Among the least consequential effects of Hurricane Harvey, which tore through Texas in the last week of August, was that it nearly scuppered the biggest trade of this baseball season—the type of deal the analytically driven Astros weren’t supposed to make.
On Aug. 25, Jeff Luhnow, the Astros’ 51-year-old general manager, left Houston with his wife, Gina, and their three-year-old son, Henry, to accompany the club on a three-game road trip to Anaheim. He had moved his furniture to the second story of their house near Rice. They stayed with Gina’s parents, in west Los Angeles, but he intended to return to Houston and hunker down with his front office before the waiver-trade deadline, midnight EDT on Aug.