The Astros have spent the fall burning precious time, and now the clock is about to get even louder.
After firing Dana Brown on August 24 and watching the season end with a sweep by the Chicago White Sox in the Wild Card round, Jim Crane and Houston went through a long search for the next general manager. They spent most of October chasing a Brewers executive who was busy winning a World Series, then shifted late last month to Randy Flores, who was announced in a press release. That sequence made one thing pretty clear: Flores probably wasn’t the first choice.
And now the delay has consequences. The collective bargaining agreement expires at 11:50 pm EST on December 1, and a lockout is all but certain.
Once that happens, all transactions stop and no one in the organization can even speak with a player on the 40-man roster, aside from a few specific exceptions. Flores walked into the job with roughly a month to work, and now he has less than four weeks.
For a new general manager, that is not much time at all.
Houston is still one of the last teams in baseball without a manager, with the Angels the only other club in that same boat after the Mariners hired Jason Kanzler. There are names in the mix.
Brad Ausmus has been mentioned. So has Morgan Ensberg, Flores’ college teammate at USC.
Albert Pujols is also of interest. Crane said he had already interviewed a few candidates before Flores was hired, which could mean he was trying to save time - or that Flores is inheriting a process that was already moving without him.
Probably a little of both.
The manager search is only part of it, too. When Joe Espada left, several coaches went with him, including bench coach Omar Lopez, who was offered a chance to stay in the organization in a different role. That leaves Flores with a pile of openings to fill while he’s still learning the job and getting familiar with the people and the place.
Then comes the roster, where the real pressure is impossible to miss. Jeremy Peña stands out as a logical trade candidate because he’ll be eligible for free agency after 2027.
Isaac Paredes is in the same situation. The rotation needs major help.
Two leverage relievers need replacing. And the outfield did not work in 2026, which means it needs at least a serious rethink.
Those are not small fixes. They’re major decisions, and Flores has to make them while he’s still getting his bearings.
The problem is that the calendar is working against him. The non-tender deadline is coming in a couple of weeks, and the free-agent market is expected to heat up fast before December 1.
If the lead-up to the lockout plays out like it did in 2021, the final week could turn into a sprint. Max Scherze, Corey Seager, Marcus Semien, and plenty of others signed in that last week before the freeze.
In that kind of rush, the teams with a plan get an edge. Right now, the Astros are still catching up.
None of this happened by accident. Crane knew the CBA timeline when he moved on from Brown.
He knew it when he was photographed with Matt Kleine on October 13. He knew it when the search kept dragging while Milwaukee kept winning.
Kleine looked like the cleanest fit. He’s 40, he’s a Brewers lifer, and he started his career as an Astros media relations intern in 2007.
He also came from an organization that just won a title with a mid-range payroll, which is the sort of model Crane wants to study. But Kleine had signed an extension with Milwaukee, so any deal would have required a buyout.
The report was that he wanted a president of baseball operations title, and Crane has never handed out that title before.
That title still hasn’t been handed out. Kleine remains in Milwaukee. Flores got the job, even though he could have been hired a month earlier when he interviewed.
Crane has said the club was thorough in its process and believed Flores was the right fit. Maybe he is.
Flores has a scouting background in an organization that badly needs it, and he knows how to operate with payroll limits. But if he was the guy all along, waiting until October 30 to hire him is hard to justify.
If he wasn’t, then the Astros ended up settling for their second choice after waiting too long for the first. Either way, it’s not a great look.
Flores didn’t create the mess, but he’s the one who has to deal with it now. Crane spent more than two months finding his next general manager, and if the lockout arrives as expected, Flores will get only about half that time to sort through everything on his list. Good luck, Randy!
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