I agree with you on many things here. I wish the Astros would extend this current window another 2-3 years, but unfortunately I feel the opposite will happen and they will continue to just miss the post season. If we were 5 games over .500 right now I'd feel better but I don't see the injuries last season as the reason why they missed the post season. They played over their heads in the middle of the season with scrap pitching only to fall on their face the final 2 months. I said before the season started this is a 75-80 win ballclub and I feel that is what our roster will stay at until something is done. A .500 team year in and year out is the worst a team can be in because you're not building your farm (although the new draft rules may allow a decent pick now at times) and you're not getting a chance to get lucky in the post season. It's limbo. Astros need to either sell a few parts to stock up or buy a missing piece but staying pat is death to this squad. Unless they know something we all don't about the upcoming possible lockout and are choosing to wait until after. That may create more problems than it solves though. I don't know enough about that at the moment so will leave that alone.
I guess a platoon of Trammell and Matthews in CF and a platoon of Wade and Dezenzo in LF The problem with this is that Wade and Dezenzo should both be pulled in the late innings but with Joey and Jake both in AAA the bench is short of + OF defenders.
Lets make an effort to be consistently mediocre and hope for the best. Those seasons from 2007 to 2010 really were the golden years of this franchise.
Pretty crazy the AL West only has 6 total All-Stars this year. The A’s have 2 with Langeliers and Kurtz, Astros have Yordan, Mariners have Arozarena, Angels have Trout, and the Rangers’ representative is something called a “Jacob Latz”.
Neyens and Alvarez (Kevin) would have to be in play for any big name.... but I don't see them dangling them (nor will they have enough to win a real bidding war as every contender has a version of those two guys in some form).
They probably shouldn't even have 6. Baseball goes from being the hardest sport to get promoted to and the hardest sport for any team to make the post-season.... to full on participation ribbons for their most prestigious select teams.
If there really is a high chance of missing the majority of next season, I could live with Cam going. That being said, both of those teams are still trying to compete moving forward. Guys like Cam, Blubaugh, Arrighetti, Ullola, etc. probably are more interesting pieces to them than a 19 year old in A ball.
Skubal is a strict rental. Gray will be this year and next. I’m not giving up any of our top tier (Neyens, Alvarez, Pecko) for either of them. I think we should just stand pat. We have too many holes to make a WS run in my opinion, but I don’t want to burn the house all the way down either. If we are sellers it should probably just be Pena as far as big names are concerned and try to extend Alvarez and Brown.
Gray and McCarthy would be a good haul. McCarthy is a perfectly league average bat so he’s not going to be a big difference maker but he will be better offensively than Meyers, Matthews, Loperfido, and probabiy even Smith. Still a big question if Trammell and Wade will be good enough to lessen the need for a bat.
Would they really be missing that much if they traded Cam and I'm a Cam fan, but he's been very disappointing this yr.