“Winning Fixes Everything”

[Can_of_corn]

That is pretty much my take on extending young players.  One big hit pays for the misses.

[now]

17 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

That is pretty much my take on extending young players.  One big hit pays for the misses.

I wonder if it works also in reverse (e.g., Chris Davis): One big miss negates all the hits? Or is "young" the key part?

[Sports Guy]

1 hour ago, Moose Milligan said:

Finally finished this book last night.  

In regards to the OP, there's a brief paragraph where it talks about Luhnow and Elias being Trump supporters and they'd rag on Brandon Taubman for being a Bernie Bro.  Luhnow and Elias also went on a diet that was almost all meat based (I've done this before, it's ****ing fantastic) and Elias would call Taubman a ****y for eating vegetables which would make Luhnow laugh.

There's also a quote about Eve Rosenbaum "Eve Rosenbaum left," an Astros executive said. "And it's not like she went to the Orioles because she just really liked working with Elias."  I suppose someone could take that as the two having more than a professional relationship.  

That's really all that I saw.   Truth be told, Elias really isn't in the book all that much.  IMO, this book is really about Luhnow and how he got the Astros to where they were towards the end of the decade.  There's a lot of talk about Mejdal, Taubman, Mike Fast and a couple other guys that were key in getting the Astros to the top.  There's also a lot of discussion about the cheating that the Dodgers, Red Sox and Yankees were doing.  And, surprise, surprise, I knew Alex Cora was a douchebag.   

However, if you're reading this through a lens of an Orioles fan and looking for things to apply from this book to what Elias has done here there are a few corollaries, namely that Luhnow didn't want to spend a dime more than he had to.  He didn't want to spend on Free Agency unless he absolutely felt that it was necessary and that seems like it could be a parallel for what's going on here.  

I parsed out some other quotes that reminded me as I was reading about what Elias has done since he's been here or things that are interesting and I've included them below.  Pardon the formats didn't know there was an upload limit.  Reached it after the first 3 jpegs, the rest of the quotes are after:

 

 

 

“Taubman, who was making six figures in investment banking, had never been to Texas before his job interview. He read up on Luhnow and Mejdal and Elias. He grew inspired by the idea of building a sustainable pipeline of players and then being religious about letting those players walk in free agency when they no longer became cost-effective assets.”

— Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess by Evan Drellich
https://a.co/cLRf7v5

 

“The attempt to sign Springer was just one piece of a larger puzzle. The Altuve extension had emboldened Luhnow to direct Taubman to construct a flurry of similar offers for young players, including Jason Castro, Matt Dominguez, Robbie Grossman, Jon Singleton, and, eventually, Dallas Keuchel and even prospect Carlos Correa. Castro’s offer was dated March 9, a $ 12 million guarantee with the potential to make $ 30 million. Grossman’s was dated March 10, a $ 7 million guarantee with the potential to make $ 23.5 million. Both players declined. The scattershot approach was purposeful and, in fact, targeted. The Astros knew that some of the deals, had they been accepted, likely would have worked out poorly. “The idea of the strategy was that it would be OK to go bust on thirty to forty percent, which is like an alarmingly high number, because the surplus value on the ones that do work out more than compensates for the losses,” an Astros exec said. “It’s a venture capitalist sort of approach. You take a handful of big bets instead of making a multitude more of small, safe bets.””

— Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess by Evan Drellich
https://a.co/0Pb8x2V

“Meanwhile, the international market, by Taubman’s calculations, was an area where the Astros had not been aggressive enough. Uncertainty with international amateur players, most of them from Latin American countries, was high. Many do not pan out as big-league players. But teams at that time had no cap on how much they could spend internationally.”

— Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess by Evan Drellich
https://a.co/2DMthAa

 

““Once Jeff started having to make decisions of, ‘Should we sign this free agent? Should we trade for Verlander?’ Sig started pushing back on him a lot on those sort of things,” a different executive said. “Sig was never able to switch gears. He wanted to hoard every single, not even prospect-prospect, but like, org piece that we had. He didn’t like spending free-agent money; he didn’t like trading for established players. I think he really thought that building through the farm and staying with those players was the way to build a ball club.””

— Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess by Evan Drellich
https://a.co/aCpOE1Z

 

“As with Hinch’s extension, Crane got involved to make Altuve’s happen, although it wasn’t as acrimonious. In the early going, Crane and Luhnow had both been adamant that the Astros would spend at the right time, and by ensuring Altuve would stick around, they were making good. Crane and Luhnow still never wanted to use free agency as anything but a supplement, but the extension for a homegrown star, even at a team-friendly price, was encouraging. “It comes down to a question of how much of your payroll do you want to tie up in one or two players, and when you have a lot of good young players coming through that you’re going to have to pay through arbitration and potentially locking them up in free agency, you have to keep that in mind,” Luhnow said about a month before Altuve’s extension.”

— Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess by Evan Drellich
https://a.co/6CQbgZ9

 

"Elias was keen to keep costs down, just as Luhnow was. The Astros had begun offering club option years in contracts not only to players, but to their own employees, including scouts. When he left the Astros in 2017, Alex Jacobs had an offer from Elias to stay for one year, plus an additional club option for another year, with a $ 10,000 buyout.”

— Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess by Evan Drellich
https://a.co/1hMQWox

 

““Sig was not offered a contract renewal,” an Astros executive said, echoing others. “He did not choose to leave.””

— Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess by Evan Drellich
https://a.co/3ZILrWu

 

As I have said a lot…JA isn’t the only reason the payroll is low. 
 

Houston doesn’t splurge in free agency. Elias won’t either even if he has the green light to do so.

He just doesn’t view it as a smart thing to do, at least in terms of big money long term deals…and he’s right.

[interloper]

5 hours ago, Sports Guy said:

As I have said a lot…JA isn’t the only reason the payroll is low. 
 

Houston doesn’t splurge in free agency. Elias won’t either even if he has the green light to do so.

He just doesn’t view it as a smart thing to do, at least in terms of big money long term deals…and he’s right.

And yet we were apparently in on Correa last year, if you believe rumors, and I'm not sure I do. And we were in on more SPs this year that didn't pan out, and that's straight from Elias' mouth basically. So I tend to think he isn't running things exactly like they did with Houston. But who knows.

I agree that it seems like we should not be expecting any big free agent deals. But I'm hopeful for some extensions.

[interloper]

6 hours ago, Moose Milligan said:

Finally finished this book last night.  

In regards to the OP, there's a brief paragraph where it talks about Luhnow and Elias being Trump supporters and they'd rag on Brandon Taubman for being a Bernie Bro.  Luhnow and Elias also went on a diet that was almost all meat based (I've done this before, it's ****ing fantastic) and Elias would call Taubman a ****y for eating vegetables which would make Luhnow laugh.

There's also a quote about Eve Rosenbaum "Eve Rosenbaum left," an Astros executive said. "And it's not like she went to the Orioles because she just really liked working with Elias."  I suppose someone could take that as the two having more than a professional relationship.  

That's really all that I saw.   Truth be told, Elias really isn't in the book all that much.  IMO, this book is really about Luhnow and how he got the Astros to where they were towards the end of the decade.  There's a lot of talk about Mejdal, Taubman, Mike Fast and a couple other guys that were key in getting the Astros to the top.  There's also a lot of discussion about the cheating that the Dodgers, Red Sox and Yankees were doing.  And, surprise, surprise, I knew Alex Cora was a douchebag.   

However, if you're reading this through a lens of an Orioles fan and looking for things to apply from this book to what Elias has done here there are a few corollaries, namely that Luhnow didn't want to spend a dime more than he had to.  He didn't want to spend on Free Agency unless he absolutely felt that it was necessary and that seems like it could be a parallel for what's going on here.  

I parsed out some other quotes that reminded me as I was reading about what Elias has done since he's been here or things that are interesting and I've included them below.  Pardon the formats didn't know there was an upload limit.  Reached it after the first 3 jpegs, the rest of the quotes are after:

 

 

 

“Taubman, who was making six figures in investment banking, had never been to Texas before his job interview. He read up on Luhnow and Mejdal and Elias. He grew inspired by the idea of building a sustainable pipeline of players and then being religious about letting those players walk in free agency when they no longer became cost-effective assets.”

— Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess by Evan Drellich
https://a.co/cLRf7v5

 

“The attempt to sign Springer was just one piece of a larger puzzle. The Altuve extension had emboldened Luhnow to direct Taubman to construct a flurry of similar offers for young players, including Jason Castro, Matt Dominguez, Robbie Grossman, Jon Singleton, and, eventually, Dallas Keuchel and even prospect Carlos Correa. Castro’s offer was dated March 9, a $ 12 million guarantee with the potential to make $ 30 million. Grossman’s was dated March 10, a $ 7 million guarantee with the potential to make $ 23.5 million. Both players declined. The scattershot approach was purposeful and, in fact, targeted. The Astros knew that some of the deals, had they been accepted, likely would have worked out poorly. “The idea of the strategy was that it would be OK to go bust on thirty to forty percent, which is like an alarmingly high number, because the surplus value on the ones that do work out more than compensates for the losses,” an Astros exec said. “It’s a venture capitalist sort of approach. You take a handful of big bets instead of making a multitude more of small, safe bets.””

— Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess by Evan Drellich
https://a.co/0Pb8x2V

“Meanwhile, the international market, by Taubman’s calculations, was an area where the Astros had not been aggressive enough. Uncertainty with international amateur players, most of them from Latin American countries, was high. Many do not pan out as big-league players. But teams at that time had no cap on how much they could spend internationally.”

— Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess by Evan Drellich
https://a.co/2DMthAa

 

““Once Jeff started having to make decisions of, ‘Should we sign this free agent? Should we trade for Verlander?’ Sig started pushing back on him a lot on those sort of things,” a different executive said. “Sig was never able to switch gears. He wanted to hoard every single, not even prospect-prospect, but like, org piece that we had. He didn’t like spending free-agent money; he didn’t like trading for established players. I think he really thought that building through the farm and staying with those players was the way to build a ball club.””

— Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess by Evan Drellich
https://a.co/aCpOE1Z

 

“As with Hinch’s extension, Crane got involved to make Altuve’s happen, although it wasn’t as acrimonious. In the early going, Crane and Luhnow had both been adamant that the Astros would spend at the right time, and by ensuring Altuve would stick around, they were making good. Crane and Luhnow still never wanted to use free agency as anything but a supplement, but the extension for a homegrown star, even at a team-friendly price, was encouraging. “It comes down to a question of how much of your payroll do you want to tie up in one or two players, and when you have a lot of good young players coming through that you’re going to have to pay through arbitration and potentially locking them up in free agency, you have to keep that in mind,” Luhnow said about a month before Altuve’s extension.”

— Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess by Evan Drellich
https://a.co/6CQbgZ9

 

"Elias was keen to keep costs down, just as Luhnow was. The Astros had begun offering club option years in contracts not only to players, but to their own employees, including scouts. When he left the Astros in 2017, Alex Jacobs had an offer from Elias to stay for one year, plus an additional club option for another year, with a $ 10,000 buyout.”

— Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess by Evan Drellich
https://a.co/1hMQWox

 

““Sig was not offered a contract renewal,” an Astros executive said, echoing others. “He did not choose to leave.””

— Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball's Brightest Minds Created Sports' Biggest Mess by Evan Drellich
https://a.co/3ZILrWu

 

Good stuff. I didn't take that Eve quote like that at all though, at least out of context. It reads to me like she just didn't like the Astros environment, or there was something problematic there. But maybe it reads different within the context of the book. 

[Frobby]

11 minutes ago, interloper said:

Good stuff. I didn't take that Eve quote like that at all though, at least out of context. It reads to me like she just didn't like the Astros environment, or there was something problematic there. But maybe it reads different within the context of the book. 

I interpret it the same way you do.

[Can_of_corn]

6 hours ago, now said:

I wonder if it works also in reverse (e.g., Chris Davis): One big miss negates all the hits? Or is "young" the key part?

I'm not advocating signing a pre-arbitration player to a 7/161 deal with guaranteed money.

[Sports Guy]

4 hours ago, interloper said:

And yet we were apparently in on Correa last year, if you believe rumors, and I'm not sure I do. And we were in on more SPs this year that didn't pan out, and that's straight from Elias' mouth basically. So I tend to think he isn't running things exactly like they did with Houston. But who knows.

I agree that it seems like we should not be expecting any big free agent deals. But I'm hopeful for some extensions.

This isn’t true. Elias said he had multiple multi year deals out. No one has ever said he would be against 2 or 3 year deals but he’s not going to be interested in anything longer for the most part and he obviously didn’t put the right money in that table either.

[Can_of_corn]

7 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

This isn’t true. Elias said he had multiple multi year deals out. No one has ever said he would be against 2 or 3 year deals but he’s not going to be interested in anything longer for the most part and he obviously didn’t put the right money in that table either.

Truth is we have no idea if he made what would be considered a competitive offer to any higher end guys.

[Sports Guy]

Elias is the perfect GM for Angelos.

[Frobby]

59 minutes ago, Sports Guy said:

Elias is the perfect GM for Angelos.

Well, that’s good, right?  Because we can’t force Angelos to sell, so we may as well do the best we can until he does.  

[Sports Guy]

5 minutes ago, Frobby said:

Well, that’s good, right?  Because we can’t force Angelos to sell, so we may as well do the best we can until he does.  

Yea it is. As long as JA doesn’t sell the team to someone who will move it or that he doesn’t stop doing what he’s doing, it works well I guess.

Of course, the other side to this is that the payroll still has to increase significantly and they need to trade for guys making money and they need to keep their own.

That will be on JA to approve that.

[Just Regular]

Broadly, this month is extension month, as Clubs and Players ride the feel good vibes.

The Big Four are, if we are lucky, all way into the 9 figures over time.    Two of them here, I hope.   I know Elias first 4-5 years has been all about controlling environments and whatnot, but one day Manny Machado is up there on the podium with the owner and the GM is off to the side.

Westburg, Ortiz and Cowser are a few players this month who I feel could boost their roster chances by giving Elias some cost certainty.     I don't think Elias intends to use say a 1/15 option on Jordan Westburg's 2030 after his 6.75 years are up, but he might like to have it in his hip pocket in case Westburg progresses very well.

One of the things I've thought about this offseason was if we missed everyone from ~Manaea on up (we did) there might be a March dividend where the Club is a little more proactive about breaking the ice with one of their Top 10-20 young guys.    4 weeks to Opening Day!

[Goober Noodles]

This isn’t totally on subject, but I thought it was a cool story, so this seems like as a good of place as any to put this.

Through a mutual friend, the former owner (let’s call him “Bob”) of the company I work for got paired up with Jim Crane for a golf tournament last year.  Through the three-day tournament, they became pretty good friends, and it subsequently led to tours of Astros facilities and dinners, etc. 

One of those dinners was at Minute Maid Park on 8/1/22.  Jim told Bob’s son that he wanted his opinion on something.  He said that the Astros could trade for the catcher from the White Sox to increase their world series chances by 2.2% or he could trade for the catcher from the Red Sox for a 1.9% increase their chances.  He also noted that Dusty Baker had informed him that the White Sox player (Grandal?) was not a good clubhouse guy.  When asked, Bob’s son paused for a moment, and said “easy, you go with the better clubhouse guy”.  Jim said something to the effect of “that’s what I’m saying!”, called up James Click (GM) and told him to make the trade.

Because the Astros were playing the Red Sox and the game hadn’t yet started, Christian Vasquez then came up and introduced himself to everyone, and went down to the Astros clubhouse.

To backtrack a bit - apparently Bob had a negative interaction with Jose Altuve at some point prior to befriending Jim Crane.  Bob talked trash about the cheating scandal after a strikeout at a Mariners game either earlier in the year or in 2021, to which Altuve responded by spitting his gum at Bob.  The gum stuck to his shirt, and Bob responded by taking the gum and chewing it, which made the Altuve and others in the stro's dugout burst out in laughter.  Fast forward to the day when Jim Crane gave Bob and his son a tour of the clubhouse prior to dinner.  Altuve recognized Bob, and Jim Crane forced him to shake his hand.  Haha

Edited November 16, 2023 by Goober Noodles