Reason number 1,345,321 that I could never achieve the level of success of someone like James Click: there is no way I would have been able to avoid punching that indignant, self-righteous d******d reporter in the face.
Seriously thought--Click was very professional. You barely see the slightest shadow of "Really, moron?" on his face before he handles the idiot with grace. Very well done.
I don't understand why we would fire the front office guys that helped create "Code Breaker". It wasn't illegal or against the rules. It was a program to determine what signals meant what. They created it and then it was taken to a whole new level when it turned into actually banging a trashcan during games. Unless I'm missing something, why would they be fired?
Because the virtue-signalling blue-polo wearing mouthbreather needs fodder for his next outrage piece.
They knew it was being relayed to the hitters in real time and acknowledged that it was helping Marwin Gonzalez the most. According to the emails leaked to WSJ.
Haha yeah, if anyone has LEGIT reason to have beef with us, it's the Twins. They were sold a false bill of goods predicated on Marwin's numbers in 2017.
2017 Budgets Astros 14,047,535,000 pennies Yankees 22,422,470,700 pennies Red Sox 19,188,842,200 pennies Dodgers 25,363,389,300 pennies
Sam Click's 8-year old friends with more rational thoughts than baseball media/reddit/twitter combined.
All the “rehire Luhnow” talk got me thinking. At this point roughly 20% of the league’s top execs have come through the Rays and Astros (Elias and Stearns from the Luhnow tree, Friedman, Hill, Bloom, Neander, and Click from the Rays tree). The fact that Houston has a group of legacy staff from the Luhnow tree now working under a Rays protégé seems like it would be a huge advantage, especially when considering the potentially complementary strategies those 2 orgs have traditionally used. The Astros were built on tanking to get high picks (Bregman, Correa, McCullers), making prudent 2nd tier free agent signings (Morton, Gurriel, Reddick, Brantley), general prospect scouting and development success (Springer, Alvarez, Altuve, Marwin, Keuchel), and blockbuster trades (Verlander, Cole, Greinke, Osuna/Giles). The Rays totally eschewed free agency and never tanked; their rosters are built purely on being better at scouting and developing than other teams. They win trades and turn late draft picks and lesser international signees into good players. If Click is somehow able to bring in those same skills and marry it with Houston’s willingness to spend money and make big trades, we could be looking at an even more dominant stretch than we saw from 2016-2019. This roster has none of Clicks fingerprints on it, and given the expected continued craziness of this coming offseason, we may not really even see real results from Click’s input until the 2nd half of next season or even 2022. But the potential is still there for this to be an excellent hire and possibly even an upgrade over Luhnow.
Mostly agreed... can't have a better pedigree than what Click has currently (both based on his previous regime and what's left of the Luhnow staff). However, GM's still need to grow into the role. Luhnow received plenty of criticism for wanting to hold on to his homegrown players, having too much faith in guys he previous scouted while with the Cardinals, and having his draft bonus manipulations end up costing him multiple players if their signings were contingent on others signing. Really didn't start to become a war-time GM till he made the Verlander trade... and that didn't come together till the last hour of the secondary trade deadline that doesn't even exist anymore. Not sure how much the Carlos Gomez trade weighed on him between 2015 and 2017... I was one of the vocal many criticizing lack of action in 2016. But getting Verlander, and the subsequent success, was truly the turning point where pretty much every big move after had more to do with the big league club, and less to do with re-stocking the farm or acquiring draft picks. It of course led to some more questionable moves (Giles trade) and then the really questionable/ethical ones (Osuna trade).
"War-time" Luhnow could not happen without Peace-time Luhnow stockpiling weapons by hoarding prospects that he would need for trades later, signing guys to bargain contracts, not taking on dead money, and developing a great staff at developing/identifying players. Astros are running out of stockpiled weapons, and will likely need a Peace-time GM in 2-4 years. I think Click will be fine for Peace-time activities. Next year will be big for him as it is tough to make trades without a stocked farm, and the budget will be limited and the holes aplenty.
I guess the Rays have never had a “war-time GM”, because they have never made a trade like the one Luhnow made to add Verlander. But I would not call the Rays situation over the last few seasons as “peace-time”. I guess ideally the GM would be so good that “war-time” moves wouldn’t be necessary; every opening day roster would be stacked, and anytime a hole appeared in the roster, the Org would have a top prospect ready to fill in. The Rays have certainly had the farm depth to make blockbuster deadline trades, but haven’t done it. It’s certainly debatable whether or not that is the reason they haven’t won it all.
The Rays have never had the budget to accept that money in a trade like the Verlander trade, though I would characterize the Glasnow trade as a war-time trade...they just didn't wait until the last minute. I'd consider the Glasnow trade to be the more difficult of the two as the Astros only traded away money and a few prospects (and not their top ones) while the Rays had to trade from their MLB team for better MLB players. The Verlander trade and Cole trades were part of having what the other team wanted, but would not have been as big a deal if it wasn't for having the staff get the absolute most out of them. The Rays roster seems like it is 75% built through trades despite almost always being a decent team. As an organization, they know how to trade. I do think Click will have to learn how to deal with a bigger budget, and hopefully he learned to trade while he was there.
The thing that stands out about TB is their ability to throw 15 arms at you and they’re all effective, and nobody knows who they are. To some extent, we are seeing the emergence of that with parades, Taylor and yes, even scrubb as options out of the pen, and now framber, Urquidi, Javier as starters. All of them have a ways to go before they become snell, Glasnow, but they’re in the category of or better then Yarborough/chirinos, and who is to say whether the pen guys become as good as drake, Castillo, Curtis, roe, beeks in the pen. There is arm talent and we need click to implement the player development that TB has in spades. if that can happen, and our hitters resume some form of normal production, this team can compete for a long while.