No... its a story because its a decision made by the Astros front office, not the player. And the Astros front office has a large role in the way they're perceived by the media... its not totally one-sided. If they wanted to be perceived better, I'm sure they're smart enough to figure out how to accomplish that.
I read it as you saying that you didn't believe that it wasn't Altuve's decision. Reading through what else you posted we are on the same page completely.
Just wish they'd have honored Altuve's wishes and let him play. He was fine with winning or losing it on the field. They should have been.
I agree 100%. Also, the fact that Jose didn't even know some of the people in the meeting where he was told he couldn't play, says a lot We have a LOT of talent in our system coming up, but dang our front office has no "people" skills at all. Hope that doesn't come back to haunt us down the road
The Astros above all else are a pragmatic organization. They did what was in Altuve's (and the organizations)best interest regardless of what he wanted. And by doing this they take all the blame off Altuve. Most people hate the organization with a passion anyhow, what's one more thing. Between pennant chases, football, and LeBron to say this won't make the front page is an understatement. Considering the Tigers are in the playoffs, I don't think anybody outside of a few Astros fans will even care.
If Altuve goes 3-4 or 4-5 today his season will be even more immortalized. If he goes 0-5 and loses the batting title, we'll say he went down swinging. It's the right move to play him.
I don't think there would be anything remotely tainted about him sitting, but it should be completely up to him.
This is gonna be interesting. There is no doubt Altuve forced this. If he really wanted to sit he could have just kept his mouth shut. Chance to put a legendary stamp on the year... or possibly a really, really bad way to finish it. I do admire Altuve's stones though, regardless of outcome.
Seriously... looks like the front office finally cared about the way they were being perceived... or Lawless and Altuve just told Luhnow and the rest of the front office cronies to go F themselves (and that wouldn't really surprise me).
I think Lawless deserves some credit too... once he basically told the media that he had Altuve starting today, all the blame/pressure got shifted to the front office and Luhnow.
Its all on you Luhnow... wonder if this basically eliminates Lawless as the team's future manager? <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>If Altuve wanted to sit, it’s rational. He publicly said he did not. The manager publicly said he intended to play him. Who made the call?</p>— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) <a href="https://twitter.com/EvanDrellich/status/516268208979181568">September 28, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
I think Altuve ran his mouth to a degree that it became an untenable situation for management. I think they ultimately gave the OK, I doubt Lawless went rouge, although he backed Altuve all along, which they could not have been happy about.
Lawless gave far more sound-bytes/quotes to the chron articles than Altuve... all Altuve said was it wasn't his decision (which we all knew). Twitter was running with the story from the very first announcement of the lineup... so Altuve saying what he said really didn't change much. I think once it became known that Lawless would have put him in the lineup, the front office really had no choice to stand in the way (or maybe Lawless just realized that he doesn't always have to do what the front office wants... just like Porter didn't).
