Intimate Meeting With James Click

I had an intimate meeting with James Click recently.

Sorry for the bad formatting. It was amazing. But I did get quite a bit of information that I thought would be good to share with you diehard fans.

I will probably delete this after a couple days because of the information.

There was quite a bit of talk and I might not get everything we spoke about. Here are the highlights:

-he said the shift will be banned in 2023( which they just came out. He loves the shift and thinks we should keep it. He said in the minors they have put circles all Over the field that players had to stand it. He said it looked awful. He said robo-umps are coming sooner than later. My guess is 2024. He loves this idea.

– he is a BIG fan of the pitch clock. Said it lowers the game to 2.5 hours. Said for a family if the game starts at 6 you are out by 8:30 if you have family. That’s huge. Big fan of it.

-verlanders calf strain is the lightest of the light in terms of the strain in a calf. He’s just fine.

-he values defensive metrics as one of the most important tools to have. He mentioned which player to have in the outfield. He said there are cameras on every inch of the baseball field that MLB installed in every stadium. You can track running paths, swings type of pitches, the depths of pitches, the exact spin, etc. He mentioned for centerfield for instance Chaz has a great first step and directly runs to the ball. The metrics for him were, he was able to shave 3 feet off per second because of his running paths. In three seconds he can shave off 9 feet which is the difference between an out and a double. Really in-depth conversation about the defense.

-He is implementing the Tampa Bays strategy of letting veterans go a year or two before their value goes down. He does NOT want to pay for players after their prime.

– He said there are exceptions to the rules. He specifically said Altuve will be an Astro for as long as he wants to be. * great news for me, he’s our teams heart.

– He talked about leadership. He said Brantley is a quiet leader and leads by example. They LOVE him in the locker room. Other younger guys emulate him and follow his lead. Said Springer was a great leader. Lead by encouragement and would get on the new guys. Said Correa was a different leader, more in your face (which we all could see).

– He has tried to change the internal culture of the organization. It was ran on fear and intimidation with Lunhow. People were always trying to get an edge on their co workers. Everyone was looking over their shoulder and worried about someone else stealing their job and no collaboration. He has changed that to work more as a team.

• he works a lot. Like 8-5 then game nights he’s at every game including home games. That’s like 14 hour days. He’s trying to change that culture a bit.

– – He mentioned they used a new amazing pitching simulator/ ball machine. It has a screen with every pitcher in the MLB. It shows their exact arm path, exact spin down to the rpm’s, angle, pitch depth etc. and the ball comes out of the screen. The players love it. He said Bregman uses it all the time.

– he said the line up is Dusty’s lineup. Dusty collaborates with their r&d department and other coaches, but Dusty has full control of the lineup. He said dusty loves talking with everyone and gets all of their input but ultimately it’s his decisions. He said he does not want the environment that others tell him what to do. They bring him the options and he makes the decisions. He said Dusty has earned that.

• even the coaches are doing coding for statistics. They are heavily into data and analytics (duh.)
• he said the division is getting better. He said he expects us to keep winning against them though.

– he said Seattle is up and coming but he is not too concerned about them long term.

– he said seattle has quite a few of their veterans coming up for free agency after 23 or 24. I’m not sure which is right, you guys can tell me that.

– he said he does not think Seattle has the capital to pay for top free agents. This is huge. Really interesting!

– he said because the community’s behind the Astros, it allows Jim crane to put up money to pay players. We should expect to be at the top of the division for the next 5 years or so.

– he said having Hunter brown as a luxury and a good problem to have. He said we have the lowest era for starting pitching and a great bullpen.

– he said the team he wants to hear the most is the Yankees

– he said sign stealing has been going on for quite a while. It’s legal in baseball. The spreadsheet they made is completely illegal. He said it was an intern that was trying to get his name on the map that created it.

• he does not do any of the heavy lifting in the data and analytics side anymore.

There is probably more that I can update when I remember it, but it was immensely fun and informative. There are a few other things I can’t share but we should be looking forward to the next couple of years.

Go Astros!