Grading Dana Brown and the Houston Astros front office at the season’s midway point

When Dana Brown agreed to become vice president and general manager of the Houston Astros last January, he entered into the most unusual management situation in baseball today.

In many ways, Brown took on a  job that in many ways had already been done for him.

Following the separation (it was never actually called a firing) of Jim Click in the wake of the Astros’ World Series win, team owner Jim Crane hemmed, hawed and delayed the process of hiring a new chief exec for two and a half months.

In that interregnum, decisions — including the signing of high-dollar free agent Jose Abreu — were made by a sort of kitchen cabinet that include Crane himself, former Astros star Jeff Bagwell, and other insiders.

Then in late January, with virtually all the 2023 heavy lifting done, Crane hired Brown. That means this assessment is only partly of Brown, and also partly of the collective that preceded him.

Grading the Houston Astros front office at the midway point of the 2023 season

What follows is a mid-term assessment of the Astros’s personnel decisions since the conclusion of the 2022 World Series with a particular focus on the extent to which those decisions have helped or hindered the team’s performance.

The standard of measurement is Wins Above Average (WAA), a variant of Wins Above Replacement (WAR). For this purpose, WAA is preferable because unlike WAR, it is zero-based. That means the sum of all the decisions made by the Astros impacting the 2023 team gives at least a good estimate of the number of games those moves have improved – or worsened – the team’s status this season.

A team’s front office impacts that team’s standing in five ways. Those five are:

1.       By the impact of players it acquires from other teams via trade, purchase or waiver claim.

2.       By the impact of players it surrenders to other teams in those same transactions.

3.       By the impact of players it signs at free agency or extends.

4.       By the impact of players it loses to free agency or releases.

5.       By the impact of players it promotes from its own farm system.

Here’s how Crane, Bagwell, Brown and the others stack up by those five yardsticks.

Acquired or traded

Perhaps the uncertainty over exactly who was the decision-maker in Houston confused general managers of the other 29 teams. For whatever reason, since the end of the 2022 season, the Astros have essentially taken a pass on any trades, waiver wire claims, purchase or sales of players if those transactions involved other teams.

Remarkably, only two players came to Houston directly from other clubs, and not a single 2022 Astro was dealt, waived or sold to another major league entity.

Beyond that, the two players who were shipped to Houston from other clubs have both served only the most peripheral functions.

In early December, when Crane, Bagwell or somebody other than Brown was calling the shots, the Astros put in a waiver claim on Rylan Bannon, an infielder who had been similarly claimed by the Cubs two weeks earlier.

To that point, Bannon’s entire major league experience consisted of four games with the Orioles and one with the Braves. When the Braves put him on waivers at season’s end, the Cubs claimed him, only to immediately turn around and waive him to the Astros.

It’s not clear what the Astros wanted with Bannon, who played only two late April games with the Astros before being sent down to Triple-A. He has since been sidelined with a fractured index finger.

The second pickup belonged to Brown. In February, a few weeks after Brown was appointed GM, he claimed Matt Gage on waivers from the Toronto Blue Jays, who had signed him as a free agent a year earlier.

Again, Gage’s major league experience was virtually non-existent. It consisted of 11 games with the Jays in 2022. Called up in early May, he pitched in three games, was sent down, was recalled in mid-June, pitched in two more games and was sent down again.

All that being the case, it won’t surprise you to learn that the total contribution of the Astros’ trade excursions works out to -0.1 WAA.

Free agency

Houston’s big off-season splash got a lot of attention, most of it due to the name involved. In late November, former MVP first baseman Jose Abreu agreed to terms on a three-year deal for $58.5 million.

Abreu was considered one of the most valuable players on the free agent market, so the Astros’ ability to sign him (especially given the vacancy at the top of the normal administrative channels) was impressive.

What has not been impressive has been Abreu’s actual performance. One-half season into that three-year deal, he’s batting .236 with just six home runs and 41 RBI, carrying a -1.9 WAA.

Deadlines forced the pre-Brown administration to assume responsibility for free agent decisions on the team’s 2022 roster.  There were eight such decisions of substances, Crane, Bagwell and Friends opting to re-sign Michael Brantley, Christian Javier and Rafael Montero … and sacrifice the rest to the marketplace.

‘The rest’ included infielder Aledmys Diaz, first baseman Yuli Gurriel, catcher Christian Vazquez, pitcher Will Smith and the big name, Cy Young Award winner Justin Verlander.

Verlander, of course, signed with the Mets in December for three years and $121.667 million. In New York, he’s been okay, but not Cy Young okay and certainly not $12 million okay. In 57 innings over 10 starts, he’s 2-4 with a 4.11 ERA. That reduces to a modestly positive +0.3 WAA.

Diaz has been the one who has dragged his new team down … and by extension artificially enhanced the Astros’ organizational score. Having landed in Oakland, he’s hitting a hollow .257 with a .528 OPS, creating a -2.0 WAA.

Farm system

The team’s championship holdover nucleus includes such luminaries as Alex Bregman, Jose Altuve, Yordan Alvarez, Framber Valdez, Kyle Tucker, and Jeremy Peña, so the Astros may have felt comfortable supplementing with their farm system. They’ve done so frequently.

Brown has used nine first-year system products, a couple for longer stretches. Corey Julks won the left field job and is hitting .265 with six homers. Hunter Brown is 6-4 in 15 starts with a 3.62 ERA, and J.P. France has filled in as a starter in the injury-induced absence of Jose Urquidy. France is 3-3 with a 3.13 ERA in 10 starts.

Their combined WAA works out to +1.6 at the season’s halfway point.

That being said, first-year classes are notoriously difficult to extract positive value from, and the Astros are no different. Of those nine first-year players, Brown and France are the only two with positive numbers, and the sum total contribution of all nine is -0.4.

The Astros appear to think that Ronel Blanco has potential. A reliever, he’s been given 13 chances to prove himself and he has a 4.63 ERA … not great but good enough to stay in Houston. Grae Kessinger has had only 10 plate appearances with just one hit since his June 5 call-up, but they haven’t sent him back down yet.