Astros just keep losing front office personnel and it has become a major problem

When you are successful, as the Houston Astros have been over the last decade, you are going to have some staff turnover as other teams lure talent away with promotions/more money. Unfortunately, the sign-stealing scandal fallout didn't help, which resulted in the loss of Mike Fast, among others, but a large swath of Houston's losses came down simply to completely normal turnover. However, this offseason has already been particularly busy when it comes to departures.

The Astros have already overhauled their coaching staff, with multiple former key coaches being shown the door. Houston also let their head trainer (a good change) as well as an assistant GM go as the team tries to reorganize and get back to their winning ways.

That was already a lot of institutional knowledge that is now gone and will be extremely difficult to replicate or improve for years. With performance science guru Jacob Buffa joining the Cardinals, the Astros could soon reach a breaking point when it comes to the amount of brain drain the organization is suffering.

Astros losing Jacob Buffa is the latest in a long line of organizational brain drain

Taken in isolation, losing Buffa isn't all that damning. Sure, he is genuinely great at the analytical side of player development as well as biomechanics, and St. Louis is lucky to land him, but he is only one cog, and Houston can keep some of the lessons and practices he put in place. However, when you look at it through the lens of all the changes that have happened to the organization in recent years, it is pretty alarming.

Houston used to be at the forefront of player development and analytics, but that has waned in recent years with multiple extremely talented executives moving on. Fast has been with the Braves for years now; both Mike Elias and Sig Mejdal left to join the Orioles. Hell, even former general manager James Click, whom owner Jim Crane ran out of town for seemingly no good reason, helped Toronto get to the World Series and is on the short list to get a GM job elsewhere.

No team can withstand that much loss of talent and not feel the effects, and we have already seen some of that with the drop-off in top talent coming from the minor leagues. General manager Dana Brown seems like a smart guy with loads of experience with scouting, but he can't do this job alone.