I was hoping they would shut Roy down. They should do the same with Lance, assuming they haven't already made that decision.
Old Chron piece on Stubbs: If you saw Drew Stubbs play center field for the University of Texas on Friday, you might have been reminded of a young Carlos Beltran. The Astros thought so as well three summers ago when they agreed to a pre-draft deal of $900,000 and took him in the third round of the draft out of Atlanta High School. Astros owner Drayton McLane, under pressure from Bud Selig's office to stay within mandated signing guidelines, ordered his scouting staff to reneg on the offer and lower it to $450,000. Stubbs signed with the Longhorns. ''I wouldn't say we reneged,'' McLane told me last summer. ''I never approved the deal you're talking about.'' His baseball people clearly didn't think his approval would be an issue. Signing Stubbs should have been as routine as signing any other draft choice that year. ''Please don't mention Drew Stubbs to me,'' a club source told me last summer. ''I get sick thinking about the way we handled that.'' ''We had a firm figure,'' Rick Stubbs, the player's father, said last summer. ''The Astros knew what it was. I remember sitting with one of their scouts and discussing this. He said, 'Are you telling me that if we offer $750,000, he won't sign?' I said, 'I'm telling you if you offer $889,000, he won't sign.' ''I'm angry with the way they handled it. They strung us along for a month. They asked Drew not to play summer ball. They understood what our price was. They said they needed to sign the guy they picked in front of him. They said they had the money and would pay us what we wanted. We waited a month.'' http://blogs.chron.com/sportsjustice/archives/2006/02/vince_young_vs.html
Apparently, a club source also was extremely unhappy with how they handled the Stubbs situation as well. I guess the club source is also a punk b****. The good guy is Drayton for making nice with Bud?
I need to congratulate Kaz Matsui for finally surpassing Adam Everett's worst full-season OPS. Yay, Kaz! The Japanese media will be recognizing the accoplishment after the game. Stay tuned.
Reading the strike zone is one of his lesser problems. He probably has a better eye than half the guys on the roster. The problem to me seems to be that he's swinging a slow bat and having trouble adjusting to major league velocity and movement.
Wes Wright has had a tough year. Anything is possible but I can't imagine him becoming starter material at this point.
Well, we'll have 2 more innings to avoid being swept and losing our 7th straight in Cinci. With the win, Cinci will be 3 games back of us and they haven't had their ace for most of the season. Imagine where we'd be without Wandy.
Maybe that's what it is too. Perhaps we can have Nolan Ryan throw fastballs at him all winter. That out to straighten out that swing.
That pitch was a foot wide. That's about as mad as I've ever seen Hunter. He had every reason to be pissed off. The ump knew he blew it immediately.
The Astros have among the worst offenses and pitching staffs in the NL. We're not much better than the Reds, if at all. In fact, we're strikingly similar if you look at runs for and against: http://espn.go.com/mlb/standings And they've been without their ace almost the entire season. Imagine us without Wandy this year.
