This is a HUGE blow to the reigning World Series champions. The Houston Astros have announced today that their World Series winning GM, James Click, has rejected his 1-year option and has cut ties with the team.
Well, the first major domino of the Astros World Series winning team has fallen. James Click is officially OUT as the Houston Astros general manager as he rejected a somewhat insulting 1-year contract offer, even though he just won the World Series.
Okay, I kind of see where Astros owner Jim Crane is coming from with that 1-year deal.
Sure, Click was the GM of the 2022 World Series winning team and 2021 World Series finalists team, but were they ever really his teams? This core group of Astros players, such as Jose Altuve, Justin Verlander, Alex Bregman, Lance Mccullers Jr., Bryan Abedeu, Framber Valdez, Kyle Tucker, Ryan Pressley, and practically everyone else, was either drafted, acquired, or signed by the former GM, Jeff Luhnow.
You know, the infamous man implicated in the Astros sign stealing scandal back when they won their first World Series in 2017. Now, Click did draft the AL and World Series MVP, Jeremy Pena, and he also acquired catcher Christian Vazquez from the Red Sox at the trade deadline, but he wasn’t the one who put Championship-proven roster together. That was Luhnow.
Moreover, Click wasn’t the guy who managed this roster either as Crane specifically brought in Dusty Baker BEFORE Click to sort out the mess that the Astros found themselves in after the cheating scandal. Without Bakers’ steady leadership and hall-of-fame (in my opinion) experience, the Astros would not only have failed to make the last two World Series, but they also would have probably had to blow up this roster.
It should have been unthinkable that the Astros could have recovered from losing their expert GM, Jeff Luhnow, and their World Series winning coach, A.J. Hinch, and been able to rebound to win another World Series. And especially not with the heavy stigma surrounding them for the cheating scandal.
This team should have crumbled and withered away like every other scandal-ridden team would have under the circumstances.
But they didn’t because of Dusty Baker. He managed them to success and was rewarded with another year in the dugout, even though he’s now 73 years old.
Unfortunately for Click, he just wasn’t as important (in the eyes of Jim Crane) as Baker or Luhnow were to the success of the Astros.
Though, in all fairness, Click was a fantastic replacement for Luhnow and should have been rewarded with a longer contract. Not everyone could have realized Pena’s talent and picked him in the 3rd round like Click did or else they would have chosen him.
Moreover, it was Click who acquired important pieces, such as Christian Vazquez, Hector Neris, and Rafael Montero, in the pitching and catching departments that enabled the Astros to have the best pitching stats out of all of the playoff teams this past postseason. He was more than deserving of at least another two years in the job, but Jim Crane has always had his own ways of doing things.
After all, he is one of the noisiest/meddling baseball owners.
So, we’ll see who he hires next to fill the vacant GM spot, and where Click lands as his talents will be in high demand after winning the World Series.
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