It's clear Astros' Joe Espada was a victim of Dana Brown's failures, Jim Crane's hubris

“Joe is doing what he can do with what he’s got.”

Those were the words of Astros owner Jim Crane in the days after the team had fired, err, parted ways with now-former GM Dana Brown regarding his manager, Joe Espada. They were damning words for sure.

Damning in the judgment levied on the job Brown had done constructing the roster. Damning on the owner's faith and belief in the roster (we can pontificate on how much that sentiment led to a feeble trade deadline in another post). Damning in the expectation of what this team, as is, could actually accomplish.

Those words, however, did not lay the blame for this uninspiring season at the feet of the manager. Clearly, another season of a pitching staff ravaged by injuries, a lost season from franchise cornerstone Carlos Correa due to a freak injury, and the vast underperformance by too many players had all conspired against the Astros this season.

Is it the fault of the manager that Father Time has come for Jose Altuve and Christian Walker? Certainly, it is not the fault of the manager that his now-former GM's inability to land one single competent outfielder has forced him to play a rightfielder the past two seasons who should have been in Double-A and Triple-A. Nor is it the fault of the manager he has been asked to win with a rotating cast of outfielders not good enough to truly be regular major leaguers.

Espada could do nothing to prevent the freak injury to Correa, the same as he could do nothing to account for All-Star SS Jeremy Pena's three injuries this season that have cost him time. It isn't Espada's fault Christian Vazquez has regressed to being a terrible hitter, Vazquez has been a terrible hitter for the past 3 seasons.

The cold, hard truth of the matter however, is that none of it will ultimately matter. When the Astros wipe the slate clean, Espada's name will be wiped with everyone else's.

Dana Brown did Espada no favors for three straight seasons. The roster has gotten progressively worse, as well as key players aging at the ends of their careers poorly.

Jim Crane expects to make the postseason every year, excuses be damned. Whatever it is you have to deal with, you are expected to find a way to overcome.

It is easy to see why the Astros are so inconsistent. The pitching has been woeful for the overwhelmingly greater part of the season. A recent uptick in the starting pitching was met with the biggest slump of Jeremy Pena's season. For an offense that is essentially a 3 man lineup with Pena, Yordan, and Paredes, it cannot overcome the loss of one of them, particularly for an extended time.

Overall, Espada has done an admirable job in keeping his team together, not allowing them to come undone after another bad start, and keeping them fighting through countless injuries. It is certainly fair to question some individual moves, but the overall view of Espada should be positive. None of his past two predecessors had to deal with anything remotely close to the injuries or the lack of talent that Espada has. Neither of his past 2 predecessors have had to play half a roster of Triple-A players for large swaths of the season because of the lack of depth.

It is easy to blame the manager for the struggles of the team behind the lazy guise of 'well, you can't fire all the players'. It is also incredibly lazy to think that 'well, Dusty would have gotten them to 90 wins' because even a future Hall of Fame manager can't turn water into wine.

Baseball is a performance business. It isn't meant to be fair. Whether Jim Crane wants to accept it or not, the Astros need, at the minimum, a re-tooling of the roster. The perception around the baseball world is the team is in decline and the owner still thinks they should be a league power. It's going to be a strong sell job to convince a strong manager to take the reins of what historically would be considered a declining situation. Some in the business would call it being set up to fail.

This final home stretch could have been looked at as a chance for Espada to show he deserves another shot, but the team's play resembles the team's play for the overwhelming majority of the season: consistently inconsistent. That is what this 'island of misfit toys' roster is, it's very construction the reason they is no consistency. It was designed, unintentionally perhaps, to fail.

This team was doomed between the injuries, and the extreme lack of quality depth that could not overcome those injuries. As the team looks for a reset in the front office, it appears that the manager will be doomed as well.

Don't expect any miracle from the next manager unless there are suddenly miracles of talent infused to the roster.

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