The Houston Astros and James Click are no longer a marriage.
The organization, according to Bob Nightengale of USA Today, fired him after he rejected a one-year extension.
Click was looking for a long-term deal and owner Jim Crane apparently did not like the idea of Click being in charge.
In this tweet by Nightengale, the situation is explained in a short, but concise way:
Houston #Astros owner Jim Crane, despite their differences, knew he had to make GM James Click an offer after winning the World Series.
Crane also made an offer that he probably knew Click would reject.
It’ll be intriguing how many front office employees hired by Click will stay.— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) November 11, 2022
Basically, Crane felt the moral obligation to make Click an offer because he had just won the World Series.
Who knows if Click had gotten an offer had the Astros lost.
The thing is that the offer wasn’t really competitive (being a one-year pact and not a multi-year one) and the Astros owner knew it, at least according to Nightengale.
Not A Good Look For The Astros
A fellow MLB analyst, Britt Ghiroli, criticized Crane for his actions because she felt the Astros’ owner wasn’t being transparent when negotiating.
The fact that everything became public is just not a good look for the organization.
“Whether Astros owner Jim Crane wanted someone other than James Click to run baseball ops or not (clearly he did) what an embarrassing way to treat a high level employee,” she tweeted.
Whether Astros owner Jim Crane wanted someone other than James Click to run baseball ops or not (clearly he did) what an embarrassing way to treat a high level employee.
— Britt Ghiroli (@Britt_Ghiroli) November 11, 2022
Transparency should be the key in all negotiations, especially if they involve a person that helped put together the team with which you just won the World Series.
The Astros have won two Fall Classic in their history, and Click was behind one of them: the one they won last week.
Evidently, Crane wanted some things to change because he wouldn’t have offered just one year otherwise.
Click is now free to negotiate with other teams, and will likely do so soon.
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