“The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” — Robert Burns
Often the best judge of a general manager’s character is not what happens when things go according to plan, but what happens when those plans go sideways. In some sense, fans will want to hold Dana Brown accountable for not having contingency plans for some of these injuries and poor play, but some of that is not reasonable. The question is what happens from here.
I often wish I could be a fly on the wall when general managers and
other executives talk. Dana Brown could be forgiven for feeling some desperation. It is hard to imagine so many plans going awry so quickly and so completely. On the one hand, the team sits at 6-7 and they have been in more dire straits before. Seemingly, they have been in worse position in each of the past three seasons at different points of the season. So, panic is not on the level of believing you are tumbling out of contention in mid-April.
The panic probably results from a number of calculated gambles that have all come up snake eyes. Jake Meyers pulled up lame in his first at bat of the game and could be disabled. When the Astros broke camp the assumption was that Zach Cole would be ready to step in and take over in that instance. He fell on his face this spring and then broke his foot in AAA. He is out a couple of months at least himself. The team can deploy Brice Mathews this year, but his K rate is close to 50 percent. That’s problem number one.
Problems two through infinity are all on the mound. The club hoped that Mike Burrows would step up and become a number two starter. That hasn’t happened yet. Tatsuya Imai looked good in his second start, but he is hardly a sure thing either. The only sure thing in the rotation is no longer a sure thing. Hunter Brown is on the shelf for at least a month.
The news went from bad to worse when Cristian Javier suddenly left the game before throwing a pitch in the second inning. He wasn’t off to a good start to begin with. Couple that with the sudden ineffectiveness of Bryan Abreu and you could be forgiven for looking past the 6-7 record and expressing more pessimism in the moment. For a general manager in the last year of a contract, this is the nightmare scenario. A normal general manager on a longer leash would exercise patience. A guy that wants to win now to keep his job must be sweating bullets.
I make no bones about the fact that I am a data driven guy. However, this commentary is not offered in the form of a lab because the labs have to remain pure to the search for truth and knowledge. This is more a gut feel. My gut is based on data and analytical thinking in part, but there is also an emotional bent to it. This feels like an avalanche. The temptation is to make some kind of trade to bring a jolt into a team reeling from sudden injury woes. That instinct would be a mistake.
Part of this is based on science. Vince Gennero used to be the president of SABR and he wrote a landmark book called “Diamond Dollars.” In that book he posited a lot of revolutionary ideas and one of those was the sweet spot of when to spend. Most good players are worth three to five wins. Six plus win players are rarely available and players worth less than three wins are probably not worth a major investment. That is true for free agency, but it is also true for trades.
The hot name right now is Sandy Alcantara. He is an impending free agent, so it is fairly certain that the Marlins will deal him before the deadline to recoup some value there. He is 2-0 with an ERA under 1.00 in the early part of the season, so it appears he is back to top form. The temptation is to think that a healthy Brown and Alcantara could team with Burrows and Imai to form a pretty good top four of a playoff rotation. That is assuming that it would be enough to get into the playoffs.
Gennaro posited that the sweet spot for making moves was when a team was somewhere around 85 wins. Those three to five wins would throw you into the playoffs. This is probably where commenters would point out that I picked them to win 85 games. This was based on a healthy Brown and a reasonably effective Cristian Javier and Bryan Abreu. This has the look of an 80 win team now. I’m not sure that warrants expending prospect capital to turn the tide.
This is the other half of the equation. The Astros don’t have a ton of hot prospects. Kevin Alvarez, Ethan Frey, Xavier Neyens, and Walker Janek qualify on that front. An Alcantara (or other similar player) would cost at least two of them. With Yainer Diaz looking overmatched, trading Janek has to be seen as a no go. That leaves you two of the three others (and probably one more prospect). In a system with few impact position player prospects, that would be extremely painful and Alcantara would be a pure rental.
Not making a trade does not mean surrendering. You have depth in Sugar Land that might help you stem the tide. Obviously, situations can change. Just a week ago we were feeling good about a 5-2 baseball team. It isn’t the losses that hurt. It is losing three players in the span of a week. This feels like 2025 all over again. It feels like fixing holes in a boat with chewing gum. That’s not the right time for desperation moves. The best move is to hope everything stabilizes. If it does then you can reevaluate a decision to add down the line. If it doesn’t then all the additions in the world won’t matter.
