The Astros have hired Cardinals assistant GM/scouting director Randy Flores as their new general manager. The team announced the move on Friday evening.
“Randy has had a huge impact on the Cardinals over the last 10 seasons,” Houston owner Jim Crane said in the press release. “Throughout the entire interview process, we’ve been thoroughly impressed with Randy and with his background in scouting and player acquisition. We’re happy to welcome Randy and his family to the Astros and we can’t wait to get to work on bringing another championship to Houston.” Flores and Crane will meet with the media during an introductory press conference on Monday morning.
It’s a surprise turn of events. The Athletic reported on Thursday that Brewers assistant GM Matt Kleine had emerged as the frontrunner for the position. Chandler Rome of The Athletic reports that Houston offered the GM job to Kleine on Wednesday evening, hours before Milwaukee won its first World Series.
Although it’s unclear precisely what changed, The Athletic suggests that Kleine had been seeking the title ‘president of baseball operations’ earlier in the week. They write that the Milwaukee AGM never pulled his name out of the running, though it’s possible there was some kind of hangup in negotiations on title and/or salary.
In any case, it’s a momentous step in Flores’ career. The 51-year-old takes over a baseball operations department for the first time. Flores had spent more than a decade in the St. Louis front office, climbing the ranks from scouting director to assistant GM over the 2018-19 offseason. He’d coincidentally been hired as scouting director in 2015 to replace Chris Correa, who’d been fired and ultimately imprisoned for illegally accessing the Astros’ internal databases early in Jeff Lunhow’s GM tenure.
Flores is a former big league player, a lefty reliever who appeared in 350 games with four teams between 2002-10. He won a World Series ring in ’06 with St. Louis. After retiring as a player, Flores completed a Master’s degree in education while working as an assistant coach with the USC baseball team. He also run a company that provided video scouting reports on amateur players. Flores’ background in amateur scouting has carried into his role with the Cardinals, whose drafts he’s run for the last 10 years.
St. Louis has had a lot of success as a draft and develop organization over the years, especially in the middle rounds. They’d begun to fall behind on pitching development in the early 2020s, which led to a few middling seasons and their ongoing retool. The Cardinals appear to be back on the upswing thanks in part to a core of position player draftees like JJ Wetherholt, Masyn Winn, Jordan Walker and Alec Burleson.
The Cardinals have had their share of misses as well. They used first-round selections on Delvin Perez, Nolan Gorman, Zack Thompson, Cooper Hjerpe, and Chase Davis during Flores’ tenure. No club is going to have a spotless draft record, though, and they’ve found potential building blocks in Wetherholt and Walker. Winn, Burleson and current top prospect Joshua Báez were second-round or competitive balance round picks. They nabbed a couple serviceable starters in Andre Pallante and Kyle Leahy deeper in the draft.
Flores’ scouting background will take on added importance in Houston as they navigate a potentially closing competitive window. The Astros returned to the postseason for the ninth time in the past 10 years, but that was largely by default thanks to one of the worst divisions in history. Houston snuck into the postseason with an 81-81 record, their worst in a full season since 2014. The White Sox swept them by a combined 13-6 margin during the Wild Card Series.
Crane clearly wasn’t satisfied with backing into the playoffs. He moved on from former GM Dana Brown shortly after the trade deadline. After the season, Crane decided not to re-sign free agent manager Joe Espada. Flores will be tasked with leading the managerial search and facing some significant roster questions.
Houston still has a handful of star players, most notably presumptive AL MVP Yordan Alvarez. They have one of the game’s best shortstops in Jeremy Peña, an ace in Hunter Brown, an elite closer in Josh Hader, an above-average corner infielder in Isaac Paredes, and a solid starting catcher in Yainer Diaz.
All those players are within two years of reaching free agency. Peña will be a free agent after the 2027 season, potentially as the #1 player in the class. Paredes will join him on the open market next winter. Alvarez ($26MM annually) and Hader ($19MM annually) are signed through 2028. Brown and Diaz are under arbitration control for two years.
Meanwhile, the Astros have bloated contracts for Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa. They still have one too many infielders and would need to eat money to find a taker for Christian Walker, who’ll make $20MM next season. They have one of the worst outfields in MLB and are short at least one starting pitcher behind Brown, Peter Lambert, Hayden Wesneski and Cristian Javier.
The Astros finished this past season with a competitive balance tax payroll around $238MM, as shown on MLBTR’s Payroll Tracker (via contributor Ethan Hullihen). They have a 2027 estimate in the $210-215MM range, assuming non-tenders of Jake Meyers, Taylor Trammell, Ronel Blanco and Bennett Sousa.
Houston has never guaranteed an individual player more than $150MM. Crane was content to let Correa, Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker leave when they hit free agency — the latter via trade before his walk year. Any or all of Peña, Alvarez and Brown could be trending toward $150-200MM+ contracts. Back in August, MLB Pipeline ranked Houston’s farm system the second-worst in the majors (above only San Diego’s). Right fielder Cam Smith and reliever AJ Blubaugh were their only real pre-arbitration contributors this past season. Smith has impressed defensively but hasn’t hit the way that the Astros expected when they made him a key piece of the Tucker deal.
There’s an overall deficit of young, controllable talent. That’s only natural after years of being one of the best teams in the league, constantly pushing in prospect capital and picking at the back of drafts (on top of the pick forfeitures for 2017). Flores and his staff will try to thread the needle and avoid a complete rebuild after 2027 or ’28. That’s made all the more challenging by having one of the league’s most active owners and senior advisor Jeff Bagwell both heavily involved in baseball operations. They’re not going to tear everything down within the next few months, but they’ll need to balance the roster and potentially entertain one or two future-oriented moves along the way.
Chandler Rome, Katie Woo and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic reported just before the club announcement that Flores was a serious candidate for the position.