More than meets the eye in Astros front office leak
There was no precedent for what happened on Monday afternoon, when the Houston Astros proprietary information system was hacked and leaked onto Deadspin via a dark recess of the internet.
The Astros most intimate details exposed for the whole world to see. Trade offers and internal chatter laid bare. It was revealing and, frankly, embarrassing.
Some of the trade offers and demands were difficult to believe. Galling and brash requests seemingly out of step with any real world understanding of value. Jared Cosart and Delino DeShields Jr. for Giancarlo Stanton? That isn’t embarrassing, it’s insulting.
Setting aside the implication that some of the chatter was false and created to give the story more sizzle, the post gained traction for a variety of reasons. It was salacious and gossipy, but it was also the Astros. The team that does things a little differently than the rest of the baseball world. The team promoted on the front cover of a recent issue of Sports Illustrated as “the 2017 World Series champions.”
Houston does things their own way. They value prospects above all else and rebuilt their entire franchise from the ground up. They’re also the worst team in baseball, losers of 100 games in each of the last three seasons.
The pre-praise heaped on them for their innovative ways fuels a backlash against the apparent “smartest guy in the room” syndrome fueled by non-traditional hires and creative job titles. In short, a lot of passionate baseball fans hate the Astros.
All the pieces fit. Their front office thinks it’s smarter than everyone else, their trade demands are out to lunch. Point and laugh at the struggling ‘stros, call it a day.
Nothing is ever so simple. The trade demands might make for great click bait but that doesn’t make them proof positive of Astros avarice on the prospect front.
Trade negotiations are just that - negotiations. The line between fact and fiction is fuzzy - even quick text messages are dripping with subtext. Much to the chagrin of old school guys like Diamondbacks GM Kevin Towers, this is the way much baseball business is conducted. Innuendo and multiple irons in countless fires.
Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos says not all conversations are about the deal at hand. “Most of the time it’s about trying to get a price on players.” Anthopoulos cites three-way deals as the great way to improve your club even when you can’t line up on a given player.
“Even though you might not like the asking price, it’s not the worst thing in the world to find out ‘what would it be specifically?’” It’s information they want, not the player specifically. With that information they make decisions down the line or insinuate themselves into other trade talks. And talk, as we know, is cheap.
When the Astros call about Giancarlo Stanton, it isn’t with the expressed desire of acquiring him for their club. They can’t value a player like Stanton the same way the Red Sox might, as his (hypothetical) acquisition means different things to teams on different timelines.
Read through the Assanged cables and then move on. Among the laundry list of reasons to dislike the Astros, the conversations found on Deadspin shouldn’t count among them. This peek behind the curtain still shows the actors in their stage makeup.