The fact he is not a left handed bat is a the only “WTF” that comes to mind as all sources point to that being a big want by the club. Thanks for the info. Hope your source is right.
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I tend to agree. I think Bagwell is right in some respects. You can do too much or too little analytics and a balance is what is needed. Having said that, I didn’t care for Bagwell calling out Click. This dynasty was built LARGELY on analytics and while Click didn’t build the foundation, his fingerprints and analytics were on the last three years. For Bagwell to criticize that when the team won a World Series doesn’t sit well with me. It doesn’t make Bagwell look real smart imho, but I guess my feelings are mine to deal with. There must have been some real animosity between Click and Crane’s “crew.” Sounds like you could have cut the tension with a knife in those conference room meetings. While Click may or may not have been at fault for some or most of that, I tip my cap to him for being willing to continue to work in what certainly seems to have been a dysfunctional environment to say the least.
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Misogynistic front office staff? No thank you.
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Tone deaf GM that alienates those around him? No thank you.
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Importing cheating leaders that spread that cancer thru the club? No thank you.
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I don’t mean to step in and speak for the other poster, but I don’t think the points you mention are the ones being referred too.
He is a catcher/catching insurance too.
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I think that too much of this years success is being ascribed to one party. There are now at least 3 recorded scenarios where Click was overruled by Crane based on feedback from advisors (Dusty, Bagwell, etc). Trading for Contreras, Favoring Meyers and batting Pena 2nd. In those 3 cases, Click’s analytics approach was ultimately proven wrong. My guess is that Bagwell believes that this team won the WS precisely because the team was willing to deviate from pure analytics in certain instances.
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I can only speak for myself, but I would in no way say to anyone that Click was the responsible party for the success the team had. He was only a part. Every GM makes good and bad decisions during their tenure. You’re fired or not rehired because of those decisions at times. But to have his contributions seemingly dismissed because he’s no longer around, as Bagwell seems to do, isn’t right either. Just my opinion.
No one ingredient makes the gumbo.
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No one ingredient makes it but the person measuring and choosing ingredients sure does matter a lot.
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Bagwell wasn’t talking about those things. The quote that everyone is printing big and bold in their headlines is “team too reliant on analytics.” That worries, me. A lot. He apparently is talking up Ausmus? I am worried. The team is not built on misogyny, the GM’s personality, and definitely not on cheating. Jeff Bagwell took aim, not at Jeff Luhnow, but at Jim Click, who was the guy hired specifically to get away from all those things anyway, but was still about strong analytical approach as Luhnow was.
My worry is that I look around the league, and the successful teams, including the Astros, are not run by baseball players. Bagwell’s and Ausmus’s are not leading baseball front offices to championships. The first team I think of when I think of a former player running a team’s personnel is the suck ass rangers who have been a joke. I dont want to head that direction. I want to keep doing what we’ve been doing that has been successful and is also largely the FO model being followed by most of our peer organizations that have also had success in the last 5-10 year period.
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On Bagwell’s comments, analytics, and Ausmus as GM.
( “source” not me)
There is a lot to consider and digest.
First, every team in the league uses analytics and a number of teams invest deeply in it. The analytics that Baltimore uses is very similar to what the Astros use. Same with San Francisco, the Dodgers and Rays and Braves. There are not many real differences. Sometimes someone younger or innovative will emerge and it will change things up some.
What made Luhnow good was his willingness to try new things and shake up his own system and infuse really smart people outside the game of baseball.
Luhnow never made decisions just on analytics. He round tabled a lot of decisions and would bring outsiders into the mix for perspective.
Making decision just on analytics would be middling or a disaster. Why? What Houston has for proprietary interests in analytics is all over the league at this point. So you have 1/3 to half the league targeting the same players in the draft, as reclamation projects in trades and free agency.
The key is to find some area that is overlooked, something to give you a marginal advantage. That can be analytics but it is a saturated market. That can be player development or scouting. Bringing in really smart people outside the industry can help with this. Having someone that can bring a perspective like Bagwell or Ausmus isn’t necessarily bad if they can balance everything.
Bagwell said that relying only on analytics is a mistake and there needs to be a balance. I agree with this, but the devil is in the details of what that proper balance is.
As for Brad Ausmus. The media and fan portrayal of him when he played for the Astros wasn’t accurate. He is well educated and smart, but he was not really a hard worker with the staff or on his game. He had a high aptitude for the game though. I don’t care that he wasn’t a successful manager because I never expected he would be. He just wouldn’t consistently put in the work like most managers would and ultimately it wasn’t worth it to him. Not his personality. Being a GM is completely different than being a manager. His strengths fit better being a GM. I do still question if he would put in the hours or retain the interest to do it
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The headline “Bagwell thinks analytics have gone too far” obscures that his main gripe seems to be giving hitters too much information to crunch before games. Maybe his issues go deeper but that’s what is top of mind for him—and it’s at least a facially reasonable critique of the way analytics are used (though obviously I have no idea if his critique is actually correct).
Also if the team is backsliding from its analytics-heavy approach we haven’t seen actual signs of it in the two moves since Click’s departure. Click acquired Montero and the stat guys (rightly) love Abreu. How much their contracts cost is a matter for Crane to worry about, the stat whizzes may have values in mind but ultimately their concern is “which players are good” more than how much those players will cost.
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I have mostly discounted the influence of Jeff Bagwell previously, but it keeps coming up again and again. Hopefully, its just because he’s the most famous local personality in the front office at this point, the media is going to him as they would to, say, a Nolan Ryan in the past. Hopefully, there’s no impression within the organization (or with Crane specifically) that it was “former players like Jeff Bagwell that won the world series this year by overruling James Click!” I want to see us hire a competent GM or President of Operations (unlikely because I think thats what Crane sees his role as at this point) to lead the organization. I don’t wanna see a former players gang suddenly take control somehow at the height of success. Thats all.
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You guys go out and have a catch. There’s 3 more months of this.
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So people really say this instead of “play catch”?
Not when I’ve got 1500 words in the hopper about Max Kepler as a potential trade target. Or on second thought maybe I need to take another look at that ADHD thread…
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I do, anyway. And was before FOD.
ETA: My dad used to say it and he played a lot of baseball. Not sure where he got it.
2017 and 2022 World Championships. 4 League Pennants. 5 Division Titles. 1 MVP. 2 Cy Youngs. Thank you.
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A player in the top 5 of ROY voting 8 of the last 9 seasons including 2 winners.
I never heard anyone say “have a catch” in my world. It was always “play catch.”
The hang-wringing in this thread is hilarious. Bagwell praised analytics for pitchers. He criticized hitters thinking too much at the plate, which means no more than “see the ball, hit the ball” which coaches have said throughout time immemorial. Bagwell said only that hitters are given too much information, and I completely agree overemphasis on analytics is undesirable. A balance between nerds’ analytics and traditional baseball methods is where Luhnow ended up.
I have no opinion on Ausmus, but I trust Crane to make a wise decision. Click did some good things and some not so good things and obviously was not a good fit.
PS das, curb your righteous indignation. Your post painted with a much too broad brush. You bought and accept the “cheaters” label apparently. Not I.
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