Jim Crane's 6 weeks without a GM did irreparable damage to Astros' competitive window

Eric Cole

Houston Astros Press Conference / Bob Levey/GettyImages

Before the Houston Astros hired Dana Brown to be their general manager, their front office was a complete mess. Former GM James Click took the reins of the franchise in the wake of a massive scandal, won a World Series in 2022, and was rewarded with a just one-year extension offer amidst a very obvious feud with owner Jim Crane.

Understandably, Click rejected that offer and eventually moved on to a position with the Blue Jays. However, that left the Astros without a front office lead for a while, and that meant Crane was in charge of the baseball decisions for a short stretch. It wasn't short enough.

Instead of restraining himself while he waited to hire a chief executive, Crane instead made a series of moves that may have set the franchise back literal years.

Astros owner Jim Crane's moves before 2023 season have been a total disaster

Click left the Astros towards the beginning of 2022 and Houston did not hire Brown until late January 2023. In that short window of time, here are the moves that Crane made while he was running the Astros front office.

Re-signed Rafael Montero to a three year, $34.5 million deal (11/15/22)
Signed Jose Abreu to a three-year, $58.5 million deal (11/28/22)
Re-signed Michael Brantley to one-year, $12 million deal (12/18/22)

That is an impressive run of suck in a short period of time. If Crane was just the owner and one of his executives had made these moves, they probably would have (and should have) been fired. However, you can't fire the owner (with apparently a helping hand from advisor Jeff Bagwell), and the Astros are much lesser for the moves Crane made. For the moment, we'll ignore more debatable decisions like letting Justin Verlander and Yuli Gurriel walk, even though there are arguments for complaints there.

Now, Houston has a ton of dead money on their books, with Abreu getting cut earlier this year and now Montero getting DFAed on Wednesday. That is going to make giving extensions anytime soon to cornerstones like Kyle Tucker or Framber Valdez even tougher. While Brantley was only a one-year deal and he had a lot of value in the clubhouse, he also only played in 15 games in 2023 and was given that deal with Crane knowing full well that Brantley's shoulder was a real problem.

It is honestly kind of wild that Brown was willing to step into that mess, but he has been working hard to undo the damage since then. Getting Abreu and Montero off the roster was a great start, but Brown is still having to deal with a power struggle between Crane and his advisors at times, and it is unclear how much control Crane is exercising behind the scenes.

One can only hope that Houston's owner doesn't get anymore bright ideas, because the Astros are still paying for his last ones.

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Eric Cole

I started my career writing about baseball covering the Atlanta Braves for SB Nation's Talking Chop back in 2015 which has since been renamed Battery Power. After years of writing for those fine folks, I made the decision to take over as Site Expert at House That Hank Built before becoming a full-time MLB Staff Writer for FanSided in 2023. Along the way, I have been a guest on multiple ESPN radio affiliates as well as 680 The Fan and 92.9 The Game to discuss Braves baseball and especially Braves prospects and was a long-time host on the Battery Power podcast. These days, I continue to write about the Braves as well as covering the Astros, Padres, and Angels with particular expertise with minor league coverage, the MLB Draft, and bashing Anthony Rendon when possible. When I am not writing about or talking about baseball (which is seldom), I am an avid baseball card collector (Maddux and Soroka being my primary personal collections) and I also collect shark teeth. All other sports are mostly dead to me as my Bills have broken my heart too many times.