With the semi-official news this morning that Reid Ryan will be replacing George Postolos as the Astros President, I am finally seeing something I haven't seen in a very long while. I'm seeing a glimmer of hope. Hope that Ryan, as a baseball man with good business acumen, will understand the frustrations of Astros fans who understand re-building the team on the field, but don't understand the wholesale destruction of the Astros image off the field. Hope that the constant PR disasters will either come to an abrupt end or at least slow to a trickle. Hope that I can once again take pride in my Astros off the field as well as on the field.
Ryan is a class act all the way. He runs fantastic operations in Round Rock and in Corpus Christi. And he understands baseball. And baseball fans. He will be friendly, approachable and sensitive to the fans' needs while also being a good steward of the business operations for Jim Crane.
I am hard-pressed to think of a better choice. Jim Crane deserves a great deal of credit for this choice. It is a chance to re-set the narrative for the Astros, a narrative which has been on a downward spiral for quite some time.
As far as I'm concerned, Jim Crane now gets a clean slate. This is his mulligan. Let's do this right this time.
My guess is that this has been in the works for longer than we realize. Very few organizations can hire a president in just a couple of days without at least having a list of people ready to call when there is a opening. If I had to bet, this has been in the works for a few weeks. Crane finally asks for Postolos' resignation paving the way for a decision that was made possibly weeks ago. I applaud Crane for making a move to right a ship that had badly gone off course on the business side.
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