The Josh Innes Show - Random Thoughts: The Astros Screwed Up

Episode Date: November 14, 2022

Hello Friends! The Astros fired GM James Click. You can say they didn't fired him. They fired him. Firing successful people is something bad organizations do. My hope is that the Astros don't become a bad organization. Turnover is bad. Stability is good. Here's what I think happened.... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So the Astros, they may have really screwed up with this James Click thing, and we'll get into that in just a second. But I do have to tell you about Aqueduct Plumbing Company with Billy and his sister Mary, of course. Go to their website to learn more. It's AqueductPlumbingCompany.com. And, hey, if you need them for any of your plumbing needs, they are outstanding. So give them a call, 281-488-6238 or AqueductPlumbingCompany.com. They do it all. With Billy and his sister Mary, they are outstanding, and they've been with us

for a long time. It is Aqueduct Plumbing Company. Thank you very much. So let's talk about the Astros and their situation with their general manager, their former general manager, James Click. And I've tried not to tweet about this a lot because Twitter really puts me in a bad mood because Twitter exposes how stupid people actually are. Let's start here. One of the arguments I've gotten from people when I did tweet, you know, good franchises do not fire World Series winning GMs the year they win the World Series. That's not what good organizations do or what well-run organizations do. To which people said, I didn't fire him, moron. They just didn't renew his contract.

All right, that confirms that people are stupid. Obviously, we've known people are stupid. But this really confirms it, and it confirms that people don't work in a world with contracts, which is understandable. Not everybody does. I work in a world with contracts. Not everybody does that. Some people work in areas where contracts are not necessary. Some people work nine to five. So I get that. I'm not trying to rip you if you don't fully understand the fact that if you are not offered a new contract, that means you were fired because that means they don't want you around or they don't view your services as necessary or they don't think you did an

exemplary job. Let me give you some examples from my own life. I got fired twice. As you guys know, I got fired in Philadelphia and I got fired from seven 90 in both of those instances. I was offered a deal early on in the process. And if I just want to sign my name on the dotted line, I would have had a new contract and they were both for more money. They were raises everything. Well, the Houston one, I'm not sure. Cause it never got to the money part of it. It was just, Hey, we want to start working on a new deal. And then like a month later, it was like, fuck you, you're fired. And I think that's because I said no, which is kind of in a James Click way, right? Like I have no idea what the details of a new contract would have been like at 790. But I know that in January of 2019,

they wanted to start talking about it. And I said, I want to kind of wait on that. And then I went to LA looking for another job. And then there was a thing that went down with something I had heard at the station and I told somebody about it. And I think that got me in a lot of trouble too. And then I got fired. But in Philly, I was also offered a new deal early on in the process too. And then I just blew myself up. But the point being in all of this is that when people say, oh, you didn't get fired, they just didn't renew your deal. You got fired. Do you think that they don't renew the contracts of people they want around? And if they don't want you around and they tell you to leave, that means you got fired. That means you're out of a job. You can give me semantics and you can use different terminology for it all you want. None

of that matters. You got whacked because they didn't want you around for whatever reason. Now, every story that's out there would say that Click never really got along with the owner. Fine, the owner makes the last decisions. He can determine who he wants. Here's how I see this having played out. Not having really any real insight into the situation other than stories that we have seen. The story is they offered him a one-year deal. They also gave Dusty a one-year deal. If you want to really rewind, you look back at the fact that this was kind of a forced duo here,

a forced partnership because they hired Dusty. They kind of have the combination of Click and Dusty. Click's kind of a more modern era guy. So I would imagine that kind of the old school ways of Dusty Baker didn't really align with him very well. But they made it work and they made deals happen where they needed to make deals happen. And I think Click did a solid job. Now, if you want to go back even further, if we want to talk about the job James Click has done, it's not like he inherited trash.

Jeff Luno, who's like the GOAT, Jeff Luno took trash and spun it into gold and made an amazing organization. Jeff Luno is the guy who did all this. But James Click came in and didn't implode the thing and made good moves and built a team and helped build a team that won the World Series. Now, the core of this team that just won the World Series, those were guys who have been here from someone else for the most part. Like, I wouldn't look back at a ton of moves James Click made and said, boy, this guy just made slam dunk move after slam dunk move. No, he inherited, you know, if you want to call it like, you know,

he got a Porsche, just don't drive it off the road, right? He's got a Maserati, just don't crash the thing. So, but that was the job they hired him to do. All right, if you're ready to win some real cash during the basketball playoffs, you got to check out Pick 6 from DraftKings. When it comes to basketball payouts, DraftKings Pick 6 posterizes the competition, including price picks. It's a very simple concept. Hit all your picks and score higher minimum payouts on Pick 6, plus even more cash if you outscore the competition. Pick 6 is available in most states, including Missouri, California, Texas, Georgia, and more. And I absolutely love it.

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offer see terms at pick six dot draft kings dot com slash prom Now you fast forward. So the guys won a World Series. They've celebrated fine. They give Dusty a new one-year deal. Of course, Dusty's going to sign it. And of course, the owner has to offer Dusty. You can't run off Dusty. He's got too much goodwill. If Dusty wants to keep managing, you cannot fire Dusty.

And by not offering Dusty a new deal, you would have been firing Dusty. So of course, you can't go, yeah, Dusty, see you later. You just earned all this goodwill. The players seem to love you. The fans have now come around. A lot of them have come around to you because you won. You're coming off your championship. You want to keep managing. So let's let you go another year. And of course, Dusty's in his seventies. Who knows how much longer he's got. He probably should have just hung it up after this year and went out on a high. It's hard to win back-to-back championships. So he's probably not gonna. He probably should have just hung it up after this year and went out on a high. It's hard to win back-to-back championships, so he's probably not gonna. He probably should have just got out on

a high. He didn't. Whatever. So they give Dusty a one-year deal. They know that any high-profile GM that may be available or some young guy that is analytics-driven, right, those type of guys, they know that they're not going to want to come in there and work with Dusty. You want to hire a GM, you got to bring in your own guy, right? So what do you do? You say, well, if we keep Dusty around for another year and we keep doing James Click one-year deals, what we can do is we let them hang out another year together, right? They're both lame ducks. Dusty ends up retiring. Then we don't renew James Click after next year. And it'll be easier to not renew James Click or

Dusty after next year because they're not going to win the championship more than likely next year because winning back-to-back championships is hard. So the odds are they might go to the LCS. They might lose in the division series. Maybe with this new schedule, they stink next year. Who knows? So it's easier to get rid of a guy when you didn't win a championship than when you did. So my guess is the plan was, all right, we can't fire Dusty because he just won and he wants to keep coaching. So we leave Dusty in there. Nobody's going to want to come and work with a lame duck manager. So we keep James Click around for a year. That's why we offer him a one-year deal. And let's say they do well next

year and Dusty wants to manage another year and they want to keep him around. Hell, we'll just give James Click another one-year deal. Sign it off there. And we keep giving James Click one-year deals until Dusty's gone. Then we have both of them blown out and we come back fresh looking for a new GM who's going to come in and hire his manager and that's what we're going to do. That would be my guess as to how this whole thing played out. Now, James Click's like, fuck you. The hell do I need this shit for? I just won a World Series. I was a very good general manager in my previous job.

I come here, I win a World Series, and what you're going to offer me is a one-year deal? And you know the reason why he didn't take that one-year deal? It's because he knows exactly what I know. That they're just going to blow him out the second Dusty's not around and they can tear the whole thing down anyway. Maybe the other option is they offered him a one-year deal knowing he'd say no so they can say peace out. He could have called their bluff and taken the one-year deal.

Or maybe they legitimately wanted him to have a one-year deal so they could do the previous thing I mentioned, the aforementioned, the latter, which would have been, all right, we bring him in. We keep him for a year. Basically, we keep him in line with Dusty, who they basically they viewed both of them as stopgaps from the jump. Dusty was going to be a holdover and try to, you know, maintain this thing for as long as they can after the scandal.

And then Click would do the same thing. Maybe Click was never long for the world with the Astros. But either way, he's gone. And I think they fucked him pretty good. And he should be able to go out and find another gig somewhere relatively easy when there's a job open. And there are jobs open every year. So he should be able to find a gig. He did good at his previous job.

He did very well here. Again, he inherited an amazing situation. So take that for what it is. But you start to look at the way the Astros organization is run. To me, what you've done now is you've gone down the road of bad organizations, kind of a Dallas cowboy-ian kind of thing. Not totally the same. But if you look at what the Cowboys did when the owner and the coach didn't get along, the owner said, well, screw you, you're out.

Now, the difference, of course, being that that coach literally built the whole thing from the ground up. You tore apart the architect or got rid of the architect. James Click is not the architect. Real talk, they might have brought me in. I think they could have brought me in there to be the GM, and they probably would have won another World Series or at least been as good as they have been because the roster was that good. So I don't want to make it sound like James Click came in there and changed the world.

But James Click did a good job. It's kind of an unenviable spot because when you go into a good spot, no one's ever going to give you credit for it. You go into a spot that's loaded, that's already been successful, and you're just told not to fuck it up. Well, people are just going to look at you and say you never did anything. So it's not an enviable spot. It's unenviable, actually. But here's what I don't like about what the Astros are doing, and this is why I think this is a harbinger of bad things. It's a harbinger of bad things because good organizations do not have

these type of scenarios. Well-run organizations do not do this. Well-run organizations aren't firing general managers after winning a World Series. That doesn't happen. But that's what the Astros are doing. And to me, that opens the door to take you down that path of bad organization. And I hope that's wrong because I'd like to see the Astros continue to be successful. I'd like to see the Astros continue to win and do things, build a dynasty that goes 10 more years, be well run. You want to look at a team? I keep going back to the St. Louis Cardinals and they've won a couple of World Series in the last two decades. But outside of three or four years, they're in the hunt every year.

They don't lose 100 games. They don't bottom out. They go to the playoffs. They've had like two general managers in the last two decades. Stability is so important in anything. Turnover is bad. Like look at Auburn football. Auburn football was a solid program under Tommy Tuberville and he was there for over a decade.

When did things start going south for Auburn? I get that they won a national championship in there too with Cam, but those freakish things happen. Turnover started to kill them. Tennessee football, another example. Phil Fulmer was there for over a decade. They won a national title. They were solid.

They went after they canned him in, I guess, 08 or 09. After they canned Phil Fulmer, they went over a decade of having like five or six different coaches and not winning. Turnover is a killer. Stability is important. And it's also not good for business when a guy wins a World Series as a GM and you fire him, and if I'm some high-profile GM, I'm like, what the fuck? Why would I want that job? Same thing like at Auburn. Auburn's got a job opening right now. I think Auburn is one of the worst jobs in America. Why? Because the boosters are insane, and they run guys out as fast as they

possibly can. It's a fucking nut house, right? So why would I want that job? There's no stability. Stability is important. Security is important. If I'm a general manager of the Astros, or a potential general manager of the Astros, and I see the way this James Click situation was handled, which a guy who's considered

one of the better GMs in the league that just won a World Series, and you run him off and fire him, if I'm somebody that has any ability, why would I want to do that? Why? Because you butt heads with him? So you mean to tell me if the GM and the owner don't get along a little bit, the owner's going to tell him to piss off and fire him?

I think overall, that's a bad look for the organization, and that's a bad trend. Now, hopefully that's not what happens here. But what you don't want to be, you know, I brought up the Cardinals. They've had two general managers in the last, actually, you know what's amazing? I think the Cardinals have had two general managers since 1996. Walt Jockety and now Moselec. Two dudes have run that organization for like a quarter century. The Steelers. Why have the Steelers been so good for so long? They've had like three head coaches ever. Stability matters. Now obviously you lost your GM.

Because you fired him. Because of the scandal. I get that. But you don't want to get into the business of having turnover every two, three years. But Josh he was a stopgap. Well great. Sometimes the stopgap can become the guy. And you just won a World Series.

And of course if I'm James Click. And they're like hey's a one-year deal for your service, go fuck yourself. I just won the World Series. What the fuck are you talking about? So to put a bow on it, here's how I think basically what happened. Obviously, he was a stopgap guy from the jump. And obviously, they brought in a guy that they didn't plan on keeping around long. Then he ends up winning the damn thing. And now you fire a guy after he wins the damn thing. And that is bad business. That is not smart. And I think that sets you up for failure down the line.

I think that sets you up for bad things to happen down the line. And I think Jim Crane did a very bad job with that. So I think they whiffed mightily. And listen, I give Click credit. Good for him for not saying to take the one-year deal. Fuck you. I don't need this. I just want a World Series. There aren't a lot of general managers who've done that. I've got a ring. Someone's going to hire me. So bad on the Astros on that. Optics don't really matter. Bad look doesn't matter unless it comes to hiring someone else. I don't know that a high-profile guy is going to go, yeah, I want that job. They just fired fucking James Click. I don't know that they'd

want that job. But ultimately, optics don't matter. You still win. I mean, the Astros are terrible with optics a lot of the time. People hate them, but they still win the World Series. So optics I don't really care about. I'm worried about what happens in the future when you become an organization that's known for turnover and you fire

a GM that just won. It's not good.