I’ll write more extensively on this later but the short version is that it isn’t the end of the world. This will be overshadowed by the departure of Albert Pujols but it’s a big deal as anyone visiting this site knows.
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76 Responses to “Jeff Luhnow to be Houston Astros GM”
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Well we were just speculating on him possibly leaving last week, and quite honestly we knew the day would come sooner or later. Wish it would have been later of course lol, but thank you Jeff for all you have done to rebuild the Cards farm system and wish you the best at your new position. Another point, jeff has been with our system for what 7 or 8 years? While he did and was doing a great job, this may actually be a good time to bring in someone new and with a fresh view for continuing our farm success anyways. Too many times you see things start to stagnate once someone is around for a decade-ish. Certainly a little dissapointed he is gone, but excited at the same time to see what changes will come!
5 first rounders…New guy has alot to work with.
I am not sure how the slotting system/cap system works, but from a preliminary strategy I would go 3 highend, 2 conservative.
FO needs to make a good hire/promotion to replace Luhnow, that will be key.
Very interested to hear your thoughts on this. My initial reaction was, “Shit…”
There are people in the org that are capable to move up and Moz will have a decent checkbook to lure/retain anyone he wants in this regard. There might be a mini-war breakout if Luhnow tries to take any of his group with him.
AZ, if you do write this up, I’d appreciate it if you concentrate on just what he leaves behind. I get the impression that the troika of Luhnow, Mozeliak and Vuch was supported by a better than average staff (Mejdal, etc.), structured rather differently from most teams’ front offices — and based on what’s happened in the last few drafts, rather more effectively. If all of that structure remains behind, we’ll survive the turnover just fine.
Congratulations to Jeff Luhnow. As I said elsewhere, we’ll miss him, but you can’t help but feel good for the sake of a guy promoted to fill one of the highest positions in baseball that you can have without carrying a bat or wearing a glove.
I agree with everything you said.
I get the feeling we won’t see many trades between the Reds and Astros in the coming years…
Well stated,sir.
Who are the internal candidates to replace him?
I would love to have been able to overhear the bar talk today in Dallas between Jockety and his kissbutt mouthpiece Strauss. The two of them were always very negative about Luhnow. The fact that Luhnow got the Astros job shows how wrong both of them have been.
While I sincerely wish well to Albert, if it came down to a choice, I would have prefered to have Jeff for the next 10 years.
I would imagine John Vuch has to be a leading candidate for replacing Lunhow. Outside of that, I’m not quite sure.
I never understood the negativity towards Strauss. The guy was actually right. For years, the cards did not have much a farm system but yet guys were consitantly overhyped.
the difference now is the cards are producing good players.
Thing is, he wasn’t right. Over the last ten years, the Cardinals’ farm system has been above average in getting guys to the majors and getting value from them. If you don’t believe me, use baseball-reference.com’s “Amateur Draft” feature and rummage through the various teams’ draft classes. Ours is better than average over guys making it at all in the last ten years; it is better than average (quite a bit better) in number of former draftees now playing in the majors; it is better than average (although obviously biased by Pujols) in collective WARP accrued by former draftees still playing. It’s really quite a shocking set of statistics when you’ve been indoctrinated with the inadequacies of the St. Louis farm system for as long as we have.
About average is not a good explantion when it comes to “overhyping”.
The farm system under Jocketty was inadequte.
Up until this past year, Strauss constantly criticized the farm system and the people running it, and he still takes shots to this day. He also shows a willful ignorance for the prospects within the system and tends to revel in it. If you listened to him, you’d be wondering how the system got to be as good and productive as it is today.
Goold is the one who was right about the system. He’s been tracking the improvements for a few years now. I prefer to read the work of beat reporters who actually have an idea of what’s going on.
Couldn’t agree more. Goold appreciates the farm system for what it is — nothing more, nothing less. “Willful ignorance” is the perfect way to describe Strauss.
I do agree that Gould is much more in tune with the prospects.
But again, I have no problem with Strauss giving a guy a verbal backhand when he assumes any cardinal prospect could just step in and be an everyday major leaguer.
Strauss is biased against a player development focus and any kind use of Moneyball tactics within the Cardinals organization (just this past year in a chat, he slammed the entire analytics movement as a failure because teams like Oakland have never won a championship, despite the fact nearly if not all franchises now employ that kind of analysis…including the reigning World Champions, who he was criticizing at the time for using it).
Goold provides a balanced, informed, and criticial look at the farm system that informs and educates readers. That is valuable. What Strauss does is the equivalent of an inflammatory sports radio voice. It’s just hot air, and generalized uninformed hot air at thay.
Goold is more often right about the system than Strauss, who seemed to claim up until this year that the system had very little in it and was overblown by third-party presses. As I said, if you paid any attention to him, its as if the current young players on the team and prospects in the system generated out of thin air. He’s only “right” because he’s now stating the obvious, now that he’s been proven wrong.
Strauss was wrong, but the people pimping Daryl Jones and Bryan Andrson were correct?
The only point I am trying to make is that there was a large contingetn of fans that were overhyping every prospect the cards had.
The differnece now is that the cards propsects deserve that amount of hype.
In my view the reason a segment of Cardinal fandome has a hard on for Strauss runs substantially deeper than the fact that he occasional poohoo’s a prospect. Have you ever read Strauss’s online chats with readers? He is uniformly condescending and rude. His tweets are an abomination. He dumps on the city of St. Louis at every opportunity as being a small cow town. The man disgusts me. I can’t fathom why is employed by a newspaper in our town.
And I can understand that.
I thought the phrase, “hard on” meant that you really like something
In internet slang, “hard on” = excitement and can mean excited to do violence upon.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. Strauss also supported a veteran bullpen over younger pitching prospects. (Also, singling out two prospects–one failed, one trending that way–to represent an entire system as “evidence” that Strauss was right? Bad form….)
Here’s my main problem with Strauss when it comes to discussing prospects and the Cardinals’ system. A couple of years ago, after the Cardinals made several win-now trades for Holliday and others using prospects, the ranking of St. Louis’ system slid to the bottom third of most organizational rankings. Strauss took that as proof that the system was no where near as good as those same third-party publications had ranked them the previous year and continued to use that whenever somebody asked him about prospects that year. Goold, meanwhile, put together at least one Bird Land post showing how the trades and *promotions to the main roster* had depleted the system of most of it’s top-ranked prospects from the previous year. One was real analysis; the other was worthless opinion that was uninformed.
By simply looking for something to support his bias, Strauss ignored several things:
1. The traded prospects obviously had enough value to trade for the likes of Holliday.
2. That he was using the very same third-party publications he usually put down to support his bias, now that they were saying something he already believed.
3. That the team has been getting contributions from its farm system, including that year.
Strauss’s view on prospects does not go far beyond Memphis–if they’re not near the majors, he simply doesn’t care about them and has stated that view several times. As such, he’s generally uninformed about player development or specific prospects, usually restating what others have said about them but filtering that info through his skewed take and presenting it as fact. It’s like asking a vegan about the quality of prime rib.
Strauss does not provide a healthy cynicism about the system; he’s a naysayer who ignores fact and cherry-picks his arguments because he’s trying to prove a point rather than actually do some actual analysis or reporting. I would not pat him on the back for that.
I think that is a fair assesment.
At the same time though, there are those who think that any prospect can just step in and succeed. I think the WAR stat as contributed some of this. Many people think just some guy from memphis could be an “average” player, when that is not true at all.
For instance, take a guy like skip. He ended up having a pretty decent career. a near .300 hitter with a .350 obp. That is actually hard to duplicate and is actually pretty great. But yet, so many people are under the impression any second baseman can come up and duplicate it. That isn’t so.
A few things…
1. Nothing of this has to do with Strauss and his extremely biased view on prospects or the Cardinals.
2. Skip was about as bad at 2nd as Theriot was at short, which is why you never saw him there during the playoffs. I’d rather trade some offense for defense up the middle. The Cardinals needed a real second baseman at second base, not a converted outfielder who’s play was struggling.
3. People, including me, wanted to see Daniel Descalso to compete with the job for Skip out of spring training rather than simply hand Shumaker the job. Now that Shumaker’s defense continued to plummet, it seems that the Cardinals organization is putting Descalso at 2nd full-time next year, with the possibility of Skip being brought back as a 4th outfielder who can platoon occasionally. I know that I would feel a lot better if Descalso was given more time at 2nd base during last season (only 9 starts and 3 complete games at the position all season). Some of that was dicated by Punto’s injury, but it also was Punto’s injury that gave Descalso an opportunity he should have been given in the first place.
4. People using the WAR stat for prospects often forget the usual drop-off or adjustment period that young players experience when they jump a level. However, that does not mean it’s worth less than a limited stat like batting average or on-base percentage.
1. I disagree. See Jarret Hoffpair.
2. Part of the reason you didn’t see Skip in the playoffs was becasue he was hurt. Prior to the injury, he platooned with Theriot. I would trade offense for defense it if it nets a worth while offensive player.
3. I agree with that. I think Descalso is in a position to warrent concideration for the starting position. I don’t envision Skip as a starter, but I do think he can be valuable bench guy. I would say the Freese injury probably had more to do with Descalso getting limited time at second. He played a majority of his time there and was a defensive replacemtn.
4. Never ment to imply that WAR is a worlthless stat. I was speaking to how people seem to misunderstand the stat because of the name. Its not “replacement” player. Its the theoretical average ML player, not just some call up replacement.
Actually, WAR _is_ about wins above “replacement” level, not “major-league average” level; that’s what the R means. That is a considerably lower bar. I quote from Baseball Prospectus for their WARP statistic: “Wins Above Replacement Player, level 1. The number of wins this player contributed, above what a replacement level hitter, fielder, and pitcher would have done, with adjustments only for within the season. It should be noted that a team which is at replacement level in all three of batting, pitching, and fielding will be an extraordinarily bad team, on the order of 20-25 wins in a 162-game season.” The definition for the baseball-reference.com WAR is similar, but more difficult to cut and paste. It contains the telling phrase, “Think AAA or AAAA.”
Also actually, by at least some (if not all) metrics, Skippy’s 2B defense this year wasn’t just awful — a bit below average according to some, right at average according to others, but not close to Theriot-bad. I could tolerate him coming back. Note that Theriot’s defense at 2B this year was a net plus in B-R’s metrics, although sample size was obviously limited. That still doesn’t mean I want him back.
Well then right there the premis is obvious flawed from a satistical point of view.
All stats are factored based off of a league average. So Albert Pujols is factred in. As is Evan Longoria. Sure underperforming players are facored in as well. however, “the replacement player” is actually closer to the underperfoming player than an albert pujols. This average sets the bar artifically higher than what should be expected from any AAA or AAAA player.
So again, its foolish to assume any minor leaue player can step in and be an average major leaguer. Its the problem of applying theoritcal in a practical world. Otherwise teams would never sign journey man players, rather just opting for AAA free agents.
The case for skip shumaker is not just his defense. It was also his offense. If skip performs at a .350 obp, you can keep him at second. But that has been declining the last 2 years which makes him expendable.
I think you’re misunderstanding the purpose and determination of WAR, as well as what “average” means. While the league’s top players are included, so are the league’s worst. “Replacement level” also does not mean “league average.” From Fangraphs: “WAR basically looks at a player and asks the question, “If this player got injured and their team had to replace them with a minor leaguer or someone from their bench, how much value would the team be losing?” This value is expressed in a wins format, so we could say that Player X is worth 6.3 wins to their team while Player Y is only worth 3.5 wins.” (Note that league average full-time players tend to fall around 2 WAR).
Moving on…If you’re talking about Skip Shumaker as a player, you have talk about his defense, especially since he’ll most likely be used as a defensive replacement. His offense is no where near good enough to justify it (an .350 obp is not something to brag about; you want something closer to .400 to be a legit lead-off guy).
“1. I disagree. See Jarret Hoffpair”
Again, what does this have do with Strauss?
In the World Series, Skip did not see any time at second in the playoffs. The Cardinals played Punto there. During the division series against Philly, he started two games at second.
It has to do with the “hyperventalating prospect geeks”. The guys pushing the Jarret Hoffpairs.
I will be shocked if Luhnow doesn’t try to raid the cupboard… The Cards need to act aggressively to promote whoever is considered invaluable in the farm system.
Agreed. The Cards have to use some of that WS money to sign their key scouts and development executives to multiyear contracts. For starters, I sure hope Vuch is happy and staying put.
Considering Vuch took over duties previously assigned to Luhnow at the start of the 2011 season, I don’t see Jeff reaching out to hire him. My concern would be saber guy brought in by Luhnow–Mejdal. I hope we have him locked up.
I’ve been trying to figure out what we are going to get for our free agents being signed. I see five first rounders above, but I’ve read that teams aren’t going to have to give up a first rounder to sign free agents this year. Does that mean all of our picks are going to be sandwich picks and not actual first rounders? Does anybody have any info on this?
We will get the Angels pick for Pujols, and presumably 3 sandwich picks (Pujols, Dotel, and Jackson). I believe this is correct at least.
As a minor consolation, the Angels were one of the better teams to sign Pujols if it wasn’t us. They pick in the lower half of the first round (19th), but just barely, so we are getting about as good a pick as we could have hoped for.
Why would we get a pick for Dotel? We didn’t offer him arbitration.
Besides, he was a type A, so if we had offered him arb, and Detroit had signed him anyway, we’d have gotten their 1st round pick + the supplemental pick.
Still, 4 picks is a nice haul. We could actually get aggressive this offseason and use prospects to trade for a shortstop or center fielder, knowing we have those picks coming up in June to restock the system.
New CBA specifically changed status of Type A relievers to Type B with automatic sandwich compensation. No requirement to offer arbitration.
Not true. The new CBA also changed the way the teams in the lower half are protected. Now, they still don’t lose the pick, but the team whose player signed with another team in the lower half gets the pick immediately above the signing team.
I.e, the Cardinals would have gotten pick 9a and the Marlins kept pick 9b had Pujols signed with Miami.
If thats the case en why are the mets only getting a 3rd round pick for reyes from the marlins?
They’re actually getting the Mets’ 2nd rounder
*Marlins
I don’t think so since heath bell has a higher rating on elias
League does not use Elias anymore to determine what draft picks teams get as compensation. MLB announced a few days ago that the Mets actually get the Marlins’ 2nd rounder.
Well thats unfortunate, i was hoping because of the ranking we’d have the first pick of the supplemental round because of pujols
The reason they are only getting a 2nd rounder for Reyes is because Heath Bell was ranked higher than Reyes on the Elias rankings. The Elias rankings still count this year for purposes of 2012 draft pick priority.
Next year, the Elias rankings are done with,
They are getting supplemental and 2nd rounder for reyes. The reason mets don’t get a 1st rounder is b/c Marlins pick is protected, not because of Bell being higher ranked.
http://www.baseballamerica.com/today/prospects/ask-ba/2011/2612703.html
first, I’ll bet they don’t replace Lunhow on a 1 for 1 basis. My guess is they will divide his duties somewhat and reorganize a little. Second, I’ll go on a limb and predict that Alan Benes gets promoted out of all this – possibly scouting director. A lot depends whether the Cards want to be more analytical or more eyes on prospect oriented.
I’d like to see us go towards more eyes on prospect oriented. The analytical method has stocked our farm system back from where it was early 2000′s to strong all over. I feel that if you look at just analytics you could find guys that will do well in the system but then plateau at different levels. You have to have eyes on the prospect to see there talent level and if they have MLB talent. Thats when the analytics comes in.
I doubt if it’s either-or. The analytics guys have helped sort out college players by context. And they’ve certainly learned from their mistakes over the years (like not drafting strikeout-prone college players or 19-year-old high school heroes in the first round).
But they aren’t drafting guys they haven’t scouted in person and rated by traditional scouting measures. The analytics simply give them context for their eyeball evaluations. I would suspect that they’re also spending a lot more time looking at psychological issues than they did in the past to judge coachability and maturity.
Colby Rasmus’ ears are burning.
I would assume this is correct. In truth have more eyes on prospects never hurts though, this is one place to spend.
There are inefficiencies with the use of video technology and radar. This is an area that needs to be expanded and this is another to spend on.
Just kind of totalling up the number of picks with either do or will have (assuming Jackson signs somewhere else), we should have 5 picks in roughly the top 50, starting with pick 19 overall from the Angels, are own at 23, then 3 picks in the supplemental first. This is going to be nice for whomever is chosen to take over our drafts, but with the new CBA in place, are they changing at all how those supp picks will be ranked or still use elias? It will also be interesting to see how both we and the others teams strategize their selections with the new money limitations in the draft, so whoever we get has a great oppurtunity, but also has their work cut out for himself with the new rules in play.
Given that this isn’t considered a strong draft class, I wouldn’t be surprised if the team went for a real “signability” challenge with one of the two first-round picks (probably their own), in the frank hope that they wouldn’t be able to come to terms and would therefore get the pick deferred to the possibly stronger 2013 draft — the new CBA still provides for that, right?
Even if it does, what about the limitations in spending per year? Do you get extra money in a given year to sign your compensatory picks?
Good question. I believe the answer is no, which removes some of the attractiveness from settling for a compensatory pick — but it leaves a team with a whole pile of sandwich picks even more screwed.
It would be nice if someone could speak authoritatively to the terms of the new CBA. They’re going to be relevant to us for a while.
This article says that teams get more money based on where they pick and how many picks they have.
http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20111201&content_id=26066708&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb
I think that the Cards are also in line to get what MLB is calling an “equalization draft”, which to my understanding is that 5 teams will receive a pick at the end of the first round (not sure exactly where, i.e. after the sandwich picks or where?) and similarly the other 5 “smallest market” teams will get an additional pick after the second round. It is my understanding that it will be a (somehow) weighted lottery amongst those 10 smallest market teams, and that these “equalization draft” picks can under certain circumstances be traded.
Thus 5 or 6 picks in the first/sandwich/equalization rounds and 1 or 2 in the second/equalization rounds. A very unfortunate time not to have Luhnow. Hopefully they make a good choice as to his replacement.
Ive heard about this, and believe i also saw that the equalization draft doesnt start until 2013, which would give whoever we put in charge a year to get used to be at the helm so hopefully they will have a good strategy going when these extra picks come into play.
Good interview with Luhnow on MLB’s sabermetric-themed show “Clubhouse Confidential.”
It’s not posted yet, but will likely make it to this location at some point
http://mlb.mlb.com/search/media.jsp?mlbtax_key=mlbn_clubhouse_confidential
Sad to see Luhnow go, but I’m happy that he was able to land as a GM somewhere. Nice to know that the Astros will be in the AL.
The organization is going to look quite a bit different next year.
Kiss of Death?
http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2011/12/quick-hits–1.html
“Former Mets General Manager Steve Phillips likes the Astros’ hire of Jeff Luhnow as GM and believes that he understands how to operate a small market team.”
This is wrong in so satisfyingly many ways. I would have expected nothing less from Phillips.
http://www.mlbprospectportal.com/2011/12/st-louis-cardinals-top-10-prospects-for.html
This prospect list had some good links.
Needing something new on here. It has been 12 days. Will a new coach change anything with our system? Will the departure of Luhnow change anything with our system? Has he taken anybody in the front office with him? Is Vuch the automatic guy to take over for Luhnow? Is there going to be a FR viewers top 10/15/20? When is the new FR top 20 going to get released? I like our system too much, and am too clueless of what is happening with all the changes, that surely something can be posted more often than there has been. Thanks and sorry, but again, it has been 12 days.
We are also going to have 5 picks in the first 50ish picks. How does the 2012 draft look? Are we going safe, risky, cheap with so many picks? Are we going to trade our system mid-season for the right player, if we are in the hunt, since we have so many picks? Who are 3-5 sleepers to keep an eye on that not many have heard about. Will Matt Adams ever start at first the the Cards? What is up with a two year deal with Furcal and how does that affect Ryan Jackson? Sorry, I am just digging for things now. But there is plenty to write about.
I have to agree with John here. It’s been nearly two weeks since anything new has been posted.
It would be nice to have something new to read about. I know this is a very busy time of year. I understand that this site may be the least of some’s worries, with everything that needs to be done between now and the end of the month. But maybe would could have a “General Discussion” thread started? You know, maybe try to center it around what the AAA team will look like next year, or maybe what impact Zack Cox will have on this organization in 2011.
Just a thought. Happy Holidays to all!
Oops, meant 2012 for Cox.
Well, not really prospect stuff but minor league news. The Cards signed LH pitcher R.J Swindle and switch hitting OF Eugenio Velez. Both have major league experience and probably got Spring training invites.
It’s a moot now, but had anyone read about what kind of upside Hector Corpas had? His ’09-’10 performance made him look like a potential ML reliever.
There’s a great name from a few years ago. I specifically remember Jeff Luhnow talking about him on a radio show one morning. I believe he was asked a question about who are some lesser known names in the minors (he may have even mentioned Oscar Taveras in this part of the interview). Anyway, one name he said was Corpas. Said he was closing out games down there and had a couple of pitches that could grow to be real plus pitches. His fastball would sit in the mid-90s and his splitter showed signs of being a real plus offering with a little more consistancy.
I had followed him for a little while but it seemed like he was begining to struggle. I just went and looked at his stats for 2011 and his ERA in A ball was over 7. Makes me wonder if he had some arm problems or if he was working on a few things. This year will be a big one for him (assuming health). He will almost certainly begin the year in A ball again. Hopefully he can regain his form and become a viable late inning reliever prospect again.
I was wondering if an injury played a part in his 2011 line too, but it doesn’t matter now. He was released for what appears to be off field issues. He was arrested toward the end of the season for assault with injury, false imprisonment and obstruction of emergency communications.
http://stlcardinals.scout.com/2/1104908.html
http://www.baseballamerica.com/blog/prospects/2011/12/minor-league-transactions-dec-9-14-2/
When you click on a pitcher profile you usually want to see him in a wind up, not a mugshot. I remember Luhnow talking about him and Oscar in the same interview, too. Pity.
BR – you must have missed it but Corpas was released. A combination of shoulder injury and legal problems (charged with assault in the QC area).
Btw, I was as big on Corpas as anyone. He was said to have had a major league quality slider already.
Wow, I guess I missed that.
That’s a shame. He had a very good arm. Luckily RH relief isn’t a problem of ours. Thanks for the info!