devastating injuries, they had more injured players than any team in 100 years of baseball. The injuries have carried over into 2026 as the Astros have an entire rotation on the injured reserve - and even some of the guys that have comeback never were healthy or the same like McCullers and Javier. The only signings that I know of that were purely Brown were the Caratini and Walker signings and the minor league deals for relievers. The trade for Tucker was something Brown wanted after it was clear that Crane wasn't paying a half billion dollars for Tucker. The Kikuchi deal was worked out by Brown and his idea - he made it with a very limited budget. The moves entering the 2026 seasons were strongly hamstrung because of budget and he needed to get multiple starting pitchers at the top of the rotation. The Japanese pitcher signing was something Crane wanted. As for the draft--- consider that Brown has not had second rounders a couple of years and he also did not get a very good farm system. He also used some of his drafted players to plug holes in trades. Go back and look at the Astros picks, who was drafted after them and how few so far across baseball have done anything in those drafts. The only real player he passed on was McGogle, and he was taken like 10 picks after the Astros first pick, so the entire league passed on him once. Even someone like the Astros took in Round 2 after Matthews--- Treadwell or Treadway (I forget his name), he made it all the way up to AA last year in his first healthy season, and in AA he had a K rate of 17 per 9 innings. He got hurt again. Brown isn't perfect and I don't even know if he is good--- I have criticisms of him for sure, but most of the Astros problems were out of his hands.
Even his first two draft classes are not bad. Go look at the players drafted that he passed on, there are very few doing anything.... and multiple of his picks in that 1st draft were sent off in trades to fortify the team at the deadline. I am not "happy" with his draft, but the only real player the Astros passed on was Kevin McGogie from the Tigers.... but so did like 10 teams after the Astros, the Dodgers passed on him multiple times..... also he was without a couple of second rounders. For all I know Brown could have terrible drafts in 2026-2028........ but I don't see anything in the picks compared to the other players available to lead me to believe that Brown just stunk it up in the Astros draft.
So I spent 5 minutes looking. It seams Brown passed on these guys Cole Carrigg, C.J. Kayfus, Tre’ Morgan, Kristian Campbell, Quinn Mathews, Connelly Early, Kyle Karros, Cooper Pratt, George Klassen, Seth Halvorsen, George Wolkow, Craig Yoho, Jonathon Long, RJ Schreck, Matt Wilkinson, Daniel Eagen, Austin Overn, Mason Russell, Brendan Lawson, Matt Halbach that look better than the Astros preceding pick. Jake Bloss, Pecko, Schiavone, Mayer, Hertzler, and Sullivan seem to be the best of the 1st 2 drafts so far. The Brown only passed on one guy thought seems an oversimplification, and the best of his picks from the 1st 2 years may have been traded away without giving the Astros a player that provided postseason value. I think deal would have been fine if the Astros would have gotten playoff value out of Kikuchi.
