Astros GM Dana Brown working to curb ‘straight shooter' tendencies: ‘You're not scouting anymore'

New York Times

25-03-2025

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Somewhere between bullish and bombastic sits Dana Brown, the antithesis of almost all of his baseball contemporaries. Those in his position often pride themselves on insulation, increasing efficiency or an Ivy League education, a few foundations around which the Houston Astros have constructed their golden era.
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To prolong it, the club chose a man who has none of that. Brown is a general manager bred in a bygone era, a straight-shooting former Seton Hall outfielder who'd rather scout amateur talent than scour spreadsheets. His candor bucks convention, running against the constant cliches or coachspeak from his counterparts.
'What you get, what the fans, the media, what they see, that is 100 percent Dana,' said Andrew Ball, one of Brown's three assistant general managers. 'I think that's a great thing.'
Authenticity is Brown's ethos. Rarely will he claim to have every answer or understand all of the sport's growing ways to measure success. Take, for example, Phil Maton, a reliever made for the modern game but mystifying to Brown. Maton rarely reached 90 mph but maintained a 3.00 ERA across 66 innings during the 2023 season — Brown's first in charge.
'I was like, 'Man, how is this guy going to get guys out?,' Brown says now, before launching into the reasons why: Maton's elite extension, movement and the spin rate on his breaking balls.
Seeing that from a scouting eye is almost impossible, so Brown sought help from those in his front office more familiar with the advanced information. Brown started calling Maton 'the Magic Man' thereafter.
'The biggest thing there is Dana has no ego,' Ball said. 'He's really humble. He's really open to learning and he's really unafraid of asking questions. He wants to learn. He picks things up really quickly.'
Brown spent 29 baseball seasons in scouting, where such bluntness is a prerequisite. Scouts' sentiments are often never heard outside of closed-door front-office meetings or conversations on a ballpark concourse.
Now, at the pinnacle of his profession, Brown's boldness is broadcast across an entire city instead of inside a conference room. Two years after inheriting a World Series championship roster, Brown is the face and voice of a franchise at a crossroads, a precarious position for someone whose entire career evolved outside of the spotlight.
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'That's part of becoming more GM-like — you have to really watch what you say because it means a lot more coming from a general manager than it does (from) a VP of scouting,' said Brown, who formerly held that same position with the Atlanta Braves.
'You learn on the job like any other job, but I do wrestle with (not) being a straight shooter. I would be lying if I said I didn't.'
Brown's optimism can be equal parts contagious and confounding, sometimes in total contradiction to the product on the field or how the Astros have operated across Jim Crane's 14-year ownership tenure. None of Crane's three general manager hires had ever had front-facing roles before arriving in Houston. All of them learned on the job, none with the soundbites that Brown has provided.
Some of them have proven prophetic, like the decision Brown made on the team's television broadcast in 2023 to convert swingman Ronel Blanco into a starting pitcher. After starting 12-22 last season, Brown insisted that he would never sell at the trade deadline. The team won the American League West on the back of August acquisition Yusei Kikuchi.
'It's really difficult for me because I'm such a straight shooter and I wear my emotions on my sleeves at times, especially being from the Northeast,' said Brown, a proud New Jersey native.
He added: 'That's just kind of how I am and that's how I was as a scout and I got to realize, look, you're not scouting anymore. You're a general manager.'
His claim two years ago that Kyle Tucker 'will be a Houston Astro for his career' seemed foolish at the time and only aged worse this winter, flummoxing a fan base he was hired to please. The words of a person in charge are not forgotten — a reality Brown now must embrace.
'We're not the most experienced leadership group, but I think we're always trying to learn and go through situations on that,' said Ball. 'I don't know that it's more buttoned up, but he definitely speaks differently about things now than the first day he got the job, but it's still authentically him.'
Nineteen months after insisting Tucker would never wear another uniform, Brown backtracked. His initial declaration defied all logic but did conjure memories of perhaps the boldest claim of Brown's tenure, one he hoped to predicate around the same long-term contract extensions he saw Alex Anthopoulos issue in Atlanta.
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Crane's appetite for those can be fickle, but upon Brown's arrival, he famously told the owner to 'fasten your seat belt, because it's time.' The extent of that wild ride is two contract extensions worth a total of $189 million. One of the recipients, Cristian Javier, underwent Tommy John surgery last season.
Having no willingness to pay Tucker and failing to approach pending free agent Framber Valdez this spring about an extension is more emblematic of how the Astros have always conducted business.
'I kind of knew the business side. I just never had to worry about it,' Brown said. 'Now, as a GM, you know the baseball side, but you have to worry that everything you do, there's a business reaction to every move we make and you have to keep that in mind.'
Trading Tucker, though, is an about-face. The Astros hadn't traded a reigning All-Star since Ed Wade shipped out Michael Bourn and Hunter Pence in 2011. Brown had to convince Crane — the owner who claims the club's championship window will never close — to trade one of his team's best players.
'It was just saying, 'Look, we want to be competitive in these two worlds: We're not going to lose our edge in the present and we're going to gain more in the future by putting it all together,'' Brown said. 'That's the goal of this trade and hopefully that should be how it plays out.'
Crane declined three interview requests during spring training, first following an appearance on the team's telecast, again after he sat in for an inning on the club's radio broadcast and, finally, through a team spokesman before Saturday's penultimate Grapefruit League game.
'He's really allowed me the opportunity to be a GM,' Brown said. 'You go to some organizations, there (is) a GM, a president and then you have the owner. But being able to go directly to the owner and have a conversation about what you want to do and for him to understand and have confidence in your baseball eye, I think that's a welcoming thing for me because he trusts me.'
'OK, pull up the video.'
Ask around the Astros' front office, Brown says, and all of his lieutenants will laugh at that rote response. When senior director of player personnel Matt Hogan finds a player on the waiver wire or assistant general manager Gavin Dickey has the latest on a well-performing minor-leaguer, Brown offers the same response.
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'He doesn't ignore the information, but he also knows the value of what his eyes are telling him,' said Joe Espada, the manager Brown handpicked to succeed Dusty Baker.
'He asks everyone in the room what they think and he's going to make the last decision. But he is a guy that wants to see the player. He wants to see it with his own eyes that the information is matching what he sees.'
There is no manual for being a general manager. That World Series champions Buster Posey and Craig Breslow now run the San Francisco Giants and Boston Red Sox, respectively, suggests a shift back toward a semblance of balance in baseball front offices. Brown epitomizes it, but within an organization that once positioned itself on the cutting edge.
Brown has surrounded himself with a blend of lieutenants from different backgrounds. He retained both Ball and Charles Cook as assistant general managers before promoting Dickey — a longtime scout and former college player — to join them. Hogan and director of baseball operations Anthony Cacchione are crucial figures, too.
'We don't have the biggest front office in baseball, intentionally, but to do that and to do it successfully, you have to be able to say, 'Hey, one person is going to kind of take this or handle this,'' Ball said.
'It's really nice that there is that trust and he gets that. It makes me feel good to just know that your boss cares about you and supports you to kind of let you go do that and trust you to do those things.'
Brown may never be called buttoned-up. He still talks fast and sheds more insight on the inner workings of a franchise than many in his position. Navigating the Astros into their next era isn't going to alter that.
'I always remind him, 'Don't change, this is who you are,'' Espada said, 'but also, let's not walk away from the information that has helped this organization be successful.'