Espada isn't Dusty, but the numbers say he deserves to be Astros manager

Joe Espada's tenure as manager of the Houston Astros has been polarizing among fans. Some fans see him as someone who has been asked to win despite declining talent, a roster with significant flaws, and having to overcome overwhelming amounts of injury without the talent to backfill those injured players. Some fans disagree with his lineup tinkering and bullpen usage, and think he has done a poor job. Some fans still want Dusty Baker back, and feel Dusty would have skippered the team to better records than Espada.

All of those sentiments are very subjective, so how can we take the subjectiveness out of the equation and evaluate Espada's performance simply on merit.

In crafting this experiment, simply using win-loss records is insufficient as it doesn't have a way to adjust for the challenges Espada had to overcome that Dusty did not. Adding up missed days from injury also isn't necessarily a fair usage, as every team will have injury, and that would not equate to the level of talent and performance that replacement players gave (whether positively or negatively).

So I decided to go with an actual numerical evaluation of total team talent, using fWAR (FanGraphs version of WAR, or wins above replacement) and then dividing the total number of wins that season by the team's total war to calculate the number of wins the team generated per WAR.

Simply put, the numbers were eye-opening and show the amount of respect Joe Espada deserves that he doesn't always seem to get.

In using FanGraphs to create a Wins Per WAR number, here is what I found:

In the Tweet/X post listed above, the numbers broke down like this: In 2021, the Astros had a total team WAR of 50.4 and won 95 games, for 1.88 wins per WAR. In 2022, the Astros had a total team WAR of 57.4 and 106 wins, for 1.85 wins per WAR. In 2023, the total team WAR was 45.3 and the team won 90 games, for a 1.99 wins per WAR. For 2024, total team WAR was 39.9 and they won 88 games, for 2.2 wins per WAR. In 2025, total team WAR was 37.3 and they won 87 games, for 2.33 wins per WAR. In 2026, the total team WAR was 28.8 and they won 81 games, for 2.81 wins per WAR.

The chart clearly shows that there has been a significant drain on overall production from the team, reflecting the loss of talent due to free agency and injury as well as the team's inability to replace that talent with equivalent talent. The steep decline in team WAR is evident of a roster that has not been as good.

The wins per WAR ratio was astonishing because it validates the concept that Espada has had to do more with less, and also validates how good a job Espada has done with less.

Dusty Baker is a Hall of Fame manager, and this article makes no attempt to besmirch his good name. It simply serves to show that Dusty had very good rosters, and he won with those rosters. Dusty went to the World Series in 2021, won the World Series in 2022, went to game 7 of the ALCS in 2023. Dusty was earning between 1.85 and 1.99 wins per WAR, which would seem to represent a solid number.

When Espada takes over the reigns, the team WAR drops considerably, especially in 2026. Espada was clearly working with less talent. Espada won the division in 2024 and 2026, and missed the playoffs on a tiebreaker in 2025. More importantly, however, is the fact that Espada was squeezing more out of his team than Dusty was, earning between 2.2 and 2.81 wins per WAR. 2.81 is a very high number, and really shows that Espada squeezed all the juice out of the 2026 team that anyone could ever imagine.

Realistically, the 2026 Astros had no business even being a .500 team. Espada not only overcame bad roster construction and immense injury, but overcame a GM in Dana Brown who lacked the ability or the authority to improve the roster (or perhaps both).

Joe Espada demonstrated why he deserves to stay on as manager of the Astros. The numbers bear it out in demonstrative fashion.

He was expected to meet with owner Jim Crane shortly after their season ended. He will find out his fate soon enough.

The math says he earned the job.

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