No, he did not. He simply had the right situation and owner to do the obvious with a franchise that wasn't going nowhere. Do not confuse ownership with GM's, every GM wants a 5 year plan where they don't have to produce any wins or results, routinely have 0 nielsen ratings on broadcasts, just to stockpile youth and talent. I'd have made a better GM given the resources and years allowed, with an equal importance to statistical measures, prospect eval and continually renewing the farm system. It's not always the big ones like giving up on JD Martinez after he retooled his swing, Hader for Gomez, sticking with Giles forever, etc. but the smaller ones and non moves that keep a franchise competitive, especially if you don't have the luxury of a Boston, NY or LA market. He certainly is no Epstein when it comes to talent eval - the defining characteristic of GM's. If you want to take away top 15, fine, but close your jaw and put him in Tier 3 of GM's.
You are literally absurd. Last night James and white were the hero’s of the game. Locked in the 33rd and 34th round. You can basically rerank any baseball draft 10 years later and can’t get past pick 25 for impact, and Luhnow routinely pulls major league talent from nowhere. Of course he’s had a couple moves that with the benefit of hindsight he’d redo. Everybody does in baseball. But he’s elite of the elite and failure to recognize that as such is patently absurd. Seriously, rank the GM’s in today’s game that are better than him. I’d be happy to point and laugh.
In addition to Epstein nailing that Darvish signing as mentioned above, he's about to offer Heyward another extension... because he should reach his expertly evaluated talent potential by the year 2030. Seriously, they pay him $30 million a year for production around the level of Jake Marisnick.
I will get to my spreadsheet once transferred from PC to mac. Apologies for looking at a team without homerism.
What you are doing isn’t removing homerism, it’s willfully removing basic cognitive function. Rank the GM’s better than Luhnow. I double dog dare you. You are the one that made the completely and totally idiotic comment and decided to double and then triple down on stupid. Here’s you chance- tell us all the other GM’s better than Luhnow. And explain how their hit rates and power moves are so much better. People I won’t argue with you (even if I disagree) Epstein Sabean Cashman Duquette I’d actually take Luhnow over all those guys (other than Epstein), but I’m not going to argue any of them. Friedman is great, he’s in the conversation. Colletti I guess is ok Billy Beane has more years in the game with less skins on the wall but he, like Luhnow, helped shift paradigms so I’m ok with him b info spoken about- but Luhnow has a better tie breaker on all these guys with a ring. You do realize, I hope, that Luhnow ran the prospect acquisition for the cardinals for damn near a decade and that was considered one of the best pipelines in baseball, right? So he should also get some credit for that. But oh noes, he hasn’t hit on all his moves and of course the ones he hit on were blindingly obvious so he’s average, right?
Lunhow moves are obvious or lucky. My iPad predicted them in 2013. Other gm’s use the brainz and also they never traded for the Carlos Gomez. Or the Ken Giles. Astros will never win a World Series with Lunhow as GM. Or Hinch. ****ing Springer batting leadoff. Idiot.
He still blows when it comes to managing his pitchers but hopefully he flips the script in the postseason like he did last year... (although I still contend that putting Verlander in out of the bullpen in game 4 vs BOS was one of the worst moves I've ever seen--but "IT WORKED!!!" smh right. And pulling McCullers in game 4 vs NYY after 81 pitches and only giving up a solo HR to Judge was damn near a fireable offense.) But we won the WS so whatever I guess. He still a lucky POS that inherited an all time great team in regards to talent and potential.
What horrible pitching moves has he consistently made? Also, not sure if any other manager in the league would have successfully managed the postseason bullpen as well as Hinch did.
A relief pitcher doing a crappy job =/= bad pitching management. If it were, every single manager in the big leagues would be considered terrible. I can't believe people hate on Luhnow and Hinch this much. There are been so many teams in the past with similar "starting from the ground up with multiple top picks" that amounted to nothing. Hinch turned a team that had lost 100 games 3 times out of the prior 4 years and won the world series within 3 years; that's incredible and way more than luck.
Hinch inherited a young, inexperienced team with a boatload of talent. Those 100 loss teams didn't have Verlander, Bregman, Correa, Morton, etc, etc, etc. He got it done but c'mon if you are going to argue for him at least don't ignore the facts...
The 2015 team didn't have any of those guys either (Correa starting in June), and made the tremendous progression to become a contender. You also act as if all managers can take a young team with talent and turn them into worldbeaters automatically.
Verlander was a near end-of-season acquisition. Yes hinch “got it done” like it’s easy to do and all managers do it. As long as you also think Madden, Melvin, Cora, Boone, the managers for the Phillies/Braves/Nats/etc are also mediocre managers. It’s an odd thing to hold against Hinch given that many managers are put into very similar positions (and most fail to deliever.)
ARE YOU SERIOUS? How about consistently putting in Ken Giles in tie games??? Idk what the exact stats are but anecdotally most of his meltdowns were in those situations... How about mismanaging Lance McCullers, especially in the playoffs... Look, we won the world series so I'm not going to say he is an awful manager. That isn't true. But should we act like Eric Spoelstra is the best coach of all time bc he won 2 championships with Lebron, Wade, and Bosh? And if you read my post you would see that I acknowledged his bullpen managing and having the balls to use McCullers and Morton the way he did in relief was a huge reason we won the WS. I'm just hoping he can catch that same magic this postseason. Although I hope Osuna provides the gun in the 9th that we don't have to worry about it.
