Three MLB clubs still don’t have a permanent head of baseball operations as the regular season winds down, but one National League executive thinks the Houston opening stands alone for all the wrong reasons.
The Angels, Athletics and Astros have all moved on from their previous leaders in season, with Perry Minasian, David Forst and Dana Brown each dismissed before the year was over. That at least gave those organizations a jump on the search for a new president of baseball operations or general manager.
Houston’s situation carries a different kind of baggage. The Astros already lived through a messy split with James Click in November 2022, just days after he turned down a one-year extension and less than a month after the club won the championship. So the next person in that seat could again find himself or herself dealing with forces outside the usual front-office chain of command.
“Why would you want to go to Houston and have all of your decisions get undercut by [senior adviser] Jeff Bagwell? It might be the worst job of the ones available,” one National League executive told Yahoo! Sports' Russell Dorsey.
Bagwell’s influence is the issue hanging over the job. The Astros retired his No. 5 in 2007, he entered the Hall of Fame in 2017, and he has served as a senior adviser with the organization since 2023. The source of friction in the Click era was his analytical style, which reportedly didn’t sit well with Bagwell and may have played a direct role in Click’s exit.
Not every team gives advisors that kind of say, but Houston appears to be the exception. If the anonymous executive is right about how much power Bagwell holds, the next Astros GM could be a scouting-minded hire, similar to Dana Brown, who helped build the Braves’ 2021 championship roster and began his career as a scout in 1994.
And if the job really is as the executive described it, that new hire may also have to answer to Bagwell.
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