Who is Randy Flores? Astros pick Cardinals executive to fix 81-81 team - USA Today

Randy Flores found Tommy Edman in the sixth round and Lars Nootbaar in the eighth for the St. Louis Cardinals. The Houston Astros are hoping he can find them a manager and another championship.

On Friday, the Astros announced that they hired Flores, a former big leaguer and the Cardinals' current assistant general manager and scouting director, as their new GM. That ends a search that started in August when Dana Brown was pushed out.

The first job on Flores' desk is filling the hole in the dugout. Houston let manager Joe Espada go on Oct. 14.

Flores, 51, takes over a team that won the American League West at 81-81. No team had ever reached the postseason in a full season with a lower winning percentage. Then the Chicago White Sox swept the Astros out of the wild-card round at Daikin Park, their ninth straight home playoff loss.

Like Brown, Flores came up on the scouting side of the game. He has run the Cardinals' drafts since 2025 and became assistant GM in 2018. Nolan Gorman, Jordan Walker, Masyn Winn, Dylan Carlson and Brendan Donovan were all his picks. So was Zac Gallen, who turned into an All-Star after St. Louis traded him.

Flores wasn't the name everyone expected. Brewers assistant GM Matt Kleine was reported as Houston's top target, but he had just signed an extension in Milwaukee. Former Nationals GM Mike Rizzo interviewed last week. White Sox assistant GM Josh Barfield and Houston's assistant GMs Charles Cook and Gavin Dickey were also in the mix.

Flores is a former big-league lefty.

The New York Yankees drafted him in 1997 out of USC, where he won 42 games, a school record. He pitched parts of eight seasons for the Rangers, Rockies, Cardinals and Twins and finished with a 4.61 ERA over 250 innings.

His best stretch came in October 2006. Flores threw 5⅔ scoreless innings in the postseason and the Cardinals won the World Series.

After he retired, he got a master's degree at USC, coached the Trojans' pitchers in 2013 and called college games for ESPN and the Pac-12 Networks. He also started OnDeck Digitial, which filmed amateur players.

The Cardinals hired him to run amateur scouting in August 2015. He drew interest from the Mets in an earlier GM search, and the Angels were linked to him this fall.

Officially, they didn't. On Aug. 24, the Astros said they and Brown had "mutually agreed to part ways." His contract was up at the end of the season anyway.

There were reports that the split came after Brown tried to trade reliever Bryan Abreu to the Minnesota Twins for Trevor Larnach, and owner Jim Crane killed the deal.

Brown had been GM since January 2023 and won two division titles. After he left, Crane and Hall of Famer Jeff Bagwell oversaw baseball operations.

Espada went 256-229 in three seasons, with two AL West titles. His teams went 0-4 in the playoffs.

The clock is already running. Free agency opens Monday, and the general managers meetings are the following week in Las Vegas.

The Astros started this season 20-31 and still won their fifth division title in six years. Their ninth playoff trip in 10 seasons lasted two games.