Another poster unable to stick to the subject without a condescending attack on another poster... The Cardinals always tried to add good pieces around young talent and stay competitive Our team cut the payroll down to an embarrassing level and has no intention of competing much like the teams I referenced. I get it the team was bad when Crane got it but it's gotten worse every year.
The Royals and Pirates are terrible comps for the Astros. Despite what people say, neither of those teams were actually all that good in terms of their minor league development for years. Sure they would turn out some studs, but most of the players they were sending up were junk with one or two good players that would cycle in and get traded off. The Astros (allegedly) have a critical mass of talent coming together at the same time that they can spend some money on free agents to augment. That was never the case with the Pirates and Royals. They typically had trash at the vast majority of the roster spots.
The Cardinals never had a team devoid of talent like the Astros were. They spent money to augment a team that consistently had good players coming up. The Astros team had no cornerstone players on it. None.
I can walk into an auction and bid $100K on a Painting knowing it will fetch $150K. Guess that's a serious offer too.
Btw, the Astros aren't the Pirates or Royals....YET. BUT! If Crane doesn't get the money he wants for the TV deal along with his empty juice box he will turn it into those clubs. That's just business any no one would have reason to blame him. This club has lost 15% of its value since Crane bought it.
define serious he needs to win a couple of those international auctions to be called "serious". It's not like we don't have room to work with on the payroll... I think the issue here is that some of you guys are giving Crane the benefit of the doubt that he'll spend money later down the road. Maybe he will. I hope he does. I just haven't seen any signs that he will be anything but a tight ass when it comes to money.
They still had consistently highly ranked farm systems. As far as we know, some of the Astros players in the farm could be the same "trash" that the Royals and Pirates had to deal with. No team develops all "studs"... chances are, the Astros really will only have 1 or 2 future perennial "deserved" (not default) all-stars in their current system. I understand the Royals and Pirates never had the ability to retain anybody... but they also never had a breakthrough/contending team worth keeping intact either (until the Pirates broke through last year). That makes a difference. There was no sense in the Royals overpaying to keep Beltran when by himself, he wasn't going to turn the team around (then again, neither did the guys they got for him... Tehan/Buck). If the critical mass the Astros are bringing up doesn't get it done... they too will be looking to sell off the few prospects that do well, in order to "restock" the farm system and try it again (or, like I said before... they may then try a different strategy). I'm all for the rebuild... and I agree what they're doing has never been done before (largely because most fan bases or media markets wouldn't "let" it happen... Houston seems to be very accommodating in that respect), but I'm not ready to count chickens before they hatch simply because the minor league teams are doing well.
Crane has paid for those 1.1 picks (Corea, Appel and likely Rodon). The Astros have also used a good chuck of their international signing monies. I'm sure he will be out of pocket on the next spring training facility deal. Crane paid 30 large for Scott Feldman. Yeah but they did not sign Tanaka. Even if they matched the Yankees, Tanaka still signs with the Yankees. The Astros are going to have to be a 500 team on the rise before they will not have to overpay for FAs (which is a fact of life and not really a Crane problem).
They only traded them after they came up to the big leagues, and ultimately the team was not winning. Had the team been winning with them all, there may have been more of an effort to re-sign some of the key players (as I'm sure the Pirates will try to retain McCutchen, and some of the other key components). Same thing could happen with the Astros critical mass of prospects if the team ultimately doesn't win. See my above post.
Right, because two months at the beginning of a season in which the team will most likely finish last again is the same thing as a competitive baseball team in six years.
Being a fiscally smart organization is not a positive sign for the future? It's exactly what smart teams regularly do.
Except they had no money to sign those players even if they wanted to. Paying Beltran $17MM/yr would have been a fiscal disaster for Kansas City back in 2005. They wouldn't have been able to field a team around him. Their total payroll that year was $36MM. Pirates got a new TV deal a few years ago that should open them to being able to change their future plans.
Have you ever seen other baseball stadiums, either presently or in the past? There are very few that aren't covered in ads.
You don't know that. If they're on the cusp of contending for World Series, and they have a strong core of home-grown players that are all in their primes, they may have taken that risk. They may have scaled back their minor league drafts/international spending to pay for it (much like the Astros did from 2003-2009). The Rays are a prime example of a team that is willing to spend to keep certain guys (not all guys), because they know they have a great chance to win now. At the same time, they're not going to sign every potential free agent and limit their spending flexibility.
