Dana Brown gives his opinion on why he was fired in first interview since dismissal from Astros

When the Houston Astros let go of their general manager Dana Brown last week while the team was still in first place in the American League West, Jim Crane said the club’s disappointing performance during a homestand about the sub.-500 Mariners, Angels and Athletics did not “have anything to do with” his decision.

Making his first public statements since his dismissal, Brown contradicted that statement from the owner. 

“As I play this through my mind, this is what I thought about: You’re coming into a nine-game home stand and you’re up by two on the Texas Rangers and you’re up by four on the Seattle Mariners. You have a nine-game stretch, you’re playing three teams in your division. All three teams are below .500 and you have to win these series,” Brown said in an 18-minute interview Sunday with Jim Bowden and Jim Duquette on SiriusXM’s MLB Network Radio channel. “We go in and we lose six of the nine, so we go 3-6 and we’re tied (with the Rangers), but we have the tiebreaker, so we’re still in first place. And I just think the frustration mounted and it boiled over and that was the end of it.”

The Astros announced the team and Brown had parted ways the morning after that 3-6 homestand.

Brown pointed out that the Astros went 330-286 (.536) in his 3 ½ years at the helm, which is better than any general manager in the American League during that time period besides the Yankees’ Brian Cashman and Rays’ Erik Neander, but he also credited Crane for hiring him back in 2023.

“I have a lot of respect for him,” Brown said. “He gave me the opportunity. I’m the seventh Black general manager in baseball. Think about it, there’s only been seven of us that walk the face of this earth that had this job. So, I’m very grateful to him for doing that.”

Crane has taken over the Astros’ baseball operations until the team hires a new general manager. While Brown admitted he had to run moves by Crane, he didn’t fault the owner for his involvement. 

“Jim Crane allowed me to do a lot, right? So I don’t think that he micromanaged my whole tenure here,” Brown said. “Of course, as the (GM), you have to fill in the owner and you have to let him know what’s going on and different things like that. … The only thing I can tell you is that he allowed me to run the club, and I had the freedom and flexibility to make some moves, but also other moves that we have to go through ownership, and that’s just the way it is. That’s baseball.”

Brown was the Astros’ third general manager during the current unprecedented run in franchise history. Jeff Luhnow led the team’s turnaround that resulted in the 2017 championship and another trip to the World Series in 2019, but he was fired before the 2020 season after the illegal sign-stealing operation came to light. James Click took over and helped the club reach another World Series in 2021 and win the title in 2022, but his contract was not renewed after the championship, which led to Brown getting the job in January 2023. That was a lot of success for a new general manager to walk into, especially for a team that had players like Alex Bregman, Kyle Tucker and Framber Valdez nearing the end of the tenures with the team as they looked elsewhere for hefty contracts the Astros weren’t willing to offer.

“The thing that keeps me up at night is I knew at some point with all of the success that they were having, there was going to be this movement from that huge success going to the World Series four times, and when I was taking over, there was this transition that this team was pretty much going back to being competitive because you were experiencing things like losing free agents,” Brown said. “Of course, when you have that much success and that much of a run, you got players that are aging, and mixed in a few bad contracts, and so things were starting to shift a little bit. But the high demand of winning and getting to the World Series is real here. That’s what it’s all about.”

Trading for Mike Burrows and signing Japanese pitcher Tatuya Imai to a lucrative deal are two moves from the most recent offseason that came back to bite Brown. He defended those deals, and said that his biggest regret actually was not bringing in a specific left-handed outfielder – he wouldn’t name the player – who he had conversations about but didn’t get it done and now that player is having a good season for someone else. 

“I really feel like Burrows is going to be good at some point. I feel like Imai is going to be good and those are the two big offseason acquisitions that didn’t quite turn the corner as quickly as I would have liked,” Brown said. “I think the team would be in a different space, maybe eight more wins if those guys had turned the corner sooner, but that’s just kind of the way it goes.”

The 59-year-old Brown, who has worked in Major League Baseball for more than 30 years hasn’t started looking for a new job yet, instead he’s spending time with his family, including two young grandchildren, while still watching every Astros game, although he says now he can be more relaxed “and kind of sit back and not scream at the TV.”

Astros manager Joe Espada entered this season in the same situation as Brown, with both working into the final year of their contracts. Brown said he thinks Espada is “managing very well” and that he’s “back him 100%” as he is the rest of the team.

“I’m still pulling for those guys down in the clubhouse,” Brown said. “I’ve had great relationships with those guys and we’ve been in the trenches together, we’ve ben in war together. We’ve had conversations. That’s the human element of the game that sometimes people don’t understand. My heart and soul’s still in it, so I’m pulling for the Astros and the city and Jim Crane and the ownership, I’m pulling for all of it.”

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This article originally published at Dana Brown gives his opinion on why he was fired in first interview since dismissal from Astros.