When the Houston Astros inked Cristian Javier to a five-year extension on Friday, it marked a change in direction for the World Series champions.
Prior to the arrival of new general manager Dana Brown, the Houston Astros were a team that was wary of diving into early contract extensions. However, owner Jim Crane’s contract philosophy is being shaken to its core by the recent arrival of Brown and his steadfast belief in the importance of locking up key pieces of the team before their contracts are up.
That belief became evident with Javier’s $64 million deal that our own Robert Murray broke down here.
How the Atlanta Braves are influencing the Houston Astros
With Brown’s experience under Alex Anthopoulos inside the Atlanta Braves organization, a franchise that has built itself on contract extensions for young stars, Houston’s way of doing business is not only likely to continue to morph, but has already started to change with the Javier extension.
“At the end of the day, that’s an important part of what we do, and coming from Atlanta, we did that well,” Brown recently told reporters, including MLB.com’s Brian McTaggart. We probably handed out more years than anyone in baseball, if you did the math. That’s a big part of what we should do. We owe it to the fan base to keep the players in the city.”
Javier is the first piece of Brown’s master extension plan to keep players in the city, with Alex Bregman and Jose Altuve reportedly on the list, as well as Kyle Tucker who, like Javier, is not through with his arbitration years yet.
Altuve and Bregman are both signed through 2024, giving the Astros time to work through what extensions might look like for both stars. However, while there’s still time to put together the framework, Brown has a message regarding how things used to be in Houston and how they will very likely be moving forward.
“I talked to Jim — fasten your seatbelts. It’s time,” Brown told McTaggart and other reporters. “If you don’t want players to walk out the door, you have to really be locked in to how good this player is, what do you project his future to be, and try to get him locked up. I think the players are motivated to get it done, sometimes the agents are motivated [to get] it done, and I think we can meet somewhere in the middle, that you can continue to sustain the winning if you can continue to sign good players.”