Houston Astros GM Jeff Luhnow is Mad at the System
The Houston Astros have rebuilt themselves through the farm system, which took some hard-luck seasons, but now it’s veterans that have caught the ire of GM Jeff Luhnow.
No-trade clauses. Can’t live without them, and apparently Jeff Luhnow can’t live with them, according to an article by Bob Nightengale of USA Today Sports. Nightengale details the Houston Astros recent string of bad luck when it comes to no-trade clauses, from Cole Hamels turning down a move to Houston in favor of in-state and divisional rival Texas, to Jonathan Lucroy vetoing a deal to the Cleveland Indians to also land with the Rangers.
In the article, Luhnow says of the two deals, “It changed everything. We’ve had two deals not accepted by the player that has directly impacted us the last two trade deadlines. That’s why I sure wish teams wouldn’t give out no-trade clauses.”
A spin-off piece from Yahoo! claims that Luhnow wants to “set baseball back 50 years,” which may be a bit of a stretch, but they do mention that perhaps it’s the Astros image that needs to be worked on to help lure players to Houston.
The Astros have one of the top AL MVP candidates in Jose Altuve, and several top young studs already at the big league level in Carlos Correa, George Springer and Alex Bregman. But something is keeping players from joining the club. There was the hacking scandal, and the Brady Aiken debacle, neither of which made the Astros look good, but could there be more to it than that?
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The Astros front office is widely regarded as one of the most forward thinking (read: they use lot of sabermetrics) in the game. Typically that comes with a judgement that the front office is a bunch of egg-headed number crunchers that lack the human touch. Well, there may actually be something to that in this case, although it would have been tough to say that before Luhnow’s remarks, which basically amount to “players are property.”
It should also be noted that Andrew Miller took less money to play for the New York Yankees than taking the bigger payday to sign-on with Houston when he was a free agent following the 2014 season. Without that elite level reliever and the team’s unceremonious implosion in the ALDS last season, the front office set out to acquire Ken Giles, giving up some solid talent in the process. Problem is Miller didn’t have a no-trade clause, he just didn’t choose Houston.
The problem may lie in the way the Astros went about their rebuild. While some may view their plentiful losing seasons (and resulting high draft picks) as the cost of rebuilding, some may view it as obvious tanking, especially when you consider their opening day payrolls of $26 million in 2013 and $50.5 million in 2014. By comparison, the Texas Rangers have been well north of $100 million since 2011 and the lowest payroll they’ve had in the last 16 years was in 2000, sans television money and all of the cash flow in today’s game, when it was still more than double the Astros $26 million spent just a couple of years ago.
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In free agency, as it is with no-trade clauses, perception is reality and winning trumps all. The headlines have not been kind to the Houston Astros, and until last season they hadn’t done much winning, so it’s not hard to see why the team has had a hard time adding key pieces when they have become available. Luhnow’s recent comments sure won’t help the situation much, either.