In the middle of a rebuild, the Astros’ most recent move becomes another step back in the organization.
The Houston Astros are Major League Baseball’s go-to team when you want to think of a team who’s looking to rebuild.
They’ve had a run of three straight seasons in which they’ve lost 100 games, and since 2011 have traded away seemingly every moveable piece of their organization, including big names such as Hunter Pence, Wandy Rodriguez, Carlos Lee and Michael Bourn.
The rebuilding process was going well all the way up to June of this year. Young pitchers such as Dallas Keuchel and Collin McHugh were pitching as well as nearly anyone in baseball. 2011 first-round pick George Springer was showing immediate flashes of brilliance. Overall, the organization had loaded itself with a laundry list of prospects impressive enough for Sports Illustrated to dub them the “2017 World Series Champions” back in June.
Shortly after that, a series of setbacks began to take place when the Astros failed to sign its first overall draft pick, right-handed pitcher Brady Aiken. Aiken would have been the third first-overall selection in as many years to sign with Houston, and would have joined pitcher Mark Appel as a lethal one-two punch in the Astros’ farm system. Instead, Houston missed out on what could have been a key part of its team’s future.
Then this year’s trade deadline came around and the organization made another questionable decision, trading 24-year old starting pitcher Jarred Cosart to Miami. Cosart was in his second year with the big league club, and appeared to be on track to be a strong front of the rotation piece moving forward.
The latest move came on Monday, when the team fired manager Bo Porter after less than two seasons on the job. His record with the club will end at 110-190.
Porter’s firing comes a week after a report surfaced saying that tensions were rising between him and general manager Jeff Luhnow. The club’s competitiveness was not the reason for Porter’s firing — the team was going to lose a lot of games regardless of who was at the helm. Rather, it was because of the team wanting to present a more “consistent and united message” throughout the organization moving forward.
Regardless of the reasoning, Porter’s firing does not seem like a timely move for the club. Porter was supposed to be the clubhouse leader needed to drive this team through a period of planned mediocrity and into a new era of success. Instead, the managerial shake-up means a (likely) brand new staff will be introduced to a team entering a critical point in its rebuild, and a new beginning to a plan that started two years ago.
It’s hard to say just how good — or bad — of a manager Porter really is, given that the situation he was put in charge of was far from a typical one, but this really isn’t about Porter. This is about a front office that is beginning to show a pattern of missing opportunities and removing key pieces of the organization’s future. For the sake of the fanbase, let’s hope they can maintain more solidarity moving forward.
We’ll check back in October 2017.
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