{"id":871455,"date":"2026-08-25T23:26:19","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T23:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/871455\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T23:26:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T23:26:19","slug":"after-ouster-of-gm-dana-brown-houston-astros-owner-jim-crane-says-manager-joe-espada-will-finish-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/871455\/","title":{"rendered":"After ouster of GM Dana Brown, Houston Astros owner Jim Crane says manager Joe Espada will finish season"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 A day after parting ways with general manager Dana Brown, Houston Astros<\/a> owner Jim Crane addressed the move and said manager Joe Espada will remain in the role for the remainder of the season.<\/p>\n

Before opening a three-game series against the Yankees on Tuesday, the Astros moved on from Brown, whose contract was set to expire at the end of the season. The team described the decision as mutual. Houston announced senior adviser Jeff Bagwell and assistant general managers Charles Cook, Gavin Dickey and Connor Huff will take over Brown\u2019s responsibilities, while Crane will oversee baseball operations during the transition.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no good time for any of that, you know, when you let someone go,\u201d Crane said outside the Houston clubhouse. \u201cJust out of respect for Dana, we thought that was a time that would give him a little space to regroup. He\u2019s a great talent. He\u2019s been in the business a long time to get settled and to get back to work somewhere else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown was hired in January 2023 and succeeded James Click, who was fired six days after Houston won its second World Series title.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe worked together very closely for three and a half years,\u201d Espada said. \u201cHe gave me the opportunity to be manager of this team. It was tough. It was a tough conversation, but he was grateful for the opportunity and I\u2019m grateful for our relationship and how we grind through this together, but it was emotional. It was a lot of emotions behind our conversation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Brown helped the Astros reach a seventh straight ALCS, which they lost in seven games to the Texas Rangers<\/a>. Houston lost in a wild-card series to Detroit in 2024 and last season missed the playoffs for the first time since 2016 when it finished three games behind Seattle in the AL West and lost a tiebreaker with the Tigers for final wild-card spot.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot everybody\u2019s been able to do it, that\u2019s a good run,\u201d Crane said. \u201cWe hope to keep that going. We had a little hiccup last year where we didn\u2019t make the playoffs but we\u2019re right there. I think some few adjustments we can get back to that and some good decisions. Certainly you got to keep working on it but the expectation that I have is that we\u2019re in the playoffs every year. It\u2019s hard to win every year, but to get there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Astros began this year 20-31 but were only 5 1\/2 games out of first place in a weak AL West on May 20. Houston (65-66) recovered to win 40 of its next 66 games through a 6-3 win over San Diego on Aug. 7 but entered Tuesday with nine losses in 14 games, including four to the Angels and A\u2019s, though Crane said that performance did not influence his decision to dismiss Brown.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat didn\u2019t have anything to do with it,\u201d Crane said. \u201cWe\u2019re focused on winning the AL, winning the division and that\u2019s our focus but that didn\u2019t have anything to do with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Espada was promoted from bench coach after the 2023 season when Dusty Baker retired. He helped the Astros recover from a 12-24 start to win their seventh AL West crown in eight seasons in 2024 and began Tuesday with a 240-214 record.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know where that got mixed up, but that\u2019s the same answer I gave since the first of the year,\u201d Crane said. \u201cWe told him we\u2019d deal with that at the end of the season and we\u2019ve never changed that answer all year long.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before Crane addressed reporters for nearly 10 minutes, he met with Espada.<\/p>\n

\u201cFocus on winning today, that\u2019s how I left that,\u201d Espada said. \u201cMy responsibility is to lead this team. We have a very important stretch of games here. So I walk out of our office ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/mlb<\/p>\n

Larry Fleisher, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 A day after parting ways with general manager Dana Brown, Houston Astros owner Jim…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":871456,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-871455","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871455","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=871455"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/871455\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/871456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=871455"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=871455"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=871455"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}