lol @ Feliz swinging at the 1st pitch high in the zone with men on the corners and no outs. lol @ Feliz in the 3-hole.
I'm still amazed by Feliz' AB. You have Hudson in a pressure situation in the top of the 1st and then bail him out on the 1st pitch. I guess that the ball was up so he figured he'd at least drive in Bourn but he didn't even accomplish that much. Take a pitch in that situation. Maybe Hudson throws a WP and Bourn jogs home. The dude just has zero plate discipline.
Well I haven't watched much Astros baseball since the playoffs are on but wow I just checked the stats shocked to see Lee's horrible numbers! This has to be his worse start ever? 0 homeruns 82 at bats wow kinda shocking. Miggy had the walk off hit last night for the O's
I liked Miggy's attitude but he wasn't making us a playoff contender. Having said that, he took $6 mil for 1 yr and accepted the move to 3B. Feliz is making $4.5. Miggy's bat will almost certainly outweight Feliz' glove but I don't see any reason to even blow another $1.5 mil for what will probably amount to a marginal upgrade when you factor in offense and defense. I don't think we should've wasted the money on Feliz, either. Yea, yea... I know it's not my money. I just don't see the point. Give it to charity or put it aside to go over slot on a couple of picks for next season. Go with Blum/Johnson in a year where everybody in the baseball world knew that we were going to struggle mightily.
It didn't turn out to be unsustainable - salaries just got way out of control so their $30MM salary was simply not enough to compete. It was one thing when they had a $30MM salary vs opponents at $80 or $90MM. It another when people have $120MM. If you have the A's philosophy with more money, you have a lot more flexibility. Absolutely - those are exactly the moves the Astros should be making. But had they traded Tejada, they end up with a lot more than they did. Agreed, though Lyon was a terrible signing that will cause problems for the team the next two years like Kaz does now. Sure - they are just not nearly as effective. The Astros, this year, finally started making some decent moves. They sort of half-committed to rebuilding. But they are behind other teams, and making minor moves and signing their draft picks is nothing that any other team isn't doing - so that just helps them tread water. Improving requires doing MORE than what other teams do. They can accelerate this process dramatically if they want to by trading the big guys. Or they can just drag out this and keep the big guys through the remainder of their primes while the team sucks, and end up with nothing or really old, expensive declining stars when the rest of the team is ready to become good. And the original post you were replying to mentioned trading 3 players: Myers, Feliz, and Oswalt. Oswalt fits the above, but the others certainly don't. Trading Feliz most likely won't bring us much, but let's not forget that a few years ago, Tampa Bay traded a similar player (Ty Wigginton) and got Ben Zobrist. Trading a guy like Feliz means you might get lucky. Keeping him only ensures you get nothing. If a team wants to be good and sustain it, they have to be willing to part with popular players when the economics of keeping them doesn't make sense. The 1990's Astros did that with guys like Kile, Hampton, Wagner, etc. Loyalty for the simple sake of being loyall is always an option - we just shouldn't expect to build a winning team that way because it is, by definition, a non-optimal move.
Filthy pitch by Wandy. Just a filthy curveball. It's fun to see him being able to take the next step like he has over the last season and a half. It is worrisome though that both he and Roy have back issues.
The announcer just said that Berkman and Jones are two of the best active switch-hitters. I'm not trying to nitpick but they are two of the best switch-hitters of all-time, not just active. Only Mantle was better than Puma and only Puma is better than Chipper. Teixeira is a distant 4th.
This slump of Lee's is becoming pretty unbelievable. Every last player goes through slumps but this is pretty severe for a guy as consistent as Lee. I have zero doubt that he will break out of it very soon but the duration is a bit shocking. He's not hitting for power. He's not knocking in runs. He's not getting on base. He's simply not doing anything productive at the plate. That's what separates a guy like Lee from a guy like Berkman. Even when Berkman hits a slump, he still draws walks at an elite rate so he's helping manufacture runs one way or the other. Lee has a very good eye but he's Tejada-like in his desire to go after balls out of the zone. He's an RBI guy so that's understandable to a degree but there are a lot of times that he seems almost determined to avoid walking when the situation calls for him to be a little more patient.
Wow...you could not have possibly gotten this more wrong. We did not get rid of Wagner because it was a good baseball move. We got rid of him because he opened his mouth and trashed ownership in an interview. Hampton we could not sign long term, so we sent him to the Mets (and got rid of Derek Bell in the process). Kile was supposed to meet with Astros management after his vacation in 1998. He signed with Colorado the day before he was supposed to return. The Astros complained that Kile did not even give the club a chance to counteroffer. So...out of the three you mentioned, only one was traded for younger players. That one (Hampton) brought only Dotel in exchange that amounted to anything in the bigs. Not exactly a great example of getting quality young guys in exchange for a pricey vet.
This is pathetic. That's at least the 2nd time this year when we've basically picked somebody off and they were still able to steal 2nd.
Wow, a comedy of errors by the Astros. In the top of the inning, signals got mixed up or something and Bourn got caught in between 1st and 2nd as if he thought Keppinger was going to swing the bat. Then, in the bottom of the inning, Feliz starts off with an error (it was a hard hit ball). Then, Bourn bobbles the ball charging a grounder in the outfield for another error. Then, Berkman makes a bad throw to 2nd on a pickoff attempt. Then, Wandy hits a batter. Then, confusion between Feliz and Keppinger at 3rd base trying to tag out Heyward.
It looks like it'll be up to Bud Norris to keep us from getting swept by a team that came into this series on a 9-game losing streak.
Great response by the Astros offense. It took Hudson 9 pitches to get through the heart of our order.
If you want a list of minor leaguers that the Astros traded away or traded for in exchange for older pricy vets in the last 30+ years, I'm pretty sure that I could come up with one hell of a good lineup (only "pretty sure" because off the top of my head I'm a couple of players short of a full rotation/bullpen). If you need me to go through the exercise, I will put in the effort.
The Astros now have given up 16 unearned runs on the young season. Only the Dodgers have more. We have 22 errors, 2nd to only the Marlins.
I don't know about the past 30 years, but over the past 10 years the only player I can really think of is Ben Zobrist. There just aren't any other former Astros that I think "man I wish they hadn't traded him away."
