http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2016/03/al-notes-drellich-odor-wang-parker.html Evan Drellich has been hired by the Boston Herald to cover the RedSox. I'm not sure how much Drellich appreciation there will be in this thread, however, I'm sure we all appreciate the Herald for taking him off our hands. The only thing that would make the article title read better than Drellich-Odor would probably be Wang-Odor.
Ironic that as much flack as Ortiz and Drellich got around here... they're both going to more high profile papers/teams to cover. They certainly drew the short straw of having to cover the Astros during their designed-tanking years... and that certainly set the tone for their reporting-styles that they really never could back away from. But like most things regarding Houston paper media... nobody (other than the diehards) really cares enough to move the needle one way or the other.
He'll probably find that his click-baiting headlines and snarky analysis will suit the Boston market much better than it does in Houston. Adios, muchacho. I've almost signed up for Twitter several times just so I could throw some shade his way. Glad that temptation will now be removed from my life.
I should have probably added that he was going back to covering the RedSox. he covered them for MLB.com before coming here. The poor quality of the team for several years and what seemed like a combative relationship with the teams management probably lead to the negative tone of his coverage.
I still don't understand all the Drellich hate. He was a little too contrarian sometimes, but he certainly didn't have a vendetta against this city like some thought. And at least he was thoughtful. Ortiz, on the other hand...
Contrarian is fine if I'm reading investigative journalism, but I'd prefer my baseball team's beat writer to not always assume the worst when it comes to the team he is covering. I do agree that Drellich is a much better journalist than JDJO, but I won't miss either.
The John McClain of the Astros. Just by reading his content, you can tell he wanted to be elsewhere. Good riddance.
He talked about it a bit in the CrawfishBoxes's last podcast. He said that at his previous job in Boston, there were multiple beat writers. Some were more critical than others but it tended to come to a balance. Beat writers being critical held the FO feet to the fire. When he got to Houston, he was pretty much the only game in town willing to be criticize the team at all. In particular he noted a lot of return criticism when he lambasted the Cosart/Marlins trade as not being "trying to win now" trade. I think his stance was reasonable. We didn't want to hear it (and it ended up being an awesome trade for Houston), but it was a reasonable stance at the time. Another article TCB put out the other day further clarified the roles of the media ("Astros News: Who Wrote It And How'd They Get It?"). Drellich is a beat writer and while he may report some news based on personal relationships he's really there to provide an opinion. It makes total sense that his sense of what a successful team is (having covered the Red Sox in their heyday) would totally clash with the Astros rebuilt. All-in-all, I didn't particularly like his coverage either but I get it where he was coming from. Glad he's gone and hope he likes his new job better.
It wasn't a win now trade, but they need perspective that Cosart was a mediocre player with a questionable attitude. Enrique Hernandez turned out to be the better player.
That was what he took umbrage with, the fact that it wasn't a 'win now' trade. I can totally see how a guy who previously covered the Red Sox looked on in disgust at the Astros rebuilding project. I'm a guy who hasn't lived in Houston for a long time and definitely hasn't attended a game in a while. But there are (or were) people paying money to see a 50-win team live. Trading one of the team's few major-league caliber young starting pitchers for a bunch of lotto tickets is definitely a slap in the face to those people. Hopefully some day the Astros are both successful and have multiple beat writers that can provide different points of view.
shocked out how few responses/posters there are in this thread. i would have bet on an easy 5 pages of hate by now.
Nobody ever said he had a problem with the the city. Not did he ever go after the players. But it was painfully obvious he had an agenda with the Astros front office. His bordering on obsessive need to force potshots into an article where they really had no place undercut everything he did. He was an otherwise perfectly capable beat writer.
I think this is where I sit with Drellich. Don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya, Evan. So, will the Chronicle hire an actual *journalist* or just another guy spewing water-cooler opinions whilst enjoying access none of the rest of us has? It's been a long, long time since there was any quality over there. One can hope, right?
Well........ ..................................................................................... bye.
Balance is important. Nobody wants a yes-man hack like McClain, who merely spews whatever the organization wants him to. There was a time/place to rightly call out the Astros for their disastrous results and PR nightmares... along with the CSN debacle. The chronicle did that. When they continued to reference or bring it up after it had long been settled, that was what most people found fault with. Chances are, the new guy won't fit everybody's preference either... and that's about par for the course when it comes to reporters.
