It's not terribly often that a front office hire (other than the GM) generates comment from around the baseball blogosphere, but that's exactly what Jeff Luhnow's hiring of Mike Fast has done.
Take, for instance, this Lookout Landing post:
The Astros aren't going to join the AL West as some kind of clown car. They're on their way towards legitimacy. And it's not just them. All teams are getting smarter. Some teams are getting smarter slower than other teams, and some teams are still run by Ned Colletti, but baseball's getting sharp. The intelligence gap between organizations is shrinking, increasing the significance of money and luck.
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
