The Astros have turned back to a familiar face, hiring Brad Ausmus as their new manager.
Before the announcement became official, John Granato of ESPN 97.5 Houston reported that Ausmus was headed to Houston tomorrow to take the job, and Brian McTaggart of MLB.com confirmed the report.
For Houston, this is more than just a new hire. Ausmus has deep roots with the organization.
He spent 10 seasons with the Astros during his playing career, suiting up for the club in 1997 and 1998, then again from 2001 through 2008. After his playing days ended, he moved into coaching, managing and front-office work.
His post-playing stops have included the Padres, Tigers, Angels, Athletics and Yankees, but the Astros connection never really went away. Jim Crane bought the team in 2011, after Ausmus had already retired, and Crane has long had a close relationship with Jeff Bagwell. Bagwell has been a major advisor to Crane on club matters for years, and he and Ausmus shared a clubhouse for a long stretch while Bagwell played in Houston from 1991 to 2005.
Ausmus has been linked to the Astros plenty of times over the years, even as the team kept cycling through managers. Since Crane took over, Houston has hired Bo Porter, A.J.
Hinch, Dusty Baker and Joe Espada. Ausmus’ name kept surfacing whenever the job opened, and he was also connected to the general manager position in Houston more than once.
Now the reunion is real. The Astros are handing him the keys at a time when the organization looks very different from the one that dominated the American League for so long.
Ausmus does have managerial experience, though the results have been mixed. Detroit gave him his first shot before the 2014 season, when the Tigers had won the Central three straight times.
He delivered another division title that year, but the club slipped below .500 in 2015. Detroit got back to 86 wins in 2016, though it still missed the playoffs, and 2017 went badly with 98 losses.
He was not retained after that season.
He later joined the Angels as a special assistant in 2018, then was promoted to manager for 2019 and given a three-year deal. That run ended after one season, when Los Angeles finished 72-90 and he was fired. Since then, he has worked as a bench coach, taking that role with the A’s in 2022 and then with the Yankees from 2024 to 2026.
The Astros are making this move after a rough stretch by their standards. They reached the ALCS in seven straight seasons from 2017 to 2023 and won two titles during that run, but they have not been back since.
Houston won 88 games in 2024 and made the Wild Card, only to be quickly bounced by the Tigers. Last year they slipped to 87 wins and missed the postseason.
This season, the American League West was historically bad, and the Astros won the division with just 81 victories before getting swept by the White Sox in the Wild Card round.
The front office has already gone through its own shakeup. Espada’s contract expired after the 2026 season and he was not brought back, while the club also parted ways with general manager Dana Brown.
Houston first filled the front office opening, hiring Randy Flores a couple of weeks ago. After that, Albert Pujols, Luis Urueta, Morgan Ensberg and Ausmus were all linked to the managerial vacancy.
The Astros believe Ausmus is the right person to guide what comes next, even as the roster looks unsettled. Yordan Alvarez, Jeremy Peña, Isaac Paredes, Hunter Brown, Christian Walker, Yainer Diaz, Cristian Javier and Josh Hader are all under contract only through 2027 or 2028. Carlos Correa has a complicated option structure, with 2028 as the last guaranteed year on his deal, while Jose Altuve is signed through 2029.
Replacing that kind of talent internally will not be easy. Houston has spent years near the back of the draft because of its sustained success, and the club was also penalized in connection with the sign-stealing scandal. That has left the farm system without much shine at the moment.
So the Astros are betting on familiarity, experience and a return to an old relationship. Whether Ausmus can do better in Houston than he did in Detroit or Anaheim is the question now. The Yankees, in the meantime, will need a new bench coach.
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