If it's trade-centric sports content that you seek, Houston has been a pretty damn good city in which to live for the last decade or so. As our big three sports teams have battled for titles, ascended and rebuilt, and just gone through the normal course of business, trades have been a huge component of their roster building.
We're talking BIG trades. Massive trades. You want a trade involving a franchise quarterback? Nick Caserio obliges. You want a trade for an all time great NBA scorer? Rafael Stone says "No sweat." How about a multi-time Cy Young Award winner? Jeff Luhnow says "Hell yeah!" Multiple times! What about traded the other way, where you know it's an awful trade the second it's reported. Well, that's where Bill O'Brien enters the chat.
So which general managers over the last decade and change have given us in the content generation business, and fans at large, the most juice, the sauciest trades, and plentiful conversation fodder. The trades can be good, the trades can be bad, but for this conversation they MUST be huge. In ascending order, here is the Pendergast Sauce Rankings for recent Houston general manager:
8. BRIAN GAINE, Texans GM (2018-2019)
The bottom of the list is the easiest selection. Gaine is handicapped somewhat by his short term as the team's general manager, not even 18 months. but even in that short time, he made almost no trades. Gaine did zero maneuvering within the draft, and his only notable trade outside of the draft was a trade deadline move to pick up wide receiver Demaryius Thomas in 2018. I felt badly for Gaine when he got fired in 2019, but long term, this was probably for the best.
**7. JAMES CLICK, Astros GM (2020-2022)**Click is the rare GM to oversee a world champion, and then not be brought back the next season. The Astros didn't really fire Click, but they did lowball him on his extension offer, and he saw the writing on the wall. Click made some really nice trades on the margins. Mauricio Dubon and Yainer Diaz were parts of Click trades. Ultimately, Click's lack of desire or lack of ability to make big moves may be what soured owner Jim Crane on him.
**6. DANA BROWN, Astros GM (2023-present)**We are into our third regular season with Brown as GM. He inherited some good and some bad, when he took over in 2023. The good? The Astros were a defending world champion. The bad? They'd watched several key players walk in free agency in the years prior, and for the few months before Brown arrived, Crane and Jeff Bagwell handed out some horrific contracts to Jose Abreu, Rafael Montero, and Michael Brantley. Brown's signature trades have been the return of Justin Verlander in 2023, and the trade of Kyle Tucker to the Cubs, for Isaac Paredes, Cam Smith, and Hayden Wesneski. The Tucker trade keeps him above Click and Gaine.
**5. BILL O’BRIEN, Texans GM (2019-2020)**Now, business picks up. That is the one compliment I can pay O'Brien as a GM — things were ALWAYS saucy with him in charge. There was never a player waived by another team where I thought "Nah, the Texans won't pick him up." O'Brien would pick up anybody, it seemed. His signature trades were the trade for Laremy Tunsil (in exchange for two first round picks), trading out Jadeveon Clowney (not good), and trading out DeAndre Hopkins (worst trade in team history). Again, saucy is not always good.
**4. RAFAEL STONE, Rockets GM (2020-present)**To be fair to Stone, most of what he's had to do in building the Rockets has been about the draft, free agency, and hiring Ime Udoka as the head coach. The only big trades he's made, though, have had MASSIVE layers of sauce on them! Just after his promotion to GM, Stone granted James Harden his wish, sending him to Brooklyn for a mountain of draft capital. Fast forward, and a week ago, Stone made the deal for Kevin Durant, which puts the Rockets right in the mix for an NBA title.
**3. JEFF LUHNOW, Astros GM (2011-2020)**Luhnow is the greatest GM in the history of this city, having built the 2017 World Series champion from scratch, and having brought in nearly all the pieces for the 2022 championship team that won two years after Luhnow was gone. Luhnow's greatest work as GM was the Verlander trade in 2017 in late August, the Gerrit Cole trade that next offseason, and the trade deadline move for Zack Greinke.
2. DARYL MOREY, Rockets GM (2007-2020)
I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but if I had to guess, Morey might have made more trades in his decade-plus as the Rockets' GM than the rest of the GMs on this list combined. I was once in a fantasy football league with Morey, and he would be making waiver pickups by the bushel in the middle of the night, all season long. I once asked him why he was so ultra active at 3 a.m. for fantasy football purposes, and he texted back "Sleep when dead." Anyway, the trade for James Harden in 2012 set the table for Morey's continued barrage of trades for years and years, highlighted by the 2017 trade for Chris Paul, and the trade two years later for Russell Westbrook, sending Paul to Oklahoma City.
1. NICK CASERIO, Texans GM (2021-present)
The "sauce level" of a trade is about (a) how big a buzz it creates, and (b) how far reaching that buzz goes. The fact of the matter is Nick Caserio has made three trades in his time as Texans general manager that set the bar for newsworthiness for the next several days — the Deshaun Watson trade in March 2022, the trade up for Will Anderson in the 2023 draft, and the trade for Stefon Diggs in April 2024. It doesn't get any saucier than that.
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