Last week, I wrote an introduction to my 2026 front office rankings. This week, I’m ranking the bottom 10 teams in the league. If you haven’t, you should read the intro to get a sense of what I’m evaluating, but broadly this is a ranking of overall front office processes, strengths, and weaknesses based primarily on my own personal evaluation, and secondarily on discussion with my sources in the industry. It is a snapshot as of today; some of these things do change pretty rapidly.

TIER 8: YOU AND ME COULD WRITE A BAD ROMANCE

30.) Houston Astros

Owner and Chairman: Jim Crane

I think the Astros are the first organization this century to actively decide to be dumber.

Coming off their 2022 World Series win, owner Jim Crane forced out general manager James Click by offering him an insulting one-year contract. While Click was not directly responsible for much of the championship infrastructure—that would be more his disgraced predecessor Jeff Luhnow—he was a perfectly competent modern head of baseball operations, keeping things together pretty well for Houston coming off the self-inflicted disasters (and penalties) from the late Luhnow era. But Crane and his cadre of traditionalist wannabes, led by Hall of Fame first baseman and ownership senior advisor Jeff Bagwell, didn’t agree with Click’s ideas on how to run a baseball team. Shortly after Click’s departure, Bagwell said to The Athletic’s Chandler Rome that “there are certain things that go on that the numbers can’t explain. This game is played by humans, man. It’s not played by computers.”

I would have understood this more if Crane had become an anti-modernist after Luhnow got the book thrown at him. A lot of the front office process things we take for granted were invented by the Luhnow Astros front office of the 2010s, and a strong departure from that would’ve been understandable. But instead Crane installed a directionally ideologically similar executive from Tampa Bay in Click, and the Astros continued to be successful under him.

And then, after another World Series—the type of thing which should make you proud of your franchise—Crane went luddite mode. For much of the 2022-23 offseason, the owner acted as head of baseball operations himself, with Bagwell as his top advisor. They immediately handed out two of the worst contracts of the decade to washed versions of Rafael Montero and José Abreu. Perhaps the numbers might’ve suggested those ones were a bad idea, but it doesn’t appear Jeff Bagwell did.

Crane ultimately installed longtime scouting executive Dana Brown as his general manager. Rumors persisted throughout Brown’s four-season tenure that Crane and Bagwell continued to have an unusually heavy influence on baseball operations, and Brown was let go last month. In recent media appearances, Brown has conceded his plans were blocked or altered by Crane at times while saying he was not micromanaged and respects Bagwell’s baseball acumen. Upon Brown’s dismissal, Crane once again took direct control of baseball operations with Bagwell listed as one of the four people assuming some of Brown’s responsibilities. Bagwell has also continued in his broadcast role as an intermittent color commentator, where he sounds exactly like ESPN-era Joe Morgan, another great player who does not seem to have any idea why he was so good. (We’ll talk about that phenomenon more with our next team.)

The Astros aren’t actually the worst team in the league at any individual point of process. I wasn’t planning on ranking them last until Crane resumed direct control of baseball operations. While they’ve had a huge brain drain since the Luhnow era, they still have some decent staffers around. Their international program has been excellent for a long time, with particular strength in finding pitching. There were problems here already; they’ve signed some very bad contracts lately and I admittedly haven’t been a fan of their past three drafts. I think Brown’s reliance on traditional eye scouting did roll things back too far—though probably at the behest of those above him—and they were already on a downward trajectory with him as GM.

The idea of Crane running this team again for any length of time is horrifying. The idea of Bagwell having a big role to advocate for a form of baseball that he thinks was successful decades ago, but wasn’t even then, is horrifying. Even the idea of Crane hiring a different lead executive is horrifying, if it is to implement his vision of a lean front office that relies on the gut feel of traditional baseball men like it’s a bad 1980s baseball movie. I cannot conclude anything but that this is the worst front office situation in the sport, because no other team actually wants to be stupid.