Day 1: Fire old general manager.

Day 1-A: Try to steal new general manager from good team.

Richard Justice:

The Astros have received permission to interview Tampa Bay Rays general manager Andrew Friedman, according to officials with knowledge of the organization’s thinking.

Although the club has asked to interview "a handful" of others, Friedman clearly is the No. 1 choice to replace Ed Wade.

And why wouldn't he be the Astros' No. 1 choice? In the single most useful measure of a baseball executive's performance -- marginal wins per marginal dollars -- the Tampa Bay Rays over the last four seasons are so far ahead of everyone else that Major League Baseball should probably create an award for baseball executives and call it the Andrew Friedman Award and just call it good for a while.

Still, this probably wouldn't be coming up at all, except Friedman grew up in Houston, Texas.

Yeah, I know: You thought everybody named Andrew Friedman was born in New York. With a father who was a doctor. Or a lawyer.

Hey, man. Check your stereotypes at the door. Friedman was born in Houston. And get this: His father played baseball at Tulane. And so did Andrew.

Which doesn't mean he wants to move back to Texas, necessarily. It's really hard to find authentic bagels there.

Whoops. Now I'm doing it. It's quite possible that Andrew Friedman doesn't even like bagels.

Also, in the long term the Houston Astros are going to win more games than the Tampa Bay Rays.

There are nearly six million people in the Houston metropolitan area. There are fewer than three million people in the Tampa-St. Petersburg metropolitan area. And that's not even mentioning the whole ballpark issue.

I don't think Friedman's going to actually leave the Rays. But there are a lot dumber things that a nice Jewish boy from Houston could do.