HOUSTON — This winter, the Houston Astros redecorated Minute Maid Park’s interview room, plastering portraits of seminal moments and storied figures on all four walls. Adjacent to the front door is a photograph of an owner admiring his act of aggression. José Abreu is smiling while Jim Crane drapes a white jersey over his shoulders.
Crane had guaranteed a 36-year-old man three seasons and more money than any free agent of his ownership tenure, a contract from which he cannot hide and that could hamstring his ballclub across the next year and a half.
The man who must mend it passed the photo at 3:05 p.m. on Friday. A team spokesman said Crane “is not in Houston currently,” leaving second-year general manager Dana Brown to answer questions better served for someone else. Crane teamed with senior adviser Jeff Bagwell to sign Abreu two months before Brown arrived.
Houston’s interview room features a photo of Jim Crane and José Abreu. (Chandler Rome / The Athletic)
The second-year general manager didn’t create this mess, but at long last engineered its end. Abreu took 697 plate appearances across his 19 months as an Astro. According to FanGraphs, he accumulated minus-2.0 wins above replacement. No player with at least 600 plate appearances since the start of last season had a lower mark.
Brown spent 17 minutes distancing himself from this disastrous deal and describing a dire situation everyone could see. The decision to release Abreu on Friday seemed foregone, even if it felt like forever before it arrived.
It is wrong to assign Abreu all blame for Houston’s horrific season, but the club finished 16-28 with him on the active roster. Playing with him limited the team’s roster flexibility and dragged down an already top-heavy lineup. Manager Joe Espada’s inability to avoid him late in Monday’s 4-3 loss against the San Francisco Giants felt like a glaring inflection point. Houston lost the series in San Francisco, falling eight games behind the first-place Seattle Mariners in the AL West.
“We ultimately had a timeline, we just didn’t know when it was. A big part of it is, when you set a timeline, you say, ‘We want to see better at-bats and those better at-bats should come in this period of time.’ We got to the timeline and were like, ‘Look, the at-bats are not better,’” Brown said.
“We’re 27 days prior to the (trade) deadline, 12 games away from being halfway through the season. Right now, we felt like we really had to turn this thing around.”
Both Crane and Bagwell had at least some influence on Abreu’s continued presence on Houston’s roster. Crane perhaps wanted to extract any value he could from a calamitous investment. Bagwell worked intensely with Abreu, including alongside him at the team’s spring training facility last month during a demotion Abreu consented to take.
Espada started Abreu in 12 of the 16 games following his return. He struck out 10 times, totaled seven hits in 42 at-bats and handicapped Espada’s ability to maneuver in late games.
“I don’t think there’s a teaching moment here. Ultimately, you were looking at José Abreu — he was signed before I got here — he had really good numbers,” Brown said. “There were a lot of teams that were in the market for first base. A lot of these deals work out. Houston did good things before I got here.”
Brown enjoys his employment. Publicly throwing his boss under the bus is one way to end it, so expecting him to say anything else is foolish. Six consecutive American League Championship Series appearances, four American League pennants and two World Series titles do suffice as “good things.”
To enhance the pursuit of more, Brown and his baseball operations department must analyze whether Abreu’s wretched tenure is anomalous — an aging player who declined faster than anyone could’ve anticipated — or a symptom of a larger issue within the decision-making hierarchy. Guaranteeing a 36-year-old player with waning power three years is a dangerous precedent no matter what the analysis discovers.
Brown intimated he won’t repeat that mistake, but it does invite wonder about the viability of long-term contract extensions for some of the club’s best players. Both Kyle Tucker and Alex Bregman will demand deals that stretch into their age-36 or 37 seasons. Jose Altuve already signed one through his age-39 season but will make just $13 million at both age 38 and 39.
“I’m not the type of guy that’s going to be in the habit of signing a lot of older guys,” Brown said. “I think sometimes you have to sign older guys, particularly when you have an opening and you have to plug that opening, you may have to do it. I think the older they get, you should try to go less years.”
The Astros will owe Abreu the remainder of his $19.5 million salary this season and the entire sum next year — at least $30 million in dead money that Brown claimed will have no bearing on how he can proceed at the trade deadline or next winter when pursuing free agents.
“We’ll do what we have to do to make this thing work,” Brown said. “We want to get back to the postseason. Ultimately, we want to win the division. We have dead money in baseball. That’s part of how it works. You’re banking on human beings and sometimes these human beings take a fall. We have dead money all over baseball.”
Brown and Espada met with Abreu on Friday afternoon to inform him of the club’s decision. Abreu, who was unavailable for comment, handled it “well,” Brown said.
“I led this thing myself,” Brown said. “Ultimately, as a GM, I always talk to my owner in terms of giving him my thought process and I talked to Jim. But I pretty much led the process.”
Such specificity seems unwarranted, but this organization mandates it. “Four or five” people make decisions in Houston’s baseball operations department, Hall of Fame adviser Reggie Jackson told a podcast last April. Bagwell and Crane remain very influential.
On three occasions Friday, Brown reminded the large group of reporters that Abreu arrived before he did. During one answer, Brown said, “When you guys signed him prior to me getting here, I think when this guy was on the market there were a lot of teams that liked him.”
The Cleveland Guardians, Miami Marlins and San Diego Padres all showed serious interest in Abreu, a former American League Rookie of the Year and MVP.
Still, signing him authored a drastic departure from procedures that put his franchise on a dynastic path. It seemed apparent at the time, but the afterglow of a World Series win masked it. Houston needed a first baseman to defend its championship. Crane acted as his own general manager and bought the best one available.
It blew up.
(Photo: Carmen Mandato / Getty Images)
