The Astros front office continues to retool the scouting side, hiring a new scouting in Brian Lambe after letting go longtime scout Rusty Pendergast and a few others. The team also hired a new minor league pitching coordinator with a pretty impressive resume. As Zachary Levine says here, Jon Matlack is a former All-Star pitcher with the Mets and Rangers who spent 13 years in the big leagues.
↵Neither move is significant in the larger sense. Both of these hires will make little impact on the big-picture side for Houston next season. However, it does show how the ownership holdout is affecting next year's team already. If Jim Crane wants to overhaul the front office, it's going to be harder and harder to find the right people at this late date.
↵Front office types are looking for jobs right now. Will they wait until Crane is confirmed in mid-November? How soon would he be able to woo Andrew Friedman away from the Rays? Will he just keep Ed Wade with the timeline to the Winter Meetings so compressed?
↵The Astros need to have some certainty at the top of the organization to move on from last year's disaster. Right now, they're moving along with business as usual, but if change is gonna come, it needs to get here in a hurry.
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