It is a bad sign when you have relief pitchers as your #4 & 5 prospects (unless they are Craig Kimbrel). Mier was probably overrated as a prospect simply for being taken as high as he was, though he had success in short season ball that made people think he might be better than most people had believed at the time of the draft.
that sucks. i would love for him to hammer that leg kicking arroyo. does anyone think its strange that porter wont designate qualls as the closer? it makes me think that its already assigned to crain when he gets up here. anybody know where crain is at with his rehab?
its been a long climb but a rather quick one. wade did wonders at the the tail end of his tenure and lunhow is just continuing the trend. really quick turn around. im glad to have fruitful baseball going forward for a long time.
Donkeypunch is referring to a quote by Porter in which he said he would not designate Qualls the closer. Porter is playing with words here. In essence a closer is your 9th inning guy. I think what Porter was trying to get across is that if there were a "game" situation in the 7th or 8th, he would not hesitate to put Qualls in. This is probably indicative of the Astros not having a reliable setup guy.
Please. Just because people skipped the Astros dead years doesn't mean they somehow passed through the painful part of fandom. The last few years the Astros have been certifiable non-existent at the MLB level. As someone earlier pointed out, these players aren't even on the roster anymore. The most painful part of being an Astros fan in the past decade has nothing to do with their consecutive 100+ loss streak. That was a forgone conclusion. It's like reading a book where you've been spoiled the ending. There's no need to finish reading. No, the most painful part of being an Astros fan was seeing the rotting of the organization from bottom up, slowly and gradually all while masked by two fortuitous FA signings in Roger Clemons and Andy Pettite. The pain was seeing Drayton closing down our South American camps, slowing down the international prospects, continuously nickel-and-diming all draftees over a few hundred K, and just seeing no talent in the minors. Btw, I checked out when the Astros signed Carlos Lee to that $100mil contract. That $100mil would've paid for decades worth of Astros minor league operations and homegrown prospects. At that point, I stopped bothering. Because if the owner doesn't care anymore, why should I?
Yes, doling out a $100 million contract means the owner doesn't care. There's a difference between an owner not caring, and an owner not understanding baseball or how to properly build a team.
Sucks that springer is out... But glad they're being cautious with him. No need to risk him getting hurt badly.
its bad enough to not understand the business you own, its worse to sign off on checks and decisions that an idiot like purpura would present to you. purpura should be public enemy #1
This is beautiful and gets to the crux of the situation. Drayton got so blinded by big-league success that he completely lost sight of what baseball at this level is truly about.....staying ahead of the curve. Sure, winning championships is amazing, and I'm sure Astros fans would gladly trade 5 more years of languishing at the bottom of the league for even just one World Series title. However, with baseball being a marathon, fielding a competitive team day in and day out is impossible without a deep farm system that has resources tied into it. Drayton knew he was going to sell the team sooner rather than later, and so he decided to start pouring money into the Major League product (to bolster the value of the sale) while stripping the foundation of the organization. On the surface, it was great for fans to come to MMP every night and see the likes of Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte, but all while that was happening, the minor league teams were rotting away.
It was really dumb to take the either/or mentality. Even the prospects they foolishly traded (Taveras/Hirsch) ended up being duds. They did have Lidge/Oswalt/Berkman/Ensberg/Everett all come up and have success, so you can't say the organization was completely incapable of developing talent... but there were far too many failed drafts (especially the 2007 one) all over money.
Granted, today's is potentially the worst lineup this team will field for the foreseeable future, but manufacturing runs is still a major problem for this team.
I think he was playing games with the pitcher not being in the on-deck circle when he was supposed to be.
