In 2011, Terry Virts attended a meeting with George Postolos, then the Houston Astros' president, during which Postolos laid out a vision to completely blow up the team and rebuild it from the ground up.
Virts, a Columbia, Md., native had moved to Houston in 2000 to become a NASA astronaut. Though he is a lifelong Baltimore Orioles fan, Virts adopted the Astros as a second team. He even befriended Astros front office executives including Mike Elias and Sig Mejdal. Elias began with the Astros in 2011 as the director of amateur scouting, while Mejdal was hired in 2012 as the director of decision sciences.
Postolos was suggesting historic levels of losing for a chance to be successful years down the line.
