The Houston Astros’ front-office missteps began long before Brandon Taubman’s comments

They will do so amid a controversy now entering its fourth day — each appreciably worse than the previous. An Astros assistant general manager has been fired amid an investigation into his mistreatment of female reporters. Major League Baseball is weighing further discipline against him as well as the organization, sources tell ESPN. The Astros’ reputation has suffered deep damage. All of it has sullied their attempt at another coronation.

Around the game, shots of schadenfreude have been chased by I-told-you-so’s. Contempt for the Astros runs deep — and has well before this incident. Jealousy breeds some of it. The organization’s arrogance accounts for the rest. The Astros painted themselves as a disrupter and reveled in the commotion. They lived with the perception that they didn’t understand people. They fed their process, followed it with fealty, doubled down. They believed in it, and they never had much of a reason not to, not until a week ago, when the assistant GM high on the feeling of winning the pennant opened his mouth, and two days later, when Luhnow and the Astros forgot to abide by that essential principle that has guided them for so long: Bad information leads to bad decisions.

IN THE MIDDLE of a celebration still raging well past midnight, a reggaeton song blasting through the speakers on repeat, a 25-year-old baseball star locked eyes with a 34-year-old front-office official. Alex Bregman and Brandon Taubman leaned in and hugged each other.

“You got us here,” said Bregman, the Astros’ third baseman and MVP candidate.

Taubman demurred. No, he said. You — the players — got the Houston Astros here, through the regular season with 107 wins, over the scrappy Tampa Bay Rays in a hard-fought division series and, on this night last Friday, past the New York Yankees in the sixth game of the American League Championship Series.

Puffing a cigar, wearing a grin of satisfaction, Taubman did not realize that minutes earlier he had likely ended his career in baseball and exposed the Astros to a stress test of their principles. Amid the festivities, Taubman found himself near a group of three female reporters, one of whom wore a purple domestic violence awareness bracelet. Taubman started yelling. At first, it was unclear at whom. Once the women heard him repeat his words, half a dozen times, it was evident he was directing his words at the reporter wearing the bracelet.

“Thank God we got Osuna!” Taubman said. “I’m so f—ing glad we got Osuna!”

• Passan: The wacky inning that put the Nats two wins from a championship

• Doolittle: Astros look beatable — very beatable — for the first time all season

• Kurkjian: Senators, Nationals and the Big Train: Why this World Series is special

• Miller: Who’s No. 1? Ranking all 50 players in the World Series

Roberto Osuna is the Astros’ closer. They acquired him from the Blue Jays a day before the July 31 trade deadline in 2018. He was in the middle of serving a 75-game MLB suspension for alleged domestic violence against the mother of his child. Canadian prosecutors dropped charges against Osuna after the woman returned to Mexico, their home country, and refused to testify, but the length of the suspension — it remains the third longest MLB has levied on a player for violating the domestic violence policy — and the fact that Osuna declined to appeal it spoke to the severity of the case.

Dealing for Osuna was a classic Luhnow-era Astros move. While a significant number of front-office employees opposed the trade, sources said, Luhnow overruled them with the support of Astros owner Jim Crane. Osuna was one of the game’s best closers, a difference-maker, and the incident had depressed his trade value. Luhnow saw him as a distressed asset; whatever public-relations hit the team took would be far outweighed by what he could bring to the team on the mound.

On a conference call the day of the deal, Luhnow tried to square acquiring Osuna with the so-called zero tolerance policy the Astros had regarding domestic violence. “Quite frankly,” Luhnow said, “I believe that you can have a zero tolerance policy and also have an opportunity to give people second chances when they have made mistakes in the past in other organizations. That’s kind of how we put those two things together.”

The logic gap in his words did not deter Luhnow from trying to sell it with conviction and assuredness. In a statement announcing the deal, Luhnow had claimed: “The due diligence by our front office was unprecedented.” When pressed for specifics, Luhnow said he had spoken with Osuna, his past teammates and players on the Astros.

Less than six weeks after the trade, the Astros promoted Taubman, then a senior director of baseball operations, to assistant GM. His ascent since joining the Astros in 2013 after working on Wall Street had been rapid: from low-level analyst to No. 2 in the baseball operations department in half a decade. Like Luhnow, a former consultant with McKinsey & Co., Taubman’s love of fantasy baseball provided a conduit into the sport. They shared, sources said, an unsparing view of the industry that manifested itself in an air of superiority. Taubman was widely disliked outside of Astros circles, eight sources who interacted with him said; most of them referenced his lack of “feel,” or people skills. But around the sport there had always been a grudging respect for Luhnow. His single-mindedness was impressive, if not admirable.

Nothing to that point illustrated it quite like the Osuna trade. The Astros had earned a reputation as an organization that lacked a conscience, though that was more because of their reliance on data, drastic personnel turnover and willingness to almost entirely forgo traditional scouting. The Osuna deal felt different — particularly the flimsiness of Luhnow’s attempts to rationalize it.

“We believe that this environment — the Houston Astros clubhouse, the players on our team, the staff that we have, the support system that we have, the influence that we can have going forward and our community in general — is a great environment to hopefully turn this from a negative story into a positive outcome down the road,” Luhnow said on the conference call. “It won’t be overnight. It won’t be easy. But we do hope that down the road there will be an opportunity to reflect on this in a more positive way.”

ON MONDAY NIGHT, the eve of Game 1 of the World Series, Sports Illustrated staff writer Stephanie Apstein published a story with Taubman’s comments from the ALCS celebration. She was one of the three women at whom he had directed them. When reached by Apstein, the Astros had declined to comment through a spokesman. At 9:25 p.m., she tweeted a link to the story. Almost exactly an hour later, the Astros released a statement.

“The story posted by Sports Illustrated is misleading and completely irresponsible,” it said. “An Astros player was being asked questions about a difficult outing. Our executive was supporting the player during a difficult time. His comments had everything to do with the game situation that just occurred and nothing else — they were also not directed toward any specific reporters. We are extremely disappointed in Sports Illustrated’s attempt to fabricate a story where one does not exist.”

In 74 words that oozed with aggression, the Astros had loosed an attack on the story’s veracity and Apstein’s credibility. It read with a similar belligerence to Luhnow’s words on the day of the Osuna trade: defensive, stilted, nevertheless awash with certitude. They were the Astros. They were right.

Earlier in the day, Apstein had called Gene Dias, the Astros’ media relations director, to inform him that she was writing a story about the incident. Dias already knew about what Taubman had said. On the night of the incident, ESPN.com reporter Bradford Doolittle had heard Taubman referencing Osuna. Though he had not observed Taubman turning toward the women, after talking with one of them, he believed Taubman had directed the words toward her. After speaking to the reporter again on Monday, Doolittle asked Dias if the team wanted to comment or make Taubman available to speak. Dias asked to call Doolittle back. When he did, he said Taubman had been speaking loudly in support of Osuna.

The context made little sense. Osuna had come on in the ninth inning of Game 6 to record a save that would have sent the Astros to the World Series and instead surrendered a game-tying home run to Yankees second baseman DJ LeMahieu. If there was any night Taubman was bound to be “so f—ing glad we got Osuna,” that was not it.

On Monday, Dias repeated that explanation to Apstein. She said she planned to publish her version, and if the Astros wanted to give an official comment she would include it. Dias declined. From there, sources say, the Astros started to craft a strategy, aware of the potential impact the story would register with Game 1 of the World Series less than 24 hours away.

play

SI’s Stephanie Apstein joins Outside the Lines to shed light on Astros assistant GM Brandon Taubman’s Roberto Osuna comments in the team’s clubhouse after Game 6 of the ALCS.

When asked by the Astros about his behavior, Taubman had vociferously denied targeting the women. Another Astros employee backed his version of the story, sources say. The organization found the information compelling enough to forgo any further examination of the comments and their context, even though Taubman’s story contained clear logic gaps. It was, as one league source says, “the Astros being the Astros. They trust their people.”

For nearly eight years, Luhnow had fomented a culture that pitted the Astros against the baseball world. This cocoon protected Taubman, even if it meant ignoring the tenet of information that stabilized the operation. They believed him, with no proof beyond his word.