Houston Astros: From the owner down, an accountability gap

Houston Astros: From the owner down, an accountability gap

With that kind of talent for self-contradiction, Crane may have a future in American politics, whose contemporary variety seems anchored in the precept that ignorance is virtuous and accountability a vice.

Amidst the volumes written about baseball’s clubhouse culture keeping the leery from blowing the whistle on things like the AIA, before Mike Fiers finally blew it to The Athletic in November, there should have been something written about another culture, in baseball and elsewhere. The one that says when you lead you take responsibility for your subordinates’ actions, whether or not you were on the scene or just in the loop.

Crane should probably be the first to get that particular memo now. “I should not be held accountable,” he said during his portion of the presser.  “Had I known about it, I certainly would have done something about it.”

He’s hereby designated Astrogate’s version of Howard Leary, the New York police commissioner who dismissed Frank Serpico’s and David Durk’s in-house crusade against rampant graft as the work of “psycho cops.” Until Leary was hauled in front of a commission finally appointed to investigate, two years after he resigned his post, and pleaded that things would have been a lot different if only he’d known.

Accountability was an Astro issue long enough before Astrogate. They’ve either had none or brushed it to one side. They tried to brush it aside when now-deposed general manager Jeff Luhnow dealt for domestic violence-attached relief pitcher Roberto Osuna in 2018, while he was still under suspension pending the outcome of his case.

When Ben Lindbergh and Travis Sawchik’s The MVP Machine was published a year ago, its revelations included Luhnow fostering so deep a front office culture hell-bent for results that the human side of things was often thought expendable. Enough so that the Astro front office and organization turned over with quicker breaks than curveballs.

Then the front office chose to smear Sports Illustrated reporter Stephanie Apstein last October rather than act promptly upon Apstein’s disclosure that soon-to-be-deposed assistant GM Brandon Taubman, with three women reporters in clear earshot, ranted how [fornicating] glad he was that the Houston Astros had Osuna after they won the American League Championship Series.

It took public backlashes both times for Luhnow and Crane to pronounce the Astros had a zero-tolerance abuse policy, and for Taubman to pay with his head almost a week after the Apstein story and smear. It took a formal investigation plus suspending Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch before Crane did what had to be done and fired both.

What does it tell you that the most sincere expression of Astrogate remorse at Thursday’s presser came from a man who wasn’t even a member of the organization from when the AIA opened for business in 2017 right up to the moment the Astros hired him to succeed Hinch?