Dana Brown Speaks: Touches on Scouting; "Optimistic" About Contract Extensions For Javier, Tucker and Valdez

New Astros GM "optimistic" about extensions for young stars

Astros general manager Dana Brown (that sure does have a nice ring to it) joined The A-Team with Adam Clanton and Adam Wexler on Tuesday. The 11-minute interview can be found here, and is well worth your time.

Brown touched on a variety of topics in the interview and his quotes should have Astros fans fired up. First, he touched on his plans to follow-up on the Astros World Series title in 2022.

"What am I going to do for an encore? Get greedy with winning. Let's just keep going. Let's keep rolling. Let's keep signing good players.""

Dana Brown

The Astros have done a great job over the years of signing good players along the lines of Jose Abreu and Michael Brantley. The hope with Brown is that he will help the Astros to do a better job of retaining some of their top talent that they have previously lost in free agency.

Brown then spent a good amount of time touching on the success the Braves have had in building a power and how he plans to replicate that success doing the work in Houston. Astros fans should feel comforted by Brown's scouting track record and that he unprompted addressed the need for analytics, calling them "a big part of it."

The Astros currently have a thin farm system, so Brown's success in scouting should help keep the title window open as they reload with top talent in the minors.

Most comforting to Astros fans should be that Brown touched on the importance of landing top players and then locking them up long-term. It's no secret the Astros have a great deal of top talent entering their arbitration years that are deserving of long-term extensions.

Kyle Tucker, Cristian Javier and Framber Valdez are three pieces that have three years of team control remaining, but we also saw Brown's Braves lock up young pieces like Michael Harris and Spencer Strider. Could young stars like Jeremy Peña or even Hunter Brown be targets for an extension this offseason.

"You always have targets that you're going to try to get guys done. You're hopeful. You have an owner like Jim Crane who is really supportive in getting guys signed. We're going to make our move. We're going to talk to the agents. We've already started to talk to the agents, and maybe we can get these guys done. We feel very optimistic about it."

Dana Brown

Brown didn't specify who "these guys" were, but it sounds like the days of Astros fans watching homegrown, top-level talent leave in free agency may be coming to a close. Houston absolutely made the right hire in Dana Brown.