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White House Has Not Issued A Public Invitation To Astros, Team Open To Visiting

Although the White House "has not issued an invitation publicly" to the World Series champion Astros, the team is "open to visiting," according to Hunter Atkins of the HOUSTON CHRONICLE. Several Astros players "expressed gratitude for a potential visit, which had been a longtime tradition" until President Trump this year "rescinded an invitation" to the Warriors. Astros P Dallas Keuchel said, "I'm going to go." Astros CF George Springer: "If the team goes, I'm going." A year ago Astros 3B Alex Bregman tweeted, "Trump is a joke." When asked if he would visit, Bregman said, "How do I feel about it? Umm. I don't know. I'm gonna do whatever Carlos Beltran and Carlos Correa do." Astros P Lance McCullers said, "There's obviously a lot of things that this country is going through and things that people need to deal with, but it's the White House. It's hard to say you're not going to go see the most historic building in our country. ... The White House stands for a lot, and I would be crazy not to want to see that firsthand" (HOUSTON CHRONICLE, 11/4). Astros manager A.J. Hinch: "We just won the first world championship in Houston Astros history. ... I don't know that this is the best stage for everybody to declare one way or the other and try to comment on the moment and be too much of a political statement." Hinch said that he "believes that the Astros should savor their accomplishment, but a decision on a White House visit would need to wait." Hinch: "We're not going to allow anything to polarize this moment that we want to celebrate with our fans" (AP, 11/3).

LONG-TERM PLAN: In Houston, David Barron in a front-page piece wrote it took a GM with an "engineering background and a manager with a psychology degree to construct and execute a plan to resurrect a woebegone" Astros team. There were "back-to-back 100-loss seasons" at the start of Astros Owner Jim Crane's era, with a rock bottom 51-111 season in '13, at the same time as the team was "suffering through significant setbacks in business operations through an unproductive local television deal." Astros GM Jeff Luhnow said, "Not everybody bought in to what we were doing. (Crane) and I met with season-ticket holders to explain that we were going to be transparent, that we were going to be honest, that this would take time and that there would be rough patches, and there were." He added, "But I have to give our ownership team and Jim Crane a ton of credit. He stuck with the plan. He trusted the people in baseball operations. He said that when the time came, he would support us with resources. He did that." Barron wrote the Crane regime's stated plan from Day 1 was to "reconstruct the Astros' minor league system, to restock the major league roster with homegrown players who would be under team salary control for a maximum length of time and, when the time was right, to add veteran players to the mix." Derided for what some saw as penny-pinching ways during three straight 100-loss seasons with the smallest payroll in MLB, Crane always said that he would "spend real money on the Astros when the time was right." A trade just seconds before the midnight Aug. 31 deadline to land P Justin Verlander saw Crane's "personal approval to spend more on Verlander [$40M] than the team's entire payroll [$13M] from just four seasons ago." It was a "promise kept and a plan fulfilled" (HOUSTON CHRONICLE, 11/5).

WINNING FORMULA: In N.Y., Tyler Kepner noted Luhnow "did more than rely on analytics." He recognized the "incentives for losing baked into what was then a new collective bargaining agreement." The worst teams would have "much more money to spend on amateur talent," and a few years of "struggle could lead to many years of success." Luhnow: "Not every plan makes sense for every team. But where we started, with the worst team in baseball and one of the worst farm systems in baseball, we really had no choice. We had to focus on developing our own and when the time is right, adding to it" (N.Y. TIMES, 11/5). Also in N.Y., Joel Sherman wrote, "Every team will try to learn their secrets, then emulate them." But the Astros showed that "there is not one way to win." The Astros' key "seemed to be an unswerving faith in sticking to their belief systems." They stayed "committed to their analytics despite being lambasted within the industry more than any other two teams combined" (N.Y. POST, 11/5). Meanwhile, MLB.com's Jessica Kleinschmidt noted the Dodgers decided to "show their respect by taking out a full-page ad in the Houston Chronicle with a few words for the team." The ad read, "The Los Angeles Dodgers Congratulate The Houston Astros On Winning The 2017 World Series Championship" (MLB.com, 11/5).

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