Normandin: Jeff Luhnow is gone, but he is everywhere you look in baseball
From Marc Normandin at Baseball Prospectus on January 22, 2020:
Jeff Luhnow is no longer running the Houston Astros. Major League Baseball suspended him for the 2020 season for his role in the Astros sign-stealing disaster, and then his boss, owner Jim Crane, fired both Luhnow and manager A.J. Hinch as a way of distancing himself from [gestures at everything]. So, Luhnow won’t work in MLB in 2020, and might never work there again. Sure, a team could hire him if they think they can absorb the PR hit, but he could just decide to go work somewhere else instead, too. Luhnow could always rejoin the nightmarish McKinsey as a consultant, or maybe go work for another ex-McKinseyite, Mayor Pete, on his presidential campaign. Or maybe Luhnow will just throw rocks at puppies for a living. He’s got options.
Whether Luhnow comes back or not is of little concern at present. We’ll set that bridge on fire when we get to it. What matters is that his ideas and his ideals are still in MLB, and they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. Between the growth of the Astros’ management tree, the rise of tanking across the league, the fallout from the sign-stealing debacle, and Luhnow’s plan that helped spearhead the movement for more than one-quarter of Minor League Baseball’s teams to disaffiliate, we’re going to be dealing with the aftereffects of his time in the league for years.
Read the full article here: https://www.baseballprospectus.com/news/article/56511/jeff-luhnow-astros-sign-stealing-mlb-integrity/
Originally published: January 22, 2020. Last Updated: January 22, 2020.