I do not think Reiter said that at all. What I recall his saying is there was no analysis of the individual importance of each AB.
Reiter was engaging in conjecture, which permeated the podcast. The purpose was a form of penance for him, since his career was built on the franchise as we knew it prior to Fiers’ squeal.
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I am looking over the 2012-2020 drafts.
My major undertaking is researching to see how good or bad Luhnow is as a GM.
Wow, the 2013 draft was bad !
He was good until the end. The run from 2015 on shows that.
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There’s a reason his competition wanted him gone, and it had nothing to do with ethics or the sanctity of the game.
I looked up the average % of drafted players who sign, who make it to mlb, and who earn at least 0.1 WAR.
This was from Baseball America.
75% of drafted players sign.
17.6% of signed players make it to the majors
9.8% of signed players earn at least 0.1 WAR.
Jeff Luhnow’s drafts 2012-2015 ( too early to judge the rest)
133 of 164 signed -81.1%
29 of 133 made MLB -21.8%
15 of 133 earned 0.1+ WAR - 11.2%
He passes the draft test.
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His arrogant, aloof personality and his non-traditional methods and internal personnel decisions were major reasons why the baseball establishment wanted his scalp. As most of you know, I spent a week or more during spring training with my longtime friend who was a very prominent scout and a baseball lifer, even though he never played. Each year before the Astros broke through in 2017 I was “treated” to his hard feelings and near-defamatory rumors about Luhnow the person and the GM. He believed strongly in “the way we have always done it” Bible, was a close friend and former co-worker with Tal Smith and Ed Wade, and was livid and often apoplectic because some of his scout friends had lost their jobs to non-baseball nerds. I tried to keep quiet during those tirades because our friendship dated back to our UT days and Coach Falk, but I finally had to ask him to not repeat rumors about Luhnow’s personal life to me.
My scout friend was very good to me when the Astros started winning and got me two tickets at face value to every playoff/WS game in Houston 2017-19. He even rooted for the Astros in 2019-20, but he never changed his opinion of Luhnow and enjoyed his comeuppance when the “scandal” broke. I risked our friendship one last time by asking him not to send me articles about it, but our friendship survived and is as strong as ever. He has Parkinson’s and had to retire one year short of his 50 years in baseball goal.
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Luhnow the person was targeted by MLB for removal; Luhnow the mastermind and analytics trailblazer was copied by everyone. That’s the podcast-ending takeaway and is described repeatedly by Reiter. He was too good at it, trashcans aside
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Coach,
I wish your friend all the best.
Thank you for that story.
You are welcome. I proofread it tardily and cleaned up the typos.
Thanks for you good wishes. My friend is doing well.
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Glad to hear he’s doing well. I was a beneficiary of his post-season generosity, and am forever grateful.
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I wish your friend the best. Also curious about a couple of things. Did he ever suggest, or admit, that cheating was not limited to the Astros? Just wondering if scouts pick up things the average fan does not.
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I expressed my opinion about that topic but did not/do not cross-examine him about what he knows. If he chooses to share info with me, which he often does, I am grateful. One of his jobs was to pick up things during games which would help his club. He scouted only MLB teams the last few decades of his career.
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FWIW, a friend of mine is very good friends with a long time scout for an AL West club (not Houston) who was furloughed earlier this year. From what he was saying, the Astros were by no means the only team who cheated. They just got caught.
Jim, really glad to hear your friend is doing well.
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I think it’s worth clarifying that they didn’t get caught, they got rattled out by a fuckwit and then foolishly decided to corroborate the fuckwit’s story.
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Logan Morrison said that due to CBA nothing was ever going to happen to the players but the union did a piss poor ( not his words) job of informing the players.
The Astros players talked.
Then the union warned the players on other teams so nobody from Red Sox or Yankees or any other team incriminated themselves
Therefore the league didn’t have the same evidence against other teams.
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Once the Red Sox players saw how poorly the Astros were recieved in the court of public opinion for telling the truth, there was no way they were going to subject themselves to that kind of scrutiny. So, they bit their collective lips and said nothing.
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Reiter spends minimal time on other teams, but purges himself of guilt pushing the pre-scandal narrative. A more detailed assessment of Boston, NY, and LA would make for a more comprehensive podcast
He should have checked with you before he produced it. He no doubt lacked info on any team other than the Astros, just like the rest of us.
He didn’t compare the situations; it was about his errant career direction and effort to redirect it