With Thanksgiving come and gone, it's officially gift-buying and list-making time for the bulk of the world. Since I haven't done a reading roundup post since April, and since I hadn't reviewed a notable baseball book since May, we may as well give you some classic Black Friday 2-for-1 value.
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[dropcap]I[/dropcap] picked up Astroball: The New Way to Win It All by Ben Reiter a while back, hoping it might offer some validation for the worst part of the rebuild -- the multiple seasons of constant losing.
It's a book Reiter deserved to write, as he was the author behind the Sports Illustrated cover story in 2014 predicting the Astros' 2017 championship. It's also a book that doesn't offer a whole lot of greater lessons for White Sox fans when it comes to surviving the dark before the dawn.
That's not necessarily the fault of Reiter. The Astros were an idiosyncratic team for the lengths they went to rewrite baseball orthodoxy, while the White Sox are hoping the same front office can get a rebuild right the second time without any great overhaul in staffing, although there is a heavier emphasis on amateur scouting this time around. Whether the Sox get it right this time or stall out, I don't think anybody is going to be hacking into their system for their secrets.
Also, Astros fans are the primary market. They're going to want to hear more about Jose Altuve's origin story, not the rhythmic, brain-melting thudding of the Philip Humber years, and you can't blame them. Altuve's story is cool, but it just doesn't have a lot to replicate.
That said, Reiter was able to dig into at least a few specific aspects of the Astros' dark ages. He spends pages detailing J.D. Martinez's epiphany after the 2013 season, which the Astros only explored for 18 sporadic spring training appearances in 2014 before letting him go for nothing. He joined the Tigers, demolished Triple-A during a tune-up, and has been a force for other teams since.
Another reminder was not to overreact to even humiliating setbacks, but to use them to evolve. When a player was adamant that he had made a change over the off-season, the Astros committed to gathering enough information to determine whether it was a meaningful one. "Nine out of ten times, when people tell you they've gotten better in winter ball, it turns out it's not true," [Astros GM Jeff] Luhnow said. "Sometimes it's actually real. I am so happy for J.D. I give him a big hug every time I see him. I think about what could have been. And I also feel disappointed that he didn't get more playing time to show us the new him."
That Martinez didn't get a chance to prove himself with the Astros was a key strike against the rebuild's first manager, Bo Porter. The White Sox have already extended Rick Renteria to make the particular timing of this decision moot, but in case you were wondering:
The job of manager, as Luhnow envisioned it, had become very different from what it once was, and even from the one Porter had learned coaching in minor league dugouts. A skipper was in some senses the pivotal member of the organization, both the conduit and filter between its executives and players. He not only had to embrace the Astros' process and convince their players to buy into it, but to provide feedback to the front office if elements of that process required rethinking.
He also couldn't fail to provide someone like J.D. Martinez enough at-bats for the organization to make an informed decision about him.
Hawk Harrelson loved Bo Porter, and accused new-school organizations of overriding managerial decisions. With Harrelson retired, that's not a battle the audience has to wage anymore, but in case you were curious:
Luhnow asked each of the 10 candidates he interviewed for the job the same question: "Are you OK with me sending down the lineup every day?" Many said they would be. That was the wrong answer.
Unless the White Sox fail to come to terms with their next draft pick as the Astros did in 2014, there's more to gain the book if and when the White Sox get ascendant. The value of a Carlos Beltran type will eventually come into play -- SI adapted an excerpt of that part -- as well as the mathematical and interpersonal calculus that goes into a move like the Justin Verlander trade. Also, by the end of the book, I couldn't quite determine if the things Luhnow was indeed deserving of the things he got slagged for early in his Astros run (reducing all decisions to numbers, even if he came off cold). Reiter doesn't offer a specific defense for him, merely saying his methods worked. And with a few key members of the Astros' front office heading elsewhere this winter, perhaps that suggests it still isn't the easiest place to work.
Specific to the Sox, Astroball probably needed to be more comprehensive in order to really glean stuff from it, but it's an easy read for those who want to catch up on the Astros model. Come to think of it, if I'm Crown Publishing, I'm pushing this book hard in Baltimore this holiday season.
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Other books I've recently read and enjoyed:
*Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker.
Keith Law might've put this book on my radar earlier in the year with his review, which goes into great detail about the selling points, both of sleep and this book. It's a habit-changer for some, a habit-enforcer for others, and hard to ignore either way.
*The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead.
The Pulitzer Prize put this book on my radar, so it's not like it needs my endorsement. As somebody who gets stuck in nonfiction ruts, it's rewarding to be reminded of the value of fiction, even when the subject matter itself is punishing and heartbreaking.
What I'm reading now:
*The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough. The combination of being a big McCullough fan, finding this on a Barnes & Noble remainder shelf for $7 and visiting Paris for the first time made it a win-win-win for me before I even opened it. So far, so good, especially about the early attempts to establish a modern medical school.
