Jesus man, this is a beating of a continuous take, especially for a fan of a team that's been to 4 WS in 6 years. That's simply not what happened. Crane did not decide he didn't need a GM, he decided that his current GM had run his course. He either had to get rid of Click OR extend him, there was no in between. So if he wanted a new GM, (which he clearly did, and so did a larger percentage of all of us) either he actively shopped and interviewed a GM during the season, during the WS run, which would have been utterly idiotic, or he did what he did and worked to find the right guy for the long term. And in between business can't just stop. Crane has said over and over again that he felt rushed when he hired Click, a guy that none of us really loved, and some of us downright loathed.
And if he didn't have a GM that didn't mean that nothing could happen in the meantime. Including using the 2 Assistant GMs to help out. There was literally nothing wrong with the Abreu deal given what we knew at the time. Go back and look at the 90% of people on this board who thought it was a good deal, save maybe it was a year too long. The Montero deal was a massive overpay at the time, and maybe you let the guy walk, but it wasn't a huge deal in the scheme of what relievers got. We could all argue against it, because relievers are cyclical (see one Maton, Phil) but it wasn't technically a horrible deal, again in the scheme of reliever pay this off season. Brantley deal was hopeful, but it wasn't horrific or team cap altering.
But my biggest issue with all of this is simple: Every single one of the guys any of us wanted is shitting the bed horribly. And don't any of you say Yuli, there was maybe 5% of people that know a thing about baseball on this board that thought we should re-sign him. He spent some money, but not team hampering money.