I am not as sure as most that Drayton McLane made the right move in firing General Manager Tim Purpura the other day. However, there is no doubt that Baseball Prospectus’ Joe Sheehan thinks that McLane screwed the pooch in canning Purpura. In this article ($) entitled “Tim Purpura Gets Screwed,” Sheehan lays into McLane’s management of the Stros:

Firing Purpura, as McLane did yesterday, is an act of incompetence. Not only was it Purpuraís workóhe ran the Astrosí player-development operations for seven years prior to becoming GMóthat built the pennant winner, but with the expensive problems he inherited and the meddling of McLane, it was impossible for him to move the Astros in the direction they needed to go. He was essentially a caretaker, needing to preside over a rebuilding process and never being allowed to do so, and heís now out of a job largely because his employer has returned to being completely irrational about what his team is.
Purpuraís performance as a GM was a mixed bag. He made his share of missteps, such as the [Jason Jennings] trade and the Woody Williams contract. However, he showed a terrific ability for making the smaller moves that add value at very little cost. In three seasons, Purpura made something-for-nothing pickups such as Mike Lamb, Aubrey Huff, and Mark Loretta. The player-development program he built continues to generate contributors such as Luke Scott, Wandy Rodriguez (check out his peripherals this year), Chad Qualls, and Troy Patton. If left to his own devices, I have no doubt that Purpura would have limited the Astrosí rebuilding process to a few short seasons, and come out on the other side with a team prepared for a long run of success.
Instead, heís out of a job. Tim Purpura isnít to blame for the Astrosí disappointing 2007 season, and that heís being fired for it is ridiculous. Drayton McLane set these events in motion by abandoning what had worked for close to a decadeóstaying out of the baseball staffís wayóand instead making his own bad decisions about what the Astros needed. McLane wanted a year-long coronation of Craig Biggio, and he got it. He couldnít have that and a contending baseball team, however, and his refusal to see thatóand his subsequent dismissal of Purpura and Phil Garner as scapegoats for his own mistakesóranks as one of the gameís great embarrassments of 2007.
Tim Purpura was one of the gameís top GM candidates when he landed the Astrosí job, and standing on the unemployment line today, he regains that description. If heís out of work for longer than a couple of days, the industry is making a terrible mistake. Purpura is a better GM than a dozen guys who hold that title at the moment, and I sincerely hope he gets an opportunity to do the job correctly, an opportunity that was denied him in Houston.

Here’s a counter-perspective.

Stros owner Drayton McLane finally pulled the plug and fired General Manager Tim Purpura and Manager Phil Garner on Monday as the Stros continue their spiral downward into last place in the National League Central. Although the timing of the firings was somewhat surprising, the fact that McLane let Purpura and Garner go was not.
The decision to fire Garner was actually the easier decision. As noted several times earlier, Garner is not a particularly good manager, although he is far from the worst that the Stros have had (for example, Jimy Williams). Inasmuch as a new general manager will likely want to hire his own manager and Garner is nothing special in that role, letting him go at the same time as firing the GM is a logical move.
Curiously, the tougher decision was on whether to let Purpura go. Although the Stros are enduring their worst season since 2000, this is only the second season over the past 16 in which the club will finish with a losing record. In fact, Purpura has been a key part of a management team for the past 14 years that helped construct the most successful era in the club’s history. He was a part of the player development division of Stros management that produced such star players as Lance Berkman, Richard Hidalgo, Carlos Guillen and Freddy Garcia, and developed a starting pitching staff early this decade that looked at the time as the best young staff in MLB (Roy Oswalt, Carlos Hernandez, Wade Miller and Tim Redding). It certainly wasn’t Purpura’s fault that that potentially fine staff was undermined by injury (Hernandez and Miller) and stunted progress (Redding).
Moreover, Purpura’s GM tenure certainly started out with a bang. In his first season after replacing Gerry Hunsicker, the Stros improbably won their first National League pennant and went to their first World Series. But that World Series season masked a gradual decline in the Stros’ performance level that had been taking place since 2001, and the results of that decline started to appear the following season — the Stros had to finish fast just to eke out a winning record (82-80). Similarly, the 2007 club has deteriorated further as it has struggled all season behind one of the worst performances by a pitching staff in Stros history.
Thus, to a certain extent, Purpura is bearing the fallout from a trend that began long before he replaced Hunsicker as GM. Along those same lines, Purpura probably had nothing to do with the club’s decision to indulge Craig Biggio’s quest for 3,000 hits, an indulgence that has negatively affected the development of younger players such as Chris Burke and Jason Lane (see here and here).
But that’s not to suggest McLane didn’t have any reasons to cut Purpura loose. It appears that Purpura bungled the due diligence on the Jason Jennings trade, and the Woody Williams deal has turned out badly. After giving up the club’s top two picks in this season’s draft in the Williams and Carlos Lee deals, Purpura failed to sign the Stros two top choices (third and fourth round draft choices), further depleting a farm system that has been in decline since 1997. Finally, with this season’s club going nowhere, Purpura was unable to swing a meaningful trade before this season’s trading deadline, which further cemented the perception locally that he was in over his head in the GM’s post.
Despite all this, Purpura leaves the Stros in decent, if not pristine, shape. Yes, the farm system is a mess as far as position players go, but there still are a decent number of pitching prospects who have the potential to contribute to the major league club. Moreover, Purpura locked up stars Oswalt, Berkman and Lee to long-term contracts that, with the possible exception of Lee’s, are well-under current market conditions. Purpura also resisted the temptation to dedicate enormous resources to re-sign fading superstars Andy Pettitte and Roger Clemens, so the club’s payroll is positioned for a new GM to bid for a couple of free agent pitchers this winter to shore up the pitching staff. The free agent pitchers available after this season are not particularly talented, but at least Purpura leaves the Stros with the financial flexibility to get involved in the market if they so choose.
So, who will McLane hire as the new GM? I don’t have a clue, but my sense is that it will be someone with a strong background in player evaluation and development. McLane realizes by now that the Stros’ current decline is the inevitable result of poor draft choices during the period from 1997-2002. Moreover, the lack of class “A” prospects in the current farm system does not bode well for the selections made in the 2003-2006 drafts, although it is still a big early to evaluate those drafts completely. The Stros franchise has increased in value considerably during the Biggio-Bagwell era and its GM job is now among the more attractive in MLB, but the club is unlikely ever to be the type of franchise that will be able to compete year in and year out with the big-market clubs for free agent talent.
Thus, the lifeblood of the Stros is their farm system, and my bet is that McLane will hire a baseball executive who has the background and expertise to turnaround the erosion in player evaluation and development that has led to this year’s bad season. With a nucleus of Berkman, Oswalt, Lee and Pence, the good news is that it’s not going to take a major overhaul to make the Stros competitive again for the National League Central title.