I had this book on my mind in light of Justin Verlander’s third career no hitter pitched 9-2-19.



The 2019 baseball is about to reach its halfway point and many usual suspects are leading their division races. Until four years ago, the who’s who of baseball did not include the Houston Astros, but in 2015 the Astros started winning, and two years later the team won it all. This came as a shock to everyone outside of Houston and this book’s author who in 2014 wrote a Sports Illustrated story correc

I had this book on my mind in light of Justin Verlander’s third career no hitter pitched 9-2-19.



The 2019 baseball is about to reach its halfway point and many usual suspects are leading their division races. Until four years ago, the who’s who of baseball did not include the Houston Astros, but in 2015 the Astros started winning, and two years later the team won it all. This came as a shock to everyone outside of Houston and this book’s author who in 2014 wrote a Sports Illustrated story correctly predicting that the Cubs would win the World Series in 2016 and the Astros won beat them to win the title in 2017. Following the Astros’ success, Ben Reiter used his article for the basis of Astroball: The New Way to Win it All, our July 2019 choice for book of the month at the baseball book club here on goodreads.



In 1962 the Houston Astros joined the National League as an expansion team. For the first few years the team, known as the Colt .45s, was atrocious. Playing outdoors, players dealt with mosquito bites and heat stroke during hot and humid Houston summers. Yet, the team’s first owner Judge Roy Hofheinz had a vision to make Houston into a city of tomorrow and the largest metropolis of the south. He foresaw Houston surpassing Atlanta and Miami in population and becoming the city where progress happened. Hofheinz started Houston’s journey toward the future by constructing a multipurpose indoor stadium on top of acres of swampland in the downtown part of the city. With a roof and, more importantly, air conditioning, players would no longer bake in the sun. Tabbing scientists from nearby NASA to produce artificial grass that could be used indoors, Judge Hofheinz named the new invention AstroTurf and his jewel of a stadium the Astrodome.



At the dawn of the 21st century, the Astros had been sold twice, both to ownership groups who did not know how to manage a ball club. The team enjoyed some quality years in the early 1980s when Texas native son Nolan Ryan joined the team as free agent and then enjoyed a renaissance in the first few years of the 2000s behind star players Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell. The 2005 team made it to the World Series, but was then swept by Chicago White Sox. With aging stars, the Astros knew it would be their last chance at a winner for many years and then began their tradition of fielding losing teams. Following a move to the American League in 2013 to even out the American and National Leagues at fifteen teams each, it appeared that the Astros had little hope to compete in the future. Then, the unthinkable happened: slowly but surely the Astros began to win.



Jim Crane purchased the Astros in 2007 and was invested in fielding a winning team. Moneyball had been recently been published and using data to create a winning ball club was en Vogue. The Oakland A’s team featured in Moneyball took analytics to an extreme due to their low budget. A self made man and scion of a string of successful businesses, Jim Crane was not low budget. He was behind the Astros and their modern Minute Maid Park because he believed that he could create not just a winning team but a winning organization. By 2011, although the major league Astros would field teams that would lose 100 games three years in a row, Crane had brought on a management team that knew its data and was at the forefront of analytics. This team behind new general manager Jeff Luhnow and his stats guru Sig Megdal came aboard from the winning St Louis Cardinals organization. They knew about winning and stats and were excited to turn the Astros into winners.



Losing for years to earn top draft picks that eventually turn a team into winners can take its toll on fans. I know this all too well as my Cubs are known as the Astros’ national league counterpart, preceding them in winning it all one year earlier. Watching draft picks from afar is frustrating, but that is what Luhnow and his team of stats geeks preached to the Astros fan base: have patience with the progress this team is making. That is difficult when a team loses over 100 games three years in a row, but those teams lead to three number one overall draft picks, who are now the core of the Astros winning teams. Luhnow, however, notes that stats need a human element as well, and Megdal actually created elements that take the human element into account. Spin rate, launch angle, and defensive shifts are all metrics that the Astros brought to Major League Baseball before any of the other teams, and, as a fan who at times complains about how the reliance on data is ruining baseball, it was interesting to see the root of these metrics and how human and computer intersect to produce a winning product. Although Sig Megdal is a stats geek and the creator of the Astros’ fabled Nerd Cave, he understands the game of baseball and used his knowledge in both departments to help Luhnow construct his winning roster.



Reiter predicted that the Astros would win in 2017. He saw the draft picks that they had accumulated and foreshadowed that the entire organization had bought into winning. In other sports, tanking has become en vogue, yet writers have pointed out that unless an entire organization buys into the system, the losing will not turn into winning. Astroball, and the Cubs way, are unique in that from the owners on down, the whole organization has bought into winning, even during the years when the top professional team appears to be going nowhere. Reiter goes behind the scenes and picks apart how the Astros management team transformed the Astros into a winning organization. He notes the signing of the now iconic Astros infield and uses those players as examples of how Megdal focused on metrics yet still had scouts meet these players to show how that the human element still mattered. There is still no reliable metric for team leadership, yet signing a 40 year old to do just that is a prominent reason why the Astros won. Another area where there is still no metric: using tragedy in a community to galvanize a team to win. Hurricane Harvey appears front and center; it is not the first time a team has used a natural disaster to propel it to a championship. I would love to see a metric for that. Houston Strong indeed became the Astros rallying cry.



Recently, I saw the Astros in person. In a game that has been transformed to homer or strike out, the Astros only struck out five times for the entire game. They indeed used the defensive shift more than I am used to, but their data served them well as shifting lead to outs. Their big free agent acquisition in 2017, Verlander, he pitched that night, and he is worth whatever prospects the Astros gave up to get him. Verlander has said he would like to pitch until he’s in his mid forties and I don’t doubt him. Astroball has been a fun, summer read. Ben Reiter accurately shows how a data savvy business side of baseball leads to a winning product on the field. While I saw a small sample size in person, it appears as though the Astros have finally created a winning organization.



4 stars