Ex-Astros President Tal Smith and former Astros Manager Bill Virdon
In reaction to the column I wrote this week on “Moneyball,” a reader identified as Gary has written the following as a comment on the article:
“Stats can tell you about 90% of what you need to know about established players. Projecting amateurs and minor leaguers is a different story. And, I’m sorry, but this must be said – Tal Smith has all but destroyed the Astros. It’s obvious the game passed him him by decades ago.”
Gary, forgive me, but when anyone tells me something is obvious that I still don’t see, I have to question: Am I just stupid here? Or do I first need to raise some questions of my own before I jump to that conclusion. So, please indulge me.
Are you saying that the current shape of the Astros roster and the longstanding decline of talent in the club’s minor league pipeline is all the result of Tal Smith’s out-of-touch inability to judge, sign, and cultivate competitive talent with no help or interference from his owner or supportive staff? Are you suggesting that Smith has no idea what is needed to make a contemporary MLB team competitive for a pennant and World Series trip through the playoffs? Are you suggesting that our worn out saddle on the now-in-its-last-year-multi-season contract with Carlos Lee is the fault of Tal Smith’s out-of-touch senior view on major league baseball?
I’m not writing today to simply defend Tal Smith. He doesn’t need any help from me on that score. I am writing to question any conclusion that the Astros’ current status is the result of poor judgment on Tal Smith’s part, with no help from circumstances and decision-making that went far beyond his individual control as President of Baseball Operations.
I don’t claim to know Tal Smith in-depth beyond our occasional baseball discussions over the years, but I have to admit to some favorable impression of his ideas on what a baseball club needs – and I have been very impressed with his open and routine use of external consultants over time on the assessment of both contract players and amateur prospects. Tal always maintained his lines with out-of-the-orgnization people like me. He never criticized anyone within his decision-making loop to me for anything that didn’t work out as he might have hoped.
It’s hard to see how any employed top baseball person in any organization today can deal with the impact of owners or market prices on talent coming into play and overriding any best laid plans of the hired baseball planning leader, but I would certainly like to know what the best modern solution to these ills might be. Unless you, or someone else, can show us how Tal Smith was not up-to-speed in specific terms as a baseball operations leader, I’ll just have to place myself in the “stupid” category for my failure to see the obvious.
Now, once upon a time, Cy Young pitched in the first World Series of 1903. On days he didn’t pitch, he helped sell tickets at the gate to the other games played in Boston. Not once did I ever hear Tal Smith say, “We need a Number One Starter in our rotation who also knows how to make change.” Had Tal said something like that, I would have had to agree. He needed to retire.
What’s really behind the bitterness that some people seem to have for Tal Smith? Is it simply the fact that the franchise went a half century with Tal Smith prominently in the picture without winning a single World Series?
Easy targets are hard to miss.
How much longer will it be before some Smith-hater decides to celebrate their resentment further by proposing that the Astros level Tal’s Hill from the centerfield landscape at Minute Maid Park?
Still, I have to finish where I started: I just wonder what you have in mind when you say that it is “obvious the game passed him (Tal Smith) by decades ago?” Do we simply reach that conclusion based upon age? If that’s it, you’ve got me too.
Houston, Baseball, & Other Musings.
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