Travis Sawchik's List of Astros Long-Term Concerns Should Be Taken Seriously
Astros Twitter dismissed Sawchik's article, but concerns about personnel losses, a modest farm system, and others catching up to the Astros technological edge are worth taking seriously.
On Friday, Travis Sawchik of TheScore published his weekly notes column and put some thoughts on the Astros at the top of ten items. His editors gave it the headline “The Astros have begun their initial descent from baseball's top echelon.”
Astros Twitter responded with the nuance and thoughtfulness that we of course expect from social media discourse. You can see all the QTs of Sawchik’s article here.
The QTs seem to fall into a handful of the similar categories: “the media” wants the Astros to fail, bookmarking for reposting later, laughing emojis, and people repeating the Astros record.
Not taking the advice of those recommended against giving Sawchik a “click,” I read the article. And I am guessing that most of those who reacted against it did not.
Sawchik addresses several long-term issues with the Astros front office and decision making. Which means that the issues do not go away with the 8 game winning streak that was only snapped last night.
These are issues that are worth taking seriously and examining in detail, which I do here.
Sawchik’s Argument
Sawchik says there are three reason that “Houston’s outlook is downgraded:”
“personnel losses following the sign-stealing scandal,”
“the erosion of talent in the farm system,”
“the rest of the industry catching up to its once-innovative practices.”
The theme that unites the three elements of Sawchik’s list is a “brain drain” among Astros personnel. The Astros have succeeded since 2017 due to innovative practices in player development urged on by a front office that sought edges by doing things in new ways not done by other teams. The combination of other teams catching up, Astros personnel dispersing to other teams, and the choices of ownership to shift the front office’s focus away from analytic thinking means that the advantages that the Astros had in the mid-2010s are smaller today, or possibly nonexistent.
Each of the issues that Sawchik lists is something that can have a large effect on the franchise and are worth paying attention to. At the same time, as I read through the details of Sawchik’s article, I found plenty of reasons to push back on Sawchik’s reasoning. On many of these items, there were reasons to think that the Astros can successfully navigate the transition to their next era.
I address each of Sawchik’s three points in detail below.
Personnel Losses in the Front Office
The personnel losses that Sawchik identifies are predominantly in the front office. Sawchik writes that “of the 32 front office personnel listed in the baseball operations department in 2018, 23 have left, including all of the senior leadership team.” In that time, the Astros have lost not only two general managers (Jeff Luhnow and James Click) but also three assistant general managers (Brandon Taubman, Pete Putila, and Scott Powers). It should be noted that only one of those five left voluntarily.1
Sawchik also note that the Astros “seem to have made a philosophical shift by hiring Dana Brown as GM...Brown comes from a more scouting-oriented background compared to the quantitative-centric hires who turned the so-called "Diasastros" into a dynamic organization.”
This point is undeniable, and not just because Brown comes from a different background that Luhnow and Click. As I noted when Jim Crane hired Dana Brown, it was not clear “how autonomous Brown will be as a GM” because Crane would have a bigger role in baseball operations than most owners, Brown had to work with Assistant General Managers chosen by Crane, and that “[Jeff] Bagwell and [Reggie] Jackson have influence with Crane.”
The team’s decision making process is clearly changing at the direction of Jim Crane and Sawchik is right to point out the concerns this brings for the future of the franchise. Yet Sawchik does something he does more than once in this article—overclaims on a bit of evidence to support his point.
Sawchik’s example of the concerns raised by the front office’s new direction is the signing of Jose Abreu. Sawchik attributes this decision to the “new regime.” But of course, Dana Brown had not yet been hired when the Astros signed Abreu in November. Would Brown have spotted flaws in Abreu’s power stroke due to his scouting eye? We don’t know. The decision to sign Abreu is solely on Crane’s ledger.
But the overclaim on the Abreu signing doesn’t take away from Sawchik’s main point. The front office has lost some top flight baseball personnel and changed its organizational structure and direction, despite being one of the top teams in baseball. This new direction is worth watching.
The Erosion of Talent in the Farm System
Sawchik also discusses the decline of the Astros farm system.
“The Astros ranked 10th in Baseball America's organizational talent rankings in the spring of 2018…But they fell to 27th in 2020 due to injuries and graduations. They then ranked 26th in the 2021 preseason, 28th last year, and slotted 25th in Baseball America's organizational talent rankings this spring.
This is quite true, and I have written before about how the Astros relatively poor farm system limits their ability to acquire major league talent. That will be true again at this year’s trade deadline.
And yet, the decline of the farm system in the rankings has not kept the team from continuing to produce high quality, young major leaguers. Current stars Kyle Tucker and Yordan Alvarez were part of the organization’s “talent rankings” in the 2018 rankings that Sawchik cites. But since 2020, the Astros have debuted Cristian Javier, Luis Garcia, Jeremy Pena, and Hunter Brown, each of whom is a starting level player on this year’s team. Contributing players like Jose Urquidy, Chas McCormick, Jake Meyers, and Bryan Abreu have all debuted since 2018.
I argued that the Astros won the World Series in 2022 because their player development system continued to produce high level players. What is more remarkable about that is that, as the farm system rankings show, the Astros have had relatively few bullets in their gun. Yet they have been precisely accurate with those few bullets.
Will that continue into the future? Sawchik brings up an important point—many of the people responsible for the success of the player development system over the last few years have moved on. “Among minor-league coordinators and major-league coaches, those who carry out the player development plans, only nine of the 21 listed in 2018 remain.”
An important question for the future of the franchise is whether the new people in the player development system can match the productivity of those that they replaced.
Catching Up to the Astros Innovative Practices
One source of the Astros edge in player development in recent years is their use of innovative technology and practices in player development.
As Sawchik notes “Before most teams had even experimented with high-speed cameras, the Astros had purchased and installed 75 Edgertronic cameras throughout its system by 2017 to hone pitch grips and evaluate mechanics. High-speed cameras are now standard technology in the game.”
To me, this is the most worrisome item on Sawchik’s list of long-term concerns for the Astros. It is difficult to be innovative over the long term, and, when combined with the shift in direction in the front office, the question of whether the new front office wants to be innovative is an open one.
But then, Sawchik overclaims again. He focuses on the losses in the player development system for the Astros, but his example is “longtime pitching coach Brent Strom, who helped get the most out of pitchers like Gerrit Cole and Justin Verlander when they came to Houston, and who might now be working similar magic in Arizona with Zac Gallen.”
No word in what Sawchik writes is false, but they leave out what happened after Strong left the Astros. Their pitching staff got better under Strom’s successor and protege Josh Miller, assisted by Bill Murphy. Are the new coaches better than Strom? I doubt that, but one reason Strom left the Astros is because he thought the younger coaches were ready. Strom’s absolutely right about that.
Long Terms Concerns Exist. But Are Balanced By Optimistic Notes
And it fits into my the broader conclusion that I reach about Sawchik’s points. Each of the three items on his list of concerns about the Astros future is real. Some fit with concerns I have raised on this Substack (e.g. the change in direction in the front office) and some which alert me to things to think about in the future (minor league coaching turnover). But for each of these concerns, there are reasons to remain optimistic and to think that the Astros can manage a change to the next era of the team successfully.
The team has managed successfully managed a transition to the next generation of pitching coaches, but ones that are steeped in the principles that have long held in the organization for developing pitchers. The farm system keeps producing high quality players despite low rankings. And the hiring record on general managers by Jim Crane is excellent.
Sawchik’s concerns are real over the long-term and we should take them seriously. That the come in the middle of the team’s best stretch of play this season is not a reason to dismiss them, but it is a reminder that this is still a very good baseball team. It has lots of good players.
But there is one another reason why Sawchik is likely to be right about why the Astros are likely to decline over the next few years. It is hard to be as good as the Astros have been over the last seven seasons. As Sawchik notes, the Astros have won “100 or more games in four of the last five full seasons.” The Dodgers have done that as well, but of course, have not had the same level of postseason success that the Astros have had, going out in the Division Series round twice in that period.
Sawchik’s list of concerns helps show why it is hard to sustain excellence over a long period of time. A team’s farm system usually declines as they get worse draft picks. Other teams take key personnel in large part because they can bring the innovations of their successful team to a new team looking to improve.
So the ultimate lesson here is that we should appreciate the golden era of Astros baseball even more. It has lasted longer than any of us have a right to expect. And with the team now having won ten of its last twelve, it seems to be continuing this season. Long may it last.
That’s Putila, whose lateral move last September to be the #2 man in the Giants front office, was a signal of the internal unhappiness with the changes Jim Crane had and was going to bring, to the rest of the front office.
I have started to cover the Astros farm system day by day on Substack (check it out if you feel like it) and one thing that I've realized is that Houston minor league organization isn't given all of the credit that it deserves. They had a spectacular draft class last year bringing in top prospects Drew Gilbert, Jacob Melton, and Ryan Clifford who have all done great in the minors this year. They have also done a great job with their international signings in past years signing both electric pitchers and position players like Pedro Leon, RHP Miguel Ullola, and SS Camilo Diaz.