At some point though, you have to quit accepting making it to the playoffs as a "good season", especially when the goal for the organization is to make it to the World Series. Am I saying I dont appreciate the fact that we have been in the playoffs ? No, not at all. I honestly dont think Drayton ever had a plan b, I think the plan the whole way was to go young, I really dont think Drayton ever was that interested in obtaining Carlos or any other free agent, not cause they werent interested, cause he doesnt wanna spend the money. I can tell you I would feel much more comfortable with a guy like Finley or Drew in the OF and Biggio back at 2nd base. I would feel a lot better about our pitching staff with Lowe, Pedro, Mulder or Hudson. I would have sworn that Tim/Drayton claimed early on in the "negotiations" for CB that we were not pursuing any other players because they were dedicated to bringing CB back ???? Anybody else remember that ? Maybe I am still pissed over the whole thing, but the more these two idiots divulge about the negotiations, the more I lose respect for both oh well, heres to a wonderful 05 season
Are you happy now that you wasted 15 minutes putting that together? If you are debating that Haren and Calero are journeymen type pitchers at best...and regardless of how good a prospect Barton is, he is still a prospect....then you need to take the advice yourself.
as i was posting it, i knew you'd respond like this. i hear ya...it's not a championship. but that wasn't what i was saying. i was responding to a post that said we weren't in the playoff hunt from year to year. that's false. and the stat i'm in love with refutes it directly. it was not the argument that you and i have had here from time to time.
mmax, I think I started this discussion about being envious of cities that have teams that are in it year after year. Let me attempt to refine the thought a little. 1. I agree that the Yanks, Sox, ATL (I might add the Giants) are the teams that seem to be regulars. Houston is mired in a group of pretty good franchises that frequently visit the playoffs. 2. Your stat talks about our actual performance in the last decade. It's undeniable and a hard, real number. But what stinks is that only once or twice have I ever believed that our team was actually good enough to do anything other than get pummeled in the first round. 3. With the Randy Johnson team and 1994 Stros, it was a completely different feeling. It was something far greater than mere hope and sitting in the crowd with your fingers crossed, praying that something good will happen. It was knowing that you had players that could and would make it happen. That feeling was the core of our excitement last year, which is the focus of my point. I'm envious of cities with teams that have that feeling every year, regardless of how it actually pans out. I'd say that the Yanks, Sox and ATL generally have that confidence. (kinda explains a lot about their fans, but that's a different topic.) To a lesser degree, it seems that the A's (the big 3), Cards (modern murders row), Cubs (tantalized with young power arms, but damn they have under performed) and Giants (even lesser degree) have those kind of teams. 4. As I type this, I realize that maybe what this all boils back down to is Biggio and Bagwell. Too long ago, they established an expectation of failure from the fans and thus blunted the possible excitement and hope. During their time here, we have only been confident and excited when the teams' playoff hopes were pinned on talents other than theirs . . . Johnson, Clemens, Beltran. And maybe that's the real rub of the Beltran situation. We're back to ol' Biggio and Bagwell.
biggio and bagwell did pretty darn well in the playoffs this past season, riley. i would say we had a legit shot in every postseason we hit except 97. second worst shot was 01, in my opinion, because of oswalt's injury...without that injury, i would say their chances were fine, going in. but 98, 99 and 04...i felt good about all of those years, going in. but we will never have the expectations...or even the justification for the expectations..that yankees fans or red sox fans have every year. we don't have that kind of revenue base. we just don't. until the playing field is made more level, that's the way it goes.
Mmax, B&B did fine last year, but I think that was because they were the 3rd and 5th best/most important hitters on the team. [edit} B&B did more than fine, they were good. Maybe it's not their fault that the stros didn't succeed when hopes were pinned on them. maybe they didn't have the help like they did last year. But the fact is, we're back to relying on ol B&B, which is all to familiar and a bit underwhelming.
i'm not sure that's true. we're relying on a good starting staff..hopefully with clemens returning...and we're relying on berkman and young talent as well. remember...when the astros fell apart in previous postseasons, it wasn't just biggio and bagwell looking stupid...freaking everyone on the the team couldn't hit. it's like they ALL went into slumps. alou, carl everett, caminiti, berry, and on and on. they all went into slumps. and not just slumps...they all looked silly at the plate.
I'm so glad to be familiar with ten years of B&B than ten years of whatever the hell the Pirates, Orioles, Blue Jays, Reds, Royals, etc. have been familiar with for the last ten years.
My response had nothing to do with Haren and Calero. As Nikestrad pointed out, the centerpiece of the trade WAS Barton. You can try to downplay it all you want with the "still a prospect" talk, but there's a reason some of the best GMs in the league make lots and lots of money every year finding guys like him. It's because they usually amount to more than "some backup catcher." If you would just admit that you didn't do your research before making a judgement on that trade, it would be one thing. But instead you try to manipulate the value of blue chip prospects to save some face. Oh, and if what I posted previously would have taken you 15 minutes to do, then I am sorry you're slow. Copy and paste is your friend.
You know a guy runs out of ammo when he has to resort to insults...I stand by what I said.. looks to me like he said that Haren and Calero were big pieces of the trade since he debated me by telling me that we had no one as good as Haren to give up and certainly didnt have a "rock solid reliever" (other than lidge) on the team as for the 15 minutes thing...sorry - i guess i hit a nerve
As opposed to starting off your post making fun of me for taking the time to properly space out the replies I accumulated? Show me where I insulted you. This is true, and I don't have enough knowledge of Haren to say if his value leans more towards your opinion or Nikestrad's. Calero is a solid reliever who had a pretty season last year. Nikestrad's overall point was that the package of Haren, Calero and Barton was a significant one, and more than you seemed to think it was. Your knowledge of Barton's value was directly related to that. Quite the opposite. All I did was point out it didn't take as long as you seemed to think. The fact that you even bothered to criticize how much time or effort I put into my posts makes me think I hit a nerve.
Haren was a top level pitching prospect coming into the season, and a low 3s ERA in the 2nd half did nothing to change that status- he's still 24. You thought Astacio was good this year? Haren only pitched 8 games in AA at 23, because he went 6-1 with a 0.82 ERA, and a 49/6 K/BB ratio. We haven't had a prospect like that since the Oswalt/Redding/Hernandez class. How you write off a 24 year old with a mid-90s fastball and made the jump from AA to the majors in one season as a "journeyman" is beyond me. Calero is one of the better setup men in the league. If you watched the NLCS, you saw the type of stuff he has, and the command of it. As I said... Scouts were RAVING about him, and he was Moneyball personified- at age 19, playing catcher, with an OBP over .400, and an OPS in the .900s, plus more walks than strikeouts- by comparison, our big 18 year old prospect Mitch Einertson had twice as many walks than strikeouts. You not only failed to mention him by name, but dismissed him as some other schmuck. The fact is, Calero was probably the least of the 3 players they gave up- and we would struggle to find 3 Calero-like talents to give up. Baseball Prospectus rated our current system as the 28th best in the league right now. The free agent acquisitions of recent years (Pettitte, Kent) caused us to lose our high draft picks, and so we haven't reloaded quite as fast. As a result, our top prospects are mostly projectable guys like Nieve and Patton, who are in all likelihood a couple years away from being real commodities. As I said, we don't have an offensive prospect in the same realm as Barton. It's debatable if we have a pitching prospect like Haren. And I wish we had a reliever we could rely on to deliver a low 3.00s ERA in front of Lidge.
Then stay out of the discussion instead of chiming in ...Nike doesn't need your help in debating this Nike - my point from post 1 was that it didn't take a king's ransom to get these guys (Mulder/Hudson)...and we won't know what the A's thought of our prospects because we basically had one goal (or maybe none based on recent quotes by purpura) and didnt give anything else a chance to materialize. That being said, who knows what will be of Mulder...he didnt seem to be close to 100% last year....but we never gave ourselves a chance to find out.
NJR, you really need to read "Moneyball". Once you do, you will understand that you should always assume that Billy Beane knows something that you don't know. This guy is a genius when it comes to aquiring players that continue to make the A's competitive w/o any money. It wasn't about aquiring players that the average fan (or even scout in many cases) thinks is good or not. Beane thinks that Haren, Calero and Barton are players that fit into his mold of what makes the A's a good team. It's possible that Beane didn't think any of the Astros prospects fit. He's already got the one that he wrote about in the book, Kirk Saarloos.
I agree. Nikestrad is doing a damn good job of shredding your points by himself, so I will bow out. But since you apparently had little to no knowledge of Haren, Calero or Barton's value before you declared that Mulder trade so one sided, perhaps you should take your own advice and stay out of discussions concerning things you don't know about.
