Short-Sighted and Self-Centered: Why Jim Crane's Choice to Get Rid of James Click is Bad for the Astros
The decision to get rid of James Click was made for odd and unconvincing reasons and will make it harder to find a new GM. It elevates Jim Crane as the top voice in baseball operations.
A news release Friday confirmed what was pretty clear for a couple of months now—Jim Crane did not want James Click to be the general manager of the Astros.
This is a short-sighted and self-centered decision by Crane that has the potential to harm the long-term future of the Astros, and it is very hard to understand why he made that decision.
The reasons to keep Click are clear:
the Astros have won a lot of games under his stewardship of the franchise.
He has continued the player development pipeline that started under his predecessor Jeff Luhnow, as players such as Jeremy Pena, Chas McCormick, Luis Garcia, and Christian Javier have debuted since Click was hired in February of 2020 and become lineup and rotation regulars.
Excellent assessment of which minor leaguers were ready to come up to the majors, which is best demonstrated by relying on McCormick and Pena rather than signing a veteran free agent to cover their roles.
It promotes stability in a successful organization, especially in the context of Click having brought in two new assistant GMs last off-season.
The reasons to let Click go are harder to understand or explain. The case against him seems to be that his personality was not the type that Crane wants as his General Manager and that Crane will not adjust his expectations to the people he works with. Instead, he’ll adjust the people to his expectations. I am skeptical that will work.
I would not argue that James Click is among the top handful of GMs in the majors. But the biggest reason I cannot argue that is that he has not had enough time to prove himself one way or the other. We can identify some clear strengths of Click (evaluation of the readiness of AAA players to play in the majors) and some weaker areas on his resume (his record on trades is modest at best). He clearly has a high floor as a General Manager, and his ability to get the Astros to continue to win in the wake of sign stealing scandal is admirable.
But the decision made by Crane to get rid of Click makes it harder to get a better GM to decide to take the Astros job over that of another team. Baseball executives now know that in Houston they will be judged by more arbitrary standards than can I get my team to win baseball games.
In this piece, I’ll sketch out why this decision is clearly a choice made by Crane. I’ll try to understand his reasons for doing so, and I’ll then explain why I think this decision is short-sighted, as it is likely to harm the Astros front office in both the long and short-term. And then I’ll explain why this decision is self-centered, presuming that the indispensable man for the success of the Houston Astros front office is not an executive steeped in his or her understanding of baseball. Instead, that man is Jim Crane.
This is a Choice Made by Jim Crane
Word that James Click did not have a contract reached the public on September 12 of this year, first discussed that morning by national writer Ken Rosenthal on The Athletic Baseball Show podcast, adding ““there could be some maneuvering if the Astros sputter in the playoffs.”
This prompted Chandler Rome of the Houston Chronicle to write about Click (and Dusty Baker’s) contract status, confirming that Click was in the last year of his contract. Rome wrote that Click’s contract was “adding more uncertainty to a front office operating with it throughout the season…Given the team’s accomplishments during Click’s brief tenure, parting ways with him seems somewhat illogical, even if the team does not win a World Series.”
Jim Crane responded that night by telling Mark Berman of Fox 26 that “we’ll address them at the end of the seasons. We don’t want any distractions right now.”
Crane’s response was a clear signal he was considering a change in his General Manager. Crane didn’t say that he would sign Click or would negotiate with him, but that’s he would think about it at the end of the season. And the bit about distractions is completely illogical. It is unusual to let a General Manager (or a manager) to go into the last season of his contract because, among other reasons, it creates distractions
It seemed that the only thing that would save Click’s job was the Astros winning the World Series. And reader, I have good news for you. But that piece of good news didn’t change Crane’s thinking that someone else should be his General Manager.
On Tuesday, Bob Nightengale of USA Today tweeted that Crane extended Click and Dusty Baker “a contract for the 2023 season.” Emphasis mine, because if Crane had given Click a multi-year offer, the standard for MLB general managers, there would have been no need to add the extra words.
On Friday, Crane and Click met after Click had returned from representing the team at the General Managers meetings in Las Vegas despite not being under contract. According to Nightengale, Click still wanted a multi-year contract with a higher raise. Crane didn’t budge from his original offer. Take it or leave it…Crane, knowing that Click would reject the offer, walked away too.”
This was 100% Crane’s choice.
Why Jim Crane Doesn’t Want James Click as GM
The next question is why is it Crane’s choice. And that is harder to answer. One piece of evidence that it’s hard to explain why Crane chose to get rid of Click is that Crane has chosen not to explain it.
In the statement the team put out today announcing that the Astros and Click had decided to “part ways” provided no explanation for why Crane has chosen to make this decision. In Chandler Rome’s article on Click’s departure, he wrote“[a]n Astros spokesman said Crane would not be commenting further on Click’s ouster.”
I find it insulting to me as a fan that Crane will not explain his move.
But I write this Substack not just as a fan, but also as an analyst, it is my job to try to understand things even if they are not spelled out for me, and I will try to do that here.
Fortunately, I can rely on others who have tried to understand this move, and the journalist who has most tried to understand and explain what is coming is Rosenthal. On October, 27, he wrote a column headlined “What would justify Astros owner Jim Crane parting ways with GM James Click.”
It is a column, so it reflects Rosenthal’s opinion on Click’s upcoming ouster (like most, he’s baffled by the choice), but Rosenthal has the deepest set of sources in the game, and his writing reflect his conversations with “[s]ources familiar with the Astros’ situation who are not authorized to talk about the team’s operation cite a variety of potential reasons for the uncertainty surrounding Click.”
Rosenthal identifies three explanations for my Crane had decided to let Click go:
“stylistic clashes” between Crane and Click,
“disagreements about the size of the baseball operations staff,” and
“concern from Click about other voices in the organization influencing the owner.”
Reasons #2 and #3 are terrible reasons to get rid of a baseball executive and speak poorly about Crane’s decision making and priorities as owner. The first reason is at least explicable, but it still is not all that good a reason to fire a General Manager based on what reporting indicates is the substance behind these “stylistic clashes.”
Let’s start with reason #2. Click has expanded the Astros front office by adding a pair of Assistant General Managers and expanding the number of scouts the team has. Rosenthal writes that “Crane loved the efficiency” of the “lean staff” that Jeff Luhnow had in his front office and that “Crane obviously approved all of the hires, but that doesn’t mean he liked increasing his budget for baseball operations.”
This is a terrible reason to fire a baseball executive. Baseball operations is a relatively low cost place in which teams can spend money and receive excellent return on investment. As I noted, the Astros won the World Series because they developed an awesome player development machine, which has allowed them to keep producing young (read cost-controlled) stars. Spending on baseball operations should be a priority for quality franchises, not a potential area of cost savings.
And furthermore, Crane has money to invest in his team. Major league teams are increasing their profits this year, and Crane should want to spend money where it is most productive (on player acquisition and development). That he wants to cut here is disturbing for the team’s long term future.
The third reason that Rosenthal cites is that “other voices” in the organization have Crane’s ear, and they are not fans of Click. Rosenthal identifies these other voices as retired players who have never worked in baseball operations, specifically noting that “special advisor Reggie Jackson and community outreach executives Jeff Bagwell and Enos Cabell…remain influential.”
If you look around baseball, its front offices are run by people who look like James Click (and Jeff Luhnow)—really smart people who have dedicated themselves to understanding the data that goes into baseball and think about it every day. It is not run by old dudes who have not updated their thinking about the sport since they day they retired.
Crane should be humoring his old school guys and insulating the innovative thinkers in his front office from the old school guys. He’s doing the opposite instead.
The first reason Rosenthal listed for Crane axing Click is “stylistic differences.” Other have suggested similar reasons On November 3, Jon Heyman of the New York Post reported that an “Astros insider suggests a personality clash” between the two. Rome wrote this week of a “philosophical chasm” between Click and Crane. Rosenthal writes that “Crane likes to act quickly and boldly. Click, who came from the Rays’ organization, moves more deliberately.”
Click himself discussed these differences in a Tuesday press conference at the General Managers meetings in Las Vegas saying that “I think [Crane] likes to act very quickly in certain cases. I tend toward a more deliberate approach. He is very demanding, but he also gives you the resources to accomplish what he tasks you to do.”
On the other hand, this is not necessarily accurate analysis.
One piece of evidence offered that Click moves more “deliberately” is looking at this year’s trade deadline when “Click could have traded one of his younger starters at the deadline for a promising catcher or center fielder.”
Except, Click did trade one of his younger starters. In an article focused on Dusty Baker’s role in helping the Astros win the World Series, Jeff Passan reported that the Astros and Cubs “were in agreement on a trade to send star catcher Willson Contreras to the Astros for starter Jose Urquidy.” Crane would not approve the trade.
Among the voices that persuaded Crane to spike the trade was Dusty Baker. Passan quoted Baker on his reasoning “I needed a guy that wasn't going to complain about not playing every day. And this is his [free agent] year. See, that's tough. When you trade for a player in his [free agent] year. Everybody's about numbers and stuff, and I can't blame them, no doubt. But that's not what we needed."
It is odd to evaluate a trade that didn’t happen. On one level, Click pursued the trade because he thought it increased the team’s odds of winning the World Series in 2022, and while that may be true, they didn’t need Contreras to win it all this year.
On the other hand, Baker’s reasoning is odd. He was not going to play Contreras, who was 28% better than the average major league hitter this season, every day. Who was he going to play instead? Well, Contreras could play 3 positions—catcher, first base, and DH. At the time, the Astros who played those positions were Martin Maldonado, Yuli Gurriel, and Aledmys Diaz. These are veteran players with value, but all were below average major league hitters this season. Why would anyone bench Contreras in favor of these players?
Baker’s logic would not hold for me, and does not seem to have held for Click, but held for Crane. What could be more deliberate than holding on to the status quo.
The best reason to spike the deal is that Urquidy, who has three seasons before he becomes a free agent, is too much to give up for one playoff run from Contreras. After all, Contreras was not needed to win in 2023 and the Astros could now trade Urquidy for help in centerfield, or keep him in the rotation long term.1
But the story of the Crane spiking the trade cuts completely against analysis that Click isn’t “aggressive” enough for Crane. It does fit with the story that Crane is listening to old baseball men more and not his analytics types in the front office.
And it produces more questions than answers about this so-called “personality” clash between Crane and Click. If it is not based on “aggressiveness,” what is it based on?
Regardless, one implicit premise behind the notion of “stylistic differences” or a “philosophical chasm” between the two is that it is wholly Click’s job to adjust to Crane’s whims, whatever they are and however they change over time.
But it seems to me that Crane has a responsibility to adjust to his personnel. Judging Click based on his “personality” or his “style” is evaluating him on secondary concerns. The goal of a general manager is not to move “boldly and quickly” or even move “deliberately.” It is to set up his or her organization best to win. Their style or philosophy of decision making is in service to that broader goal.
We can question specific individual moves that Click made, didn’t make, or was blocked from making. What we cannot question are the result—the team kept winning after he was brought in.
And thus, getting rid of Click sends a clear signal to the rest of baseball about being the Houston Astros general manager—you will be judged primarily by factors other than your win-loss record.
Why This is a Short-Sighted Move
And if the Astros general manager will be judged by factors other than their win-loss record, it raises the question of what type of person would take the job.
A candidate who takes the Astros GM job has to work with an owner who has shown he will evaluate you more on your personality type than on how many games your teams win. He has shown that he will spike trades due to prioritizing old school thinking over optimizing the lineup, and that he listens closely to the old players who kiss up to him in the suite each game. Recent evidence suggests that Crane is edging away from the analytical innovations that have boosted the Astros to the top of the game.
Who wants to work in a situation like that? Who wants to work in a situation in which your autonomy is limited and your best ideas are rejected?
Obviously somebody does. There are only 30 jobs leading a major league front office, and each one is valuable and desired. But do the top candidates want to work under these conditions? Or could they find a better job somewhere else.
But Crane’s actions have harmed the Astros reputation among other baseball executives. Jon Heyman has reported on other MLB front office types “are abuzz over the bizarre treatment” of Click. Rosenthal had noted “the incredulity of [Click’s] peers” in what has been “a topic of industry speculation virtually all season.”
After Click was let go, speculation turned to Brewers executive David Stearns, who had previously been the Astros Assistant General Manager under Jeff Luhnow. Stearns had served as President of Baseball Operations with the Brewers until last month, when he stepped down to serve as an advisor to the team.
That’s the official story. The unofficial story on Stearns is that he wanted to leave the Brewers, but their owner held him to his contract, which expires after next season. Stearns taking the advisor role seems a managed compromise that kept him with the Brewers after other teams came after Stearns.
So it’s possible that the one-year contract offer to Click was an attempt to bridge the year until Crane can hire Stearns. Except, other teams may want to hire Stearns as well. Stearns has long been connected with the Mets, the team he rooted for as a child in Manhattan. The Angels may be looking for a new front office leader once a new owner takes over the team. And some other team will have a disappointing 2023 and decided in the middle of next season to change the top of their front office. Would Stearns take the Astros job over a job with the Mets, the Angels with a new owner, or mystery team. After yesterday, it is less likely.
Why This is a Self-Centered Move
On Friday, the Astros let go of James Click as their general manager. On Saturday, they signed Rafael Montero to a 3 year free agent contract. Which led to a question rarely asked about a team signing a free agent. Who, exactly, signed him to that contract?
The answer it seems is Jim Crane.
And it leads one to ask question where the real decision that Jim Crane made is not that there is a better GM out there than James Click, but that there is no one better to run the Astros than Jim Crane. He is now the indispensable man in the Astros baseball operations department.
It is likely that Crane hires a general manager (or puts an interim person in charge for a bridge season), but one wonders if he is looking for an intelligent person with his own vision for how to keep the Astros on top of baseball, or if he is looking for a yes man (or yes woman).
What is so bizarre about Jim Crane’s elevation of Jim Crane to the top man in the Astros baseball operations department is that Crane has succeeded as the owner of the Astros not by trusting himself, but by trusting and supporting the vision of his general manager.
Shortly after his purchase of the Astros went through, Crane hired Jeff Luhnow as the Astros general manager. Luhnow cared little of what others thought about him, and that helped him implement innovative programs to change player development for the Astros. Luhnow ignored critics calling for him to add payroll in early days but instead focused on giving major league roster spots to players who might improve his team in the future. The costs of this strategy was clear; the team suffered through three straight 100-loss seasons.
As all long-term Astro fans know, that period was painful. But Luhnow’s vision was unwavering, and Crane’s support for it was rock solid. Crane has bought in to a plan developed by his General Manager (and undoubtedly one Luhnow sold to Crane in the interview process) to be bad at the major league level (read: keep attendance low) while waiting for a later payoff.
The payoff was awesome, as the Astros have made the playoffs in seven of the last eight seasons, with four World Series appearances and two championships. It implemented the vision of a general manager supported by the owner.
Crane now seems to want to flip that on its head and have his vision for player acquisition trump that of his general manager. This is a model that has not worked in baseball in generations.
I don’t understand why he wants to try it this way.
There is also another reason why Crane’s choice to get rid of James Click at this time is self-centered. It is done at the point where Crane saves the most money.
This argument is centered on the timing of Click’s dismissal from the GM spot. Crane would have been better off making this move during the season. The argument against dismissing Click during the regular season is that it would have been a distraction to the team, but it was a distraction anyway. And it would have created a PR hit for the Astros, which happened anyway when Crane was dismissed after the season.
The advantage of a mid-season move is that it increases the pool of potential candidates for the Astros job. Three teams (Tigers, Rangers, and Royals) made changes in the leadership of their baseball operations and department during the season and the Brewers made a change after the season. That is four potential candidates for a GM job not available for Crane to interview.
Why didn’t Crane dismiss Click during the season so he could hire a GM before the offseason begin. Perhaps the explanation is money. Crane would have had to pay two general managers for some period of time.
The money argument is stronger if we consider another option for Crane—sign Click to a multiyear contract and fire him next season. This is an especially attractive option if Crane’s plan was to have Click serve for a season and then hire David Stearns when his contract expired.
But it would require Crane to pay two general managers for a good long while. Now Crane has the money. Forbes estimates that the Astros “operating income” for 2021 (i.e. profit) was $29 million. And that’s not the big source of Crane’s wealth from the team—Forbes also estimates the value of the franchise increased by over $100 million.
Click made $1 million last season as was due for a raise. Obviously, Click’s salary is a lot of money to you and me, but to a billionaire like Crane, it’s a rounding error. Yet, Crane cared deeply about that rounding error.
How Much Will This Move Hurt The Astros?
The good news is that the Astros are an excellent baseball team. As noted several times, they won the World Series just a week ago. They project to be a strong team again in the 2023 season—they being the offseason with the 6th most projected WAR in the majors according to the Depth Charts projections at Fangraphs.
They remain strong favorites to win the AL West again and to advance to the playoffs for the seventh straight season in 2023.
The issue is not the short-term but the long-term. Can the team succeed with the owner at the center of baseball operations? Can a team succeed if the pool of general manager candidates is limited due to the owner prioritizing personality over winning?
It remains to be seen. The world works on probabilities, not certainties. Getting rid o James Click may decrease the odds that someone like David Stearns takes the Astros job next season, but it does not eliminate that possibility. Stearns may just demand more in salary now, and the biggest cost is in the place where it can most easily be absorbed—in Jim Crane’s wallet.
Maybe Crane is really good at identifying General Manager candidates (he’s hired two and both have won World Series at the helm of the Astros), and though his options are more limited, he can identify a very good baseball decision maker.
But the odds of the team succeeded long-term are reduced. And they were reduced by one man—Jim Crane—and for baffling and hard to understand reasons.
Let’s just hope the odds are not reduced too much for the team to succeed long term. I, for one, liked the part where they win games. And I especially liked the part where they won the World Series.
It’s possible that Baker made this argument as well. Passan only discussed Baker’s reasoning that he wouldn’t make Contreras an every day player.
I didn’t agree when Crane fired Luhnow and Hinch, they should have served their suspensions and returned in their respective rolls, but it’s his team and he gets to make these decisions. I don’t know him, but people I know and trust do not have the highest opinion of him, yet he is the only Astros owner to deliver 2 World Championships.
This article is a promotion for Click and a direct hit at Crane, I do not agree with the author, but just like Crane they are in titled to their opinion. To believe you understand what happens with their relationship is purely speculation.
To date he has produced a wining organization that has delivered, the answers as to how the team operates is more than any one individuals impact, Click obviously didn’t sell the one person he needed to…