New Astros GM Jeff Luhnow is a Penn alum

With a front-office shakeup ongoing in the Houston Astros organization, and MLB's winter meetings taking place, baseball's losing-est team this year announced the hiring of Jeff Luhnow as its new general manager.

As Zachary Levine, Astros beat writer for the Houston Chronicle, points out, Luhnow went to Penn, graduating from Wharton and the School of Engineering in 1989. (Levine, too, is a Penn and DP Sports alum).

Lunhow had been a vice president with Cardinals organization since 2003, and was most recently director of player procurement in St. Louis.

“We are very pleased to have Jeff as the new General Manager of the Houston Astros,” team CEO George Postolos said in a statement. “Jeff is the perfect fit for the Astros because of his track record in scouting and player development during his eight-plus seasons with the Cardinals.

The new GM was also quoted in the DP back in 2006 in an article on Ivy Leaguers in the MLB:

Jeff Luhnow, a Penn grad who now works as the vice president of player procurement for the St. Louis Cardinals, previously worked for McKinsey.
"Decision-making in baseball is not too different than decision-making in business," Luhnow said. "You ultimately have to make decisions with less than perfect information, and you may end up being wrong because there are always variables that are impossible to account for completely in advance."

Nonetheless, owners and fans alike are relying on younger people armed with prestigious degrees to do their best to calculate success.