I don't think anybody is saying you have to be happy with what's going down. I'm certainly not happy about it. I just have a different feeling than you. This isn't some team that is a choking repeat offender. This is a young team, that is still incomplete. If we had entered this season thinking we would be good, I imagine Luhnow would have constructed the team differently. Every team has different expectations for a season. Being happy that you franchise is on a clear upward trajectory is not a losers mentality, it a pragmatists mentality. And I wish people would stop with the Prior/Wood comp, that was a mediocre team completely dependent on 2 arms. This team has a plethora of outstanding young players, and more on the way.
Pretty much this, but it's hard to see the big picture described in #2 until the season has been over for a few months. Sort of like being on a sinking ship and saying it's cool because you almost made it to your destination. Maybe we'll make it next time without hitting an iceberg and sinking in the middle of the ocean.
Did you have fun watching the Astros all those years? Or did you hate that ~10 years of fandom since they didn't win a title?
I think it's more like sinking 100 yds from the shore...with a bigger and badder ship ready to take you out next time. Yeah, that last 100 yds sucked but at least you know the next ride is going to be even better.
That's what I'm thinking. I'm not sure why so many people think this is even close to our final form.
Of course I had fun. Are you saying it would not have been more fun with it ending in a championship? Or were you not upset with how we went out in 98, 99, or 01? Those are about as silly of questions as yours given the number of times I've said I've enjoyed the vast majority of this season. Most sports fans, hopefully, can see the good and bad in a season and judge how they were entertained accordingly. And it's up to them to come to that conclusion, not for anyone else. That's who I'm referring to people who tell me I should not be upset about collapse. Or want to question my feelings about it. How Major reacts to a game has no bearing as to how I will react to it (NOTE: this is not taking into account rivalries, I'm talking about fans of the same team...I take great pleasure in how bad the Rangers fans I know take losses). If it does, that is my problem and not Major's. Basically, it's condescending to argue that others should feel differently about something like this. That said, I enjoyed the first half of the Bills/Oilers game in 1993 too. Should I not be upset they lost because they were a wild card team on the road not expected to win anyway? You enjoyed the movie Limbo until the ending made it suck for you. I think you would have punched me had I said "yeah, but at least the rest of the movie was really well-made and you should've enjoyed everything up until the very last second, so hating the movie because of the ending is ridiculous!" :grin:
There are absolutely 0 guarantees in sports. That big bad ship you're waiting on just might be the Titanic.
Any more baseball-specific examples besides the 2003 Cubs? (and don't mention that generation K Mets farce... they never had any sort of actual success). And if this team can replicate the Biggio/Bagwell years... I'd take it (even if a ring is not guaranteed). Those were tremendous years that went a long way to not only adding to the ability to this city to become a bonafide baseball town, but helped usher in a whole new generation of Astros fans.
Certainly - but at this point, you seem to be arguing against no one. No one has told you that you should be enjoying the collapse. People are just suggesting they are enjoying the season as a whole.
That's fine. I'm not saying I'm happy about them failing. But I'm not going to lost my s*** over it like so many in here have done. Yes, it blows that they've been sucking it up of late. Yes, it blows that it might be the rangers that a)finish us off this weekend and/or b) finish ahead of us. Yes, it blows to possibly not have made the playoffs after a season in which we were in first for a huge majority of it. Still, I'm just happy to be here. It's better being here than where we were in 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014...years where our position was practically a guarantee. Just because someone is happy to even have something to b**** about on September 24th for the first time in years doesn't equate to having a "loser mentality".
That quote was more along the lines of "I'm getting old I want a championship dammit" than saying those years were not fun because they didn't win.
I think the Strasburg-benching Nationals a few years ago are a decent example. That said, I don't see why guarantees even matter. If I knew my team was going to be awesome and win before the season, watching wouldn't be nearly as interesting. The fact is that we have good reason to expect our team to be good for the next several years.
Posts have most definitely been made that said people should just be happy that they're in this position to begin with and that people shouldn't be that upset with this choke job. Maybe not on recent pages or necessarily in this thread, but it's definitely been argued.
Well, until that ship actually swings around and picks me up, I ain't assuming nothing! But isn't that the same thing, essentially? The collapse is a huge part of the season as a whole.
But is their window of opportunity definitively closed? They have the likely MVP who happens to only be 22 years old... and they at least 1-2 more prime years of Scherzer. Strasburg (like most young pitchers) hasn't been the future HOF-type they'd hoped he was going to be after his debut... whether it was due to injury or simply too lofty expectations... but he's still young, and still been much better than average. They could go either way on him (sign him long-term, or trade him for younger pieces before 2017). They've also won two division titles the last 3 years. Yes, they've fizzled in the playoffs... and this year were over-taken in drastic fashion by a come-out-of-nowhere Mets team (like the Astros)... but would anybody be surprised if they come back and are in contention again next year?
Well in order to collapse, you will have had to play extremely well earlier. Coming into the season, most people expected the target to be around .500. For most of the season we were playing at a record well above what we thought, it created a moving target for success in some people's eyes, which appears to be at the heart of this discussion. Unfortunately it's all going poorly here in the last 20% of the year, but that doesn't eliminate what we were doing earlier. The season has been almost a complete success by my preseason expectations, and I'm a person who judges a season in it's totality. Entering next year, the expectations will be different, a similar collapse or outright failure will have a much different feeling.
Well here we are. IMO, we have to sweep the Rangers to get back in the division race. Win 2 out of 3 to keep our wild card hopes alive.
I think in Major's quote that he is saying that people are saying they are enjoying the season as a whole - not that you have to enjoy the season as a whole.
