The MVP Machine: How Baseball's New Nonconformists Are Using Data to Build Better Players

by Ben Lindbergh

Even though NDAs bar analysts and coaches from taking team property with them, they can’t forget what they know. That presents a problem, because although the Astros have modernized player development by breaking down barriers between baseball worlds, they aren’t indivisible. The pursuit of a championship acted as a unifying force, but in the wake of the 2017 title, even some nonscout Astros sources grew disgruntled, believing that Luhnow was becoming too cost conscious and overly reliant on numbers—criticisms that external sources once lodged during the Astros’ no-holds-barred rebuild. Front-office members have clashed over a series of subjects, including how much information to share with scouts, how many scouts to employ, and whether to trade for reliever Roberto Osuna, whose 2018 acquisition in the midst of a domestic-violence suspension—followed by Luhnow’s convoluted attempt to square the swap with a supposed “zero-tolerance policy related to abuse of any kind”—caused a public backlash. According to multiple sources, most or all of the front office was strongly opposed to that trade, but Luhnow—who had earlier been talked out of drafting Oregon State pitcher and convicted child molester Luke Heimlich, who has trained at Driveline—rammed it through regardless, with Crane’s support. The same pursuit of inefficiencies that prompted the GM and owner to strip-mine the roster and revamp player development convinced them to cross a line that many of their own recruits consi...