Astros Lose Baseball Operations Hand to the Orioles

The Astros lose member of their baseball operations staff in Brendan Fournie to the Orioles.

On Monday, Jake Kaplan of The Athletic reported that Brendan Fournie had been hired away by the Baltimore Orioles from the Houston Astros to be their director of baseball strategy. Current Orioles’ general manager and executive vice president Mike Elias was with Houston from 2012-2018.

Since 2019, Fournie was Houston’s senior manager of player evaluation and economics and in the baseball operations department since 2016. Fournie now joins a front office of former Astros’ staff.

Elias left the Astros for the vacant general manager position, while bringing Sig Mejdal along with him from Houston. Elias was hired as the general manager and the main contributor of instilling analytics within the organization. Eve Rosenbaum, former Astros’ manager of international scouting, is also in the Orioles’ front office as the director of baseball development.

Fournie had a handful of roles in the Astros’ organization over the last couple years. The University of Missouri graduate came on the scene in Houston in the baseball operations department as an apprentice in 2016.

He moved through the ranks of the ball club’s baseball operations to a coordinator and then to a manager. Fournie leaves the Astros with a vacant position in player evaluation and economics, where he was the senior manager since the end of the 2019 season.

The organization are looking to hire at a few positions within their organization; mostly on the player development front. Minor-league field coordinator Jason Bell has been on the front of promoting two openings for a development coach and a bullpen catcher and coaching apprentice.

Current Astros’ minor-league hitting coach and coordinator Jason Kanzler has also promoted the need for hitting coaches for the teams at the Florida complex, as well as the Dominican Academy for the 2022 season.