Want them to do it so badly. It’s a huge one, and if they win 2 WS during that stretch then they can legit claim the greatest 4 year stretch in the history of baseball. I have long thought that the only way the tanking was worthwhile/justified was if it resulted in multiple WS OR 4 straight 100 win seasons, OR 7 straight division titles.
If we don’t win the WS this year or next and win 99 games next year I will be bummed but still think the project was worth it. We’ve now had as much good times as we had bad with the tank.
The tank was "bad" but SO much better than the years preceding it, when everyone knew (except the Astros brass, it felt like) that the team was so much mediocrity with a fresh coat of spray paint to cover the duct tape. Watching young Altuve, Springer, Gonzalez, Keuchel,etc . find their way, even while losing 100+, was so much better than the endless, no-hope-in-sight mediocrity that preceded it. I remarked over and over that 2012-2014 felt like those early 90s Astros. I was wrong: they were better
14 yes. 12 and 13 were just incredibly brutal at the major league level with basically no hope anywhere to be seen.
You sure you don't mean Sunday Mornings? My brother & I watched these on Sundays because every other station was playing a Church Service. Saturday mornings was the Prime-Time of Saturday Morning Cartoons.
Given that they went 50 years without winning one, it seems like 1 World Series has already justified 4 years of really sucking in years you were going to moderately suck no matter what.
I'll never get the tanking complaints from Astros fans. As if losing 90 games is so much more enjoyable than 100 losses. Bad team is bad team.
Losing 90 is no big deal. Losing 111 is a soul sucking monstrosity that kills your will to live. There truly is a big difference, if you appreciate the season for being 162 games to get enjoyment out of, as opposed to just precursor to the playoffs and crowning a champion.
Probably not. But my argument wasn’t that they shouldn’t do what they did, my argument was there was a big cost in enjoyment to fans of doing what they did, vs being run of the mill bad.
I don't think there is. Had we signed some mediocre free agents and lost 90 3 years in a row, nobody would have been watching. Attendance was on a consistent downward trajectory when we were only losing 86 games. We could have been more competitive, fans still would have stopped caring, consistent losing does that.
I for one was much more interested in 2012-2013 than in 2009-2011. They weren't trying to pretend that POS roster could do anything other than 80ish wins on a good day. As if we couldn't tell. Crane/Luhnow said, "We're blow this dumpster-fire up and build it the right way." Then they did. Tuve and Keuchel up in 2011/2. Marwin, too. Springer up in '13. One could just feel it--something special was coming with these kids. Kinda like 1991, only better.
I don't know if i was any more interested in the MLB product, but I certainly felt miles better about the organization. Those years from 08-11 were easily my toughest as a fan. To this day I remember where I was and how disgusted I was when the Tejada trade dropped. And the poor choices just seemed to keep coming.
