Well, unfortunately those are the Astros current peers in terms of MLB payroll. They are the closest benchmarks (even though no benchmark is being set as low by any other team right now). Neither had to bottom out like this team did. And despite the improvement in the current farm system, its not overwhelmingly better than any of the other low payroll organizations. If anything, its closer to even... except at the MLB level (which is really all that matters). As the Astros are looking to run things more "fiscally" in the near to long-term future, you have to see what works for other similar clubs and what fails.
Tuve? Villar? Keuchel? That's just three off the top of my head who had minimal prospect hype and are now solid contributors. Tuve and Keuchel definitely overachieved relative to their pedigrees and Villar is a massive over-perform given his minor league performance. That's wishful thinking if you think teams just 'run into' all-stars that easily. It's a nice story but rarely happens. I (sigh...) had hopes for JD Martinez being such a guy. If the Astros traded/signed 1-2 core players to surround this budding group of contributors, the perspective would be completely different. Springer and Singleton still have time to develop into that type of player.
Wasn't Villar one of the key pieces of the Oswalt trade? I remember hearing good things about him then. He certainly wasn't a top-tier prospect, but he wasn't thought of as a dud by any means and had decent hype with his promotion. All three that you mentioned are doing ok, but none of them are the type of player i'm talking about. I'm talking about finding a true stud beyond the first few rounds of the draft. Plenty of teams do just that... and perhaps the Astros have somebody in the minors that will become that guy (but he'd have to both be promoted along with perform at that level in the majors prior to being anointed).
I know exactly what you're talking about. I said it was wishful thinking to expect to find all-stars outside the first few rounds of the draft. You saying 'plenty of teams do just that' is as anecdotal as you saying 'true studs can skip AAA'. Are there cases of both? Sure. Do good organizations appear to find hidden-gem players at greater rates than bad organizations? Yes. But no organizations bank on that. No club expects to find the next Roy Oswalt every season. Nick, I respect your baseball knowledge and insight but your expectations of the front office are ridiculously high/skewed. You see all positives of the successful clubs and think they should translate directly to the Astros regardless of circumstance. If it were as easy as you claim to do all these things successful teams do them then Cubs wouldn't be terrible every year or Pittsburgh wouldn't have taken 20 years to get back to the playoffs.
The way I see it, clubs like STL and ATL have years/decades of organizational excellence to build on each season. Those organizations are strong from top to bottom and are streamlined for success. The Astros organization was completely torn down. Not just the on-field product but the local scouts, minor league coaches/development, international operations, the FO leadership, etc... I expect by now Luhnow has his infrastructure in place, but expecting the organization to be as productive as the well-established clubs is unreasonable. Several of the 'sleeper' players you've been beating the drum for haven't even had a chance to make it to the big leagues yet. The draft years immediately preceding Luhnow are the ones that are showing up in the bigs now. Give it a few more years for Luhnow draftee's to show up as sleepers. Guys like Preston Tucker, Aaron West, Conrad Gregor, Brady Rodgers could all have a big impact. Examples from the Cardinals Matt Carpenter: Drafted at 23, ML debut at 25, first full season at 26 Allen Craig: Drafted at 21, ML debut at 25, first full pro season at 27
Someone needs to start a poll in the Hangout: "The Most Misunderstood #&^% in Sports History". I nominate Billy Beane and "Moneyball"
Billy Beane didn't write moneyball. And the concept of drafting/scouting undervalued players/prospects has been well understood and duplicated by many. Michael Lewis just happened to write a book about Beane... and conveniently leave out the high round draft picks of Hudson, Mulder and Zito in consecutive years to anchor their team (the main reason for their success)
Seriously? We're simpatico here. All's I'm saying is I'm not sure how many of the people who use the term "moneyball" (moreyball?) left and right have actually read the book and grasped the concepts it outlined.
Dont mean to change the subject but does Porter get any blame for this pathetic, lack luster, no account of a team? Just sayin!
Should be plenty of blame to go around, so yea he gets some too. Him, Crane, Luhnow, drayton and more all to blame here
This team wasn't supposed to be contending this year. We have one of the best farms. If you want to see good baseball just watch the Skeeters or Rice.
Arguably relevant to this thread, looks like Jose Fernandez is the latest victim of the elbow ligament injury plague. Just hit the DL with a Sprained Right Elbow. TJ looking possible. Doesn't bode well for the fish to continue their hot start.
I strongly feel there is a system wide fail in conditioning and strengthening of pitchers in MLB/minors/college/. I know part of it all of them trying to throw harder and faster, but you would think that teams would be trying to decrease the percentage of of pitchers undergoing procedures like Tommy John's and such as opposed to the current trend. While it is true that these procedures "save careers", you are always better off with the original biomechanics.
I'm not sure it has to do with conditioning or strengthening or anything of the sort. It's happening to pitchers of all ages and usage levels. I don't think anyone could argue Jose Fernandez has suffered from overuse - the Marlins have managed his innings very carefully. I think there are two things going: 1. It's being diagnosed & the suggested route more. I think TJS used to be seen as a last resort that might work; now its the first option. Anytime someone has elbow soreness, it seems like TJS is the next step as opposed to trying rest/etc and then finally going with TJS. This is in part because they are getting better at it with higher success rates and lower recovery time, and partly because it seems like an "easy" solution. 2. Pitchers are throwing harder each year. This seems to be the result of this new crop of young hard throwers that's having a lot of success. Offense has been down dramatically over the last years and this is probably part of the reason. I wonder if TJS can be correlated to pitcher velocity (or pitch type) and if there's just a certain level where it starts becoming dramatically more likely? There should be some research into the pitching styles of all the people that have had it recently compared to MLB pitchers as a whole and see if there's some kind of pattern.
This is BS. Through 90's and mid 00's they could compete with anyone. They were better than the cards. I think they were behind atl and nyy in terms of wins over the period. The whole thing started after Gerry left. I don't know why we just didn't get him back.
