Rays executive vice president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman has already decided against taking the Astros GM job, tweets Bill Shaikin of the L.A. Times. Joel Sherman of the New York Post agrees that Friedman is definitely staying in Tampa Bay. Friedman, a Houston native, was said to be the first choice of the new Astros ownership group.
Rockies senior vice president of scouting and player development/assistant GM Bill Geivett has interviewed for the Astros position, and Rockies folks told Troy E. Renck of the Denver Post today that Geivett has a real shot. I interviewed Geivett in August as part of MLBTR's GM Candidates series. Our top 20 GM candidates have been getting interviews and GM jobs left and right since the list was published on August 12th.
Astros fans should be very very happy. While Friedman may be capable he did inherit good players and prospects when he took over the job. The team was very bad for 9 years and had many high draft picks which helped him incredibly. Both he and Maddon have done outstanding jobs but too many people give them more credit than they deserve- Lou Piniella cleaning house and the high draft picks also played a very large role.
Who heard of Friedman before his time in Tampa? A team like the Astros does not need to spend money on a GM- they can find a capable young gm who can become their own Friedman.
Have you ever heard of Friedman making a mistake in terms of signing players to a much larger contract, overspending, etc.? No. He always makes the right move (or so it seems). Don’t know why you’re criticizing him
How do you overspend when you have no money to spend?
have you ever heard of friedman signing a player to a large contract, period? can’t fail if you can’t try
his largest signings:
pat burrel (2 years, $16M), which was a failure
troy percival (2 years, $8M), which was a failure
rafael soriano (1 year, $7M), which was a big success
those aren’t even significant signings; they’re budget buys. friedman is great, but his ability to sign big targets is largely a question mark
You got Johnny Damon too for 5.5 mil, and he was more of a success than a failure. And if I remember right, Percival was injured alot. Pat Burrell really was a bust though.
if other GMs have a 33-50% success rate on free agents, they are criticized pretty heavily for it – even if they have success in other areas
i’m a fan of friedman and think houston should have done whatever it took to get him. but we can’t give him credit in an area he hasn’t earned it. we can say (and i have before) that he would probably be good with bigger free agents, but if anything the evidence suggests it’s a toss up
I agree, but it really is a veryyyy small sample size.
We are awesome at finding cheap players who have great years
Pena, Balfour, Benoit, Choate, Peralta, Farnsworth, Kotchman and the list goes on.
Pat Burrell and Manny Ramirez. I am not criticizing him- I am saying he does not have a hall of fame plaque yet. He does a very good job- but so do many gm’s and the Astros can find a good one and not have to pay a premium that is better spent on players. If Friedman took the job he would be under alot of pressure to duplicate Tampa. Add the fact he would be in his home town and you have more pressure. It would be a harder job for him than many others and Houston is better off in a different direction with a guy who would not have additional pressures.
Would have been nice to add a proven good GM into the mix, now we have to with a younger guy in his first GM hire, which is a bit of a crapshoot.
Again with this from a Yankee fan? If you guys are so smart, please explain to me why the Devil Rays went 66-96 with BJ Upton (.300 27hrs), Carlos Pena (.282 49 hrs), Carl Crawford, Scott Kazmir, James Shields, Delmon Young (first overall pick) in 2007. How did they go from 66 wins to 97 wins in one year when their biggest signing that offseason was Troy Percival? You guys can stick with the RBI stat and Jeter is clutch school of baseball.
Friedman was a 25 year old investment banking analyst at Bear Stearns. He is the epitomy of what a modern baseball GM should be. Combination of business savvy plus understanding of modern sabremetrics.
Gotta love insignificant Rays fans speaking about what modern baseball should be when he only went to 1 game last season. LOL
Yeah, I’m sure Astro fans are all smiles.
Give me a break.
Thanks for staying with us, Friedman.
Well now we don’t have to pay him a top executive salary and throw ownership stake at him.
Friedman hasn’t left the Rays.. yet.
Honestly, at this point, nobody seems to have the round ones to try and rebuild the Astros. I figured they could lure some young assistant GM who wants to prove himself or maybe an older GM who wants the challenge. I wonder if working for Crane–with his problems getting ownership–is scaring people off?
I think the uncertainty had alot to do with people staying away. New owner with no track record- the sale price unknown at the time with it still unknown who is paying the discount and the fact it was not even known what league they would play in.
You could have situation 1 a great owner, 20 million extra in the budget playing in the NL Central with no Rangers or Angels or 2) a bad owner, a smaller budget and moving to the AL West after always being in the National League and having players more suited to that style.
Not knowing kept people away.
Yes, successful GM’s tend to avoid taking over disaster areas like the Astros.
Epstien has taken over the Cubs, who are a disaster 100+ years in the making. So I don’t think that’s the issue. Maybe it has to do with the fact that his Dad lost to Crane on his bid to buy the Astros — who knows?
Exactly, but the GM everyone measures up to takes on the Cubs job. Makes sense.. NOT