In 2009, with the sting of the Killer Bees a mere pinprick and Roy Oswalt three years from MLB irrelevance, Astros GM Ed Wade signed a pair of middle relievers to hefty contracts and horded his aging stars in an effort to ... well ...field a respectable team, but not a contender. Predictably, the Farm atrophied and the team finished a combined 79 games under .500 from 2007-2011. When new ownership bought out the regrettable Drayton MacLane, nanoseconds passed before Wade was mercifully jettisoned.
And with Wade, went an epoch, never to be seen again.
Starting in 2012, God has bestowed the general manager position upon no more dolts or Luddites unable to discern what every other GM understands. There exists in 2016, no general manager, or VP of Baseball Operations, upon whom opposing clubs can giddily dump their problems. No one is as patently without a clue as Ed Wade anymore.
Every club in Major League Baseball employs an analytical department that complements the scouting department with statistical analysis, psychological profiling and who knows what else. There is no one left to get fleeced of, for example, a low batting average/high on base guy, because every team understands his value.
And the days when front offices debated the value of analytics is long gone. Every front office appreciates the competitive disadvantage attendant to knowing less than what a dozen websites (one one third-rate blogger from Charleston) know about players' true value.
A decade ago, I could wring a column a week out of reviewing major transactions and identifying the patent lunacy of half of them. Signing a player after a good season without accounting for his ridiculously high BABIP. Valuing a pitcher with a nominally good W-L record without accounting for the conditions under which his team won. Spending money on declining veterans when it's time for a rebuild. And so on.
It just doesn't happen anymore.
Ironically, the last obviously head-scratching trade was made by the Grand Wizard of analytics himself, the guy who made his name bamboozling his counterparts a decade ago. Last winter, Billy Beane flipped star third-sacker Josh Donaldson, a seven-win player with five tools, for three-win third baseman Brett Lawrie and some spare parts.
All Donaldson did was win the MVP Award for a nine-win season in which he paced the league in total bases, runs scored, and RBIs while slugging 41 homers and 43 doubles/triples for Toronto while Lawrie backslid a win.
But even then, there might be extenuating circumstances. Lawrie is four years younger and can play other infield positions. Two nearly Major League-ready hurlers accompanied him to Oakland. And there were reports that Beane and Donaldson weren't gracefully co-existing.
The point is, the days of the doofus GM are over. Now even Billy Beane can get jobbed. And all I got out of it is one column.
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