Alan Truex: Crane replaces Reid Ryan, may have to replace Luhnow
Updated Thursday, November 14, 2019
HOUSTON – Under the invisible hand of Jim Crane the Astros have been a model baseball organization. When Crane bought the team from Drayton McLane in 2011 he hired an innovative general manager, Jeff Luhnow, well schooled in one of sport’s most successful franchises, the St. Louis Cardinals.
Luhnow quickly built a fertile farm system that resulted in a Houston World Series championship in 2017.
While Luhnow was in charge of player procurement and development, Crane in 2013 hired Reid Ryan as president of business operations. It was a popular choice, Ryan being a son of Astros pitching icon Nolan Ryan, a Hall of Fame inductee.
Reid’s pitching career stalled in the low minors, as his fastball was 10 mph slower than his father’s. But the son has a quick mind, and he proved to be a wizard in a field in which the Astros had never shown much expertise: marketing.
I met Reid Ryan when he was running a minor-league franchise in Round Rock in the 1990s. I was impressed with his command of detail and his ability to convince anyone that his plans would work. It was obvious he had a big-league future, even if not on the playing field.
So it was a shock to this city when Crane, 65, shoved Reid Ryan aside to promote his son, 36-year-old Jared Crane.
“Time for him to step in,” the patriarch said last week. “It has nothing to do with Reid.” Except that it cost him his job, one that by all accounts he was performing well. Reid gracefully accepted a demotion to “executive adviser.”
Nolan Ryan, who’s a tad more temperamental, immediately severed his relationship with the Astros. That’s more significant than many realize. Sitting behind home plate at Minute Maid, the elder Ryan was the most recognizable face of the franchise, but he was more than a figurehead. Last spring he worked with Justin Verlander to perfect his changeup so it consistently would dive away from lefthanded batters.
The Ryan changeup became a reliable fourth pitch after Verlander’s fastball, curve and slider. At 36 he won 21 games. On Wednesday night Verlander was announced as winner of the American League’s Cy Young Award.
Some Astros sources say the catalyst to the unfortunate front office blowup was Brandon Taubman, 34-year-old assistant GM who offended three female reporters with a misogynistic tirade in a clubhouse celebrating the winning of the AL pennant in a stirring 6-game series.
Luhnow and Reid Ryan defended Taubman. Their lack of accountability prompted Jim Crane to craft a warm letter of apology, which he sent to Sports Illustrated reporter Stephanie Apstein.
Crane reportedly was disappointed that Ryan had not shown initiative in damage control. This rare oversight of oversight by Ryan created justification to launch young Jared into a position for which he’s unready.
When the Astros proceeded to lose the World Series as the most prohibitive favorite in two decades, the Taubman incident became the flashpoint of a penultimate postseason.
Crain was accused of nepotism that made the Astros a house divided.
But Houston didn’t have a major problem until one of its former players turned whistle-blower and Luhnow was confronted with his own Spygate.
Mike Fiers, who pitched for the Astros in 2017, revealed to The Athletic that during their world championship season the team mounted a camera in center field to film the opposing catcher’s signs to his pitcher. That view, Fiers said, was conveyed to a television monitor in the tunnel between the Astros’ dugout and locker room.
An Astros employee – perhaps a player or coach — watched the TV, studied the catcher’s signals. When he saw a sign for an off-speed pitch, he signaled to someone who banged a trash can in the tunnel. Within a second the batter would know he’d have something slow and easy to launch.
Luhnow’s explanation was not reassuring: “We haven’t done everything properly,” he admitted when questioned Wednesday by reporters at the General Managers Meeting in Scottsdale, Arizona.
“But I do feel confident that in general, most of the time, we did things right.”
Most of the time?
“We try to be good citizens,” he said, “and we try to compete as hard as we can.”
As if those are conflicting goals.
He added, in what sounded like an excuse for malfeasance: “Everybody’s trying to get an edge.”
When pressed about the Astros’ “edge,” he said: “I’m not going to get into exactly what I knew, at this point.” To which ESPN’s Tony Kornheiser later retorted: “What are you waiting for, Ash Wednesday?”
The national media is all over this. “I think this is terrible,” Kornheiser said. “The Astros cheated. This is not lack of institutional control. This is the institution.”
Frank Isola said on ESPN’s Around the Horn: “They’re going to be fined; they should be fined. They’re not going to take away their World Series title, but it is tainted a bit.”
Fiers, ace of the Oakland A’s, is a credible source. In 2017 he led the Astros with 153 innings. He was not on the postseason roster but was in the dugout. The Athletic claims three other Astros (anonymously) corroborated Fiers’ story and that it was the lovable manager A.J. Hinch who devised the illegal, elaborate scheme, with Carlos Beltran (now manager of the New York Mets) and Alex Cora (Boston Red Sox manager) much involved.
Brian McTaggert, who covers the Astros for MLB.com, pointed out: “The Red Sox with the Apple watch incident a few years ago were fined a quarter million dollars. If this bears out to be true I would expect it to be much bigger than that. MLB has docked teams’ draft picks before, so that’s a possibility. There could be unprecedented punishment.”
My bold prediction, and lately I’ve been wrong a lot: This does not end well. The Ryans will be happy to be out the door, and Jeff Luhnow and A.J. Hinch will be following them.
