Former Astros Beat Writer Pens First Book
Since Moneyball, have we seen a book so dedicated to the inner workings of a major league baseball organization? Winning Fixes Everything is not about Billy Bean and the Oakland A’s game-changing strategies. Still, it does compare with the theory of using metrics to examine nearly all facets of the game. The shift in this baseball’s management thinking involves a general manager who hired and allowed McKinsey consulting to do research and development into almost every facet of the game.
Mostly Winning is about the dysfunctional rags-to-riches story of one of baseball history’s least proficient teams losing over 100 games three consecutive seasons than a turnaround amidst scandal no less of a win-at-all-costs strategy that involved the two-time World Champion Houston Astros. Who had previously never won a pennant until Jeff Luhnow arrived.
Evan Drellich, who has penned many sports articles and even a few books, is a Houston native who seems slightly betrayed.
While Drellich spent three years as the beat writer for the Houston Chronicle, he now resides in New York and works as a writer for The Athletic. Drellich has a real problem with how the Astros owner and his GM rebuilt the Astros to win over the long haul. There is a deep dive into the initial hiring of General Manager Luhnow and team President George
Postolos. The former Rocket boss and the man who spearheaded and later secured Crane’s efforts to assemble a team of investors to buy the Astros. Postolos and Crane exhibited “truthfulness” in letting people go that had been there for years. The author speaks glowingly about former owner Drayton McClane and how he treated Astros employees as a family business. Also, he implies how his loyalty led to the mammoth payday of a nearly 500 million dollar profit upon selling to Crane and Company.
Crane is written about at length and very little positive without the winning, which is the reason for the tile itself. Luhnow is the main character among the cast of many who had a hand in all the good, the bad, and the ugly. To give you an idea of why is to know about the initial meeting with Luhnow and Crane, where Luhnow had prepared a 25-page report on the overall strategy of building the team and organization from the bottom up. Before the report, he had asked Crane what my restraints are, and Crane handed him a blank sheet of paper. Crane is criticized heavily for his money penchant ways. One idea Crane had that backfired was when he filled an enormous part of the outfield with large signs involving a partnership to provide money to build youth facilities. Still, actually, most went into the Astros’ coffers as adverting. The signs were repositioned after much backlash. The author alludes to the premise that Crane’s earlier business discrimination lawsuits predated social media, therefore, skating sharp criticism that may have precluded him from an ownership position among MLB owners. His previous episodes of employee discrimination suits by blacks, Hispanics, and women and by the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission, according to Drellich, had “predated the ubiquity of the internet and did not dissuade MLB from letting Crane into the fraternity.”
During the first few years of cost-cutting and implementing the changes, it was Luhnow who was working with his people a crazy amount of hours and replacing others and encouraging all others to be held accountable and to get rid of the worst performers in the scouting and player development. It was three painful years, but five years in, the writing was on the wall. The Astros were good, and the farm system was great, and all was going according to the plan Luhnow had laid out with the help of his old employee Mckinsey and company consulting. To build from the bottom with the draft and focus on players that could develop based on their advanced Mckinseyan system of evaluating talent.
While the book describes in fascinating detail many of the staff and players and sometimes reads like a soap opera, the cheating scandal is covered more briefly than one would expect but does offer some highlights. It reiterates the denial by Luhnow that he knew about the elaborate sign-stealing camera/trash banging and offers scant evidence to the contrary. The players were scared to be whistleblowers. Alex Cora and ring leader Carlos Beltran forged ahead despite some pushback by some older players, most notably Brian McGann.
While it may not make a movie script, aka Moneyball, Winning Fixes Everything is a must-read for Astros lovers and haters.