7 Observations About the Release of Jose Abreu

The immediate collapse of Jose Abreu was hard to see coming, even if it seems inevitable now. Jim Crane how to swallow over $30 million to make his mistake go away.

Yesterday, the Houston Astros released Jose Abreu. It was a long time coming, and I have a number of observations on the move.

1. Jim Crane Was the Last Person To Decide That Abreu Had To Go

Since returning from his month at Extended Spring Training in an effort to make adjustments on his swing, Jose Abreu had 7 hits in 42 at bats with 1 walk and 3 extra base hits. He was no longer performing and the team is better off without him.

But the man who had to make that decision ultimately was Jim Crane. Jim Crane is the person who will have to pay Abreu over $30 million not to play baseball for his team.

When Abreu returned to the active roster, I noted that choice was made primarily because of Crane and the fact that he was the one bearing the sunk cost of Abreu’s contract. Many Astros fans reached their breaking point with Abreu when he started the season off cold. Crane finally reached his breaking point during the series in San Francisco.

2. Abreu Fell Off a Cliff

Friend of the Substack Cody Poage posted this tweet yesterday showing Abreu’s wOBA by season. And good gracious.

The last people to fall off a cliff so quickly were Thelma and Louise.

Bad Dad jokes aside, this chart speaks to an important point on Abreu. His decline happened exceedingly quickly, apparently on Opening Day of the 2023 season. And I mean Opening Day. In Spring Training of 2023, Abreu slashed .292/.327/.583 with 10 extra base hits among his 14 knocks.

But once the season started, it immediately went bad, as Abreu slashed .235/.267/.270 in April of 2023. In 2023, Abreu was able to find it a couple of times during the season and had productive months in June, September, and in October. But he seemed to decline even further in 2024.

3. Abreu Stopped Hitting the Ball Hard And Stopped Pulling the Ball

Why did Abreu decline and decline so suddenly? The answer is more complicated than an outside analyst can offer, having to do with bat speed, timing, and the ability square up baseballs. But we can look at the results and see that Abreu stopped hitting the ball as hard and stopped pulling the ball as much.

Hitting the ball hard is obviously good, and pulling the ball—especially balls hit hard and into the air—leads to the best results at the plate.

You can see the evidence for this chart below, which shows Abreu’s rate of hard hit balls and pulled balls over the last four years of his career.

I made the chart go back four season to show 1) that Abreu demonstrated better rates on both measures in his 2021 and 2022 seasons an 2) Abreu declined precipitously at the start of the 2023 season. You can also see his recovery in the middle and at the end of 2023, and then his big decline here in 2024. There is little prospect for recovery.

4. It Was Hard to See This Coming

In writing about the Abreu signing when it happened, I wrote that “the weaknesses of Abreu start with his age” and that the Astros would be dealing with the decline phase of his career.

Players usually decline gradually over time. As players move past their peak in their late-20s, they get a little less good each year. As a result, my biggest concern was that Abreu’s “contract is an albatross in the 2025 season.” The good news is that I got that right; the bad news is that the contract became an albatross almost immediately.

And my tempered take on the Abreu signing at the time seemed to go against the grain of most Astros fans—who were quite enthusiastic about signing a well-regarded player with a long history of excellent offensive performances.

But even my tempered take was too optimistic. Abreu’s immediate decline was hard to see coming.

5. The Winner’s Curse

There is a concept in economics called the winner’s curse—which is the tendency for the winning bid of an auction to exceed the worth of an item. The alternative to winning feels like nothing, and that pushes bidders to exceed a rational value to win the auction.

A classic example of this in baseball is the free agency of Jose Abreu. Abreu was regarded as the top free agent first baseman on the market in the 2022-23 offseason, and he was pursued by the Guardians, Padres, and Red Sox, in addition to the Astros. While I expressed concern about the fact that the Astros put a 3rd year on his contract, I also noted that it was “the cost of doing business.” The Guardians were reported at the time to have made a 3-year offer to Abreu.

Of course, the definition I gave of the winner’s curse discussed how “the alternative to winning feels like nothing.” But in the real world, the alternative is not nothing. One of the few voices criticizing the Astros signing of Abreu was Keith Law of The Athletic, who wrote that a team can easily fill “First base and DH spots…in the lower end of the free-agent market.”

So one lesson of the Abreu free agency saga is that you should not want to win a free agent—there is always a lower cost alternative out there. And that player won’t require such a long-term commitment.

6. Develop Your Own Prospects

Perhaps the other lesson the lesson of the free agency game is that it is best not to have to play it. The Astros had to sign a first baseman after the 2022 season to replace Yuli Gurriel, who had aged out of being a useful major league player. The Astros had replaced several of their legendary players before in the golden era, but the had predominantly done this by developing their own prospects and inserting them into regular playing time (c.f. Kyle Tucker for Josh Reddick; Framber Valdez for Gerrit Cole; Jeremy Pena for Carlos Correa).

They lacked a first base prospect to do this in 2023, prompting the team to seek a free agent from outside the organization. Being put in this box—having to sign a free agent—may have prompted the bad evaluation and the need to win Abreu. The front office at the time may have felt that it had to win him.

Hopefully, the team will be able to slot in Joey Loperfido to 1st base when he is eligible to return from the minors and they will have an internal own solution to the problem at first base.

7. It’s on Jim Crane’s Ledger

It’s hard to know if another head of baseball operations would have signed Abreu to a 3-year contract. Perhaps if James Click was still in charge of baseball operations, he would have said it’s okay to let the Guardians pay for Abreu’s third season. Perhaps Jeff Luhnow would have said we can find almost as much production for cheaper from another first baseman. Maybe Dana Brown’s scouting eyes would have told him that Abreu was losing bat speed and would decline quickly.

But maybe not. Abreu was a hot commodity in the 2022-23 free agent market, pursued by the Guardians, Padres, and Red Sox. Each of those teams were run by competent lifelong baseball decision-makers.

But at the time of the signing, the Astros baseball operations department was headed not by a lifelong baseball man, but by owner Jim Crane. His decisions that offseason—signing Abreu, Rafael Montero, and Michael Brantley to free agent contracts—have not held up well.

The job of the head of baseball operations is often not whether to go after a player, but how strongly to go after that player. To determine what price—in terms of trade assets, free agent dollars, or contract years—to pay for a player. As such, they are often marginal calls. Baseball men screw these up all the time, but I trust them more than an owner to make these marginal calls. The saga of Jose Abreu is just one example of this.