I have not seen a manager that I would consider elite in strategy versus the majority of his peers in many years. I have seen bad managers, but in-game decisions seem really bland to me these days.
Agreed. I don't think anyone here is arguing anything but semantics. What the Astros and Patriots have done has certainly produced results. But I do feel organizationally there's a sense that individual milestones (i.e. getting Altuve to play 162 games a year to maximize his career hits) should be subjugated in favor of team performance especially if it has the potential to become a distraction. Exactly the same way Belichek will cycle out his running backs and never let a receiver outside of Gronkowski (or Randy Moss that one year) accrue stats. Pop quiz: how many 100 RBI hitters have we had during our run with Hinch?
I agree with you... Bruce Bochy was excellent handling his pen, and Leyland seemed to excell at handling his starters.
As we ger smarter and evolve the difference between top performers and median narrows significantly in basically every walk of life. Those that were outliers before and used that to accumulate a major distinction from their peers get copied and lose their comparative advantage. Those guys you mentioned are two of the better skippers ever imo. Those advantages can’t last- eventually others catch on and then they catch up.
Bochy and Leyland have earned their share of criticism over the years... no manager is elite every year at in-game decision sciences. Its largely dependent on the team they have. LaRussa gets credit for "inventing" the one inning bullpen role... which was eventually copied by every single team out there.... but while impactful in an in-game strategy, it very well could have been considered some of his elite team's biggest downfalls/failures, as he possessed talent that should have led to plenty more WS titles and appearances than he actually had between Oakland and St. Louis.
I had an itemized spreadsheet of his hits and misses on my old computer, and it's really not that impressive given all the options he's had. But then again, I value facts over emotional bias.
Regardless of his mistakes, with the exception of Alruve, Springer and Keuchel, wasn't every player and coach on the WS winning team a Luhnow acquisition?
There's more points to be had when you've got a 100 darts to throw as opposed to 20. I loved the WS win, I really did, but it didn't surprise me. It was coming. 5 straight years of intentionally tanking and trading away all your establishe dplayers for picks will do that - it's a blueprint the Marlins, Orioles and half the league are now following. Gotta give credit to Crane for biting the losses for all those years and allowing Luhnow to stockpile when other owners wanted consistent attendance. Now it's about how much more can the Stros add, and that requires efficiency. For every unanimous #1 pick like Correa, there's a Mark Appel. There's a Brady Aiken (thanks for Bregman, but Luhnow wasn't exactly a day 1 mastermind behind it). I follow all levels of the organization, nothing in Astroball came as a surprise to me, but I pride myself in being able to objectively look at the team I support as opposed to just being a biased fan. Hinch is a really good manager with a great approach as a leader, Luhnow is a numbers guy who's had just as many KO's as hits. The difference is he's had more AB's than any other GM and the rest of the owners caught on late to the approach.
Oh good. Now you are doubling down on silly. Tom Brady is one of the best 50 QB’s alive! Tiger Woods’s career, if looked at objectively, is one of the top 50 golf careers of all time! Steven hawking is definitely someone that has at least a median IQ
I can’t believe I’m even entertaining this with a serious reply, but my wife and 7 year old and 3 year old are literally all vomiting right now so I’m home taking care of them and have the time since I’m not going to work I guess, so here goes. JL basically pioneered and pushed the tanking concept to a different level. The entire plan was that he wanted to throw “100 darts” at the board bc baseball is such a game of failure, not only at the plate but in the FO as well. Nobody else was doing that. I think he should be given some credit for Altuve and Keuchel success. Yes the other regime drafted/signed them. But they weren’t considered great talents and grew into their stardom. If he didn’t strip th e ML roster down to nothing they’d have never gotten the opportunities they did and neither was a sure thing. He created the conditions and environment that made their success possible. Springer was drafted by the other regime and already a stud. He gets basically zero credit for him. That was an important piece. He would get developmental time and rope in basically any organization. No credit at all for him. Every other player in the organization (I think) was a guy he acquired. He turned a 100 loss team at the major league level with awful farm system into a higher sight in 5 years. If it was that easy you wouldn’t see teams at the bottom of the pile stay there for a decade at a time. That’s the norm, the astros are the exception. He hired A.J. Hinch when it was time to win. He recognized when it was time to win, and waited to try to win until there was a critical mass of players ready to do so. He hired thendevelolmental staff in the minors that developed and nurtured talent in such a way that we have a plethora of guys ready to play in the majors or flip for established major leaguers. He drafted all stars and he drafted guys in the 33rd round that would be important pieces to the team. He kept the books clean so they would have flexibility, and used service clocks to leverage extensions that got us the ability to give out multiple contracts with 1 of them getting us a big savings in Altuve. His time at St. Louis he owned the draft and minor leagues and they were a veritable assembly line of big leaguers that allowed them to replace stars and win with a middle of the road payroll. He plucked fliers off waiver wires that became all stars (Harris) or important pieces of title teams (Marwin, McHugh) He seamlessly integrated analytics into the organization in a way that everyone was aligned and then used stuff like spin rates and shifting to make guys more successful. Of course every move didn’t work out but that’s not the standard. You put him at median in comparison to his peers and that’s just insane. Oh- and he nurtured other front office talent being a mentor and sign post to guys that have gone on and succeeded elsewhere (Milwaukee) while plucking other FO talent from places like NASA. Seriously, name 14 other GM’s better than Luhnow. I will be pointing, laughing and mocking you by the time you try to argue #6 or 7 wth a straight face.
He's not being given enough credit for setting up that fake access point for the Cardinals, ruining their draft for decades.
So you expect half the league to win World Series in the next few years? Or was the Astros front office forward-thinking and figured out the strategy before everyone else?
Sure, anybody can look like a genius with the benefit of hindsight. Luhnow has repeatedly said they can not make perfect decisions all the time; they aim to make more correct decisions than wrong ones and learn from their mistakes. I think we have arguably the smartest FO in baseball, certainly in all of Houston pro sports.
Patiently waiting for @Senator to provide the list of 14 GMs that are equal to or better than Luhnow.
Connie Mack Branch Rickey Pat Gillick John Schuerholz Brian Cashman Lee MacPhail Dave Dombrowski Frank Cashen Sandy Alderson Walt Jocketty Dan Duquette Brian Sabean Theo Epstein That's only 13, I'll let you name the last one.
