Waiting for Espada to say more things to try and save his job Espada "I had a five year plan going in. The first two years we were supposed to get worse so we can start getting better. Now that chip is so big that we have to start winning."
Bring back Verlander. Even when he was injured, the team was in the postseason. Eight Verlander seasons = eight seasons of October baseball. The golden good luck chARM. https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/46304453/giants-justin-verlander-wants-pitch-age-43-2026
Espada needs to go. Like now. I'll never forget I went to opening day vs the Yankees last year, and him managing the game like it was game 7 of the World Series was absolutely embarrassing.
This was from two weeks ago, but it says the Astros suffered the most potential WAR loss from injuries. It was more than DOUBLE that of any other team in the division. It’s crazy they held first for as long as they did when you think about it. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/which-teams-have-suffered-the-most-from-injuries/ But were all those injuries just historically bad luck or mistakes made by the medical staff? Is that what Dana is saying when he says “potentially more imaging could have helped Yordan”? It felt like there were several instances of confusion with the severity of players injuries, beyond just the team being vague with public reporting.
This was who I wanted two years ago - and I think should be a very strong candidate. He is very positive, but knowledgeable and not a push over. Beltran would be a very good choice.
If Brown said that "more imaging could have helped", then yes that is 100% on the medical staff, at least that is what Brown is getting at... I don't know if Brown is concerned about his job, or if he really believes that that is was all a combo of bad luck and mediocre medical care.
I honestly thought that Crane's mindset would be something like...even though there are valid excuses for this team this year, Joe Espada did not help us live up to our standards. On any other team, he might survive another year, but not the Astros. But here we are holding press conferences with Brown and Espada. I may be reading too much into it but it seems odd to allow a manager that you are about to fire to speak on behalf of the team, if he was about to fire him. Which leads me to believe that he's not.
There are three possibilities. This meeting was going to happen within a day or two of the seasons ending to discuss postmortem and we shouldn't read into it at all, and the people in charge for this past season are discussing this past season. The second option is that Crane has already decided that injuries were the culprit and everyone is safe. The third option, which I think is the most likely - Crane has not and will not discuss or decide on the future until he takes his trip, plays some golf and talks to several people not involved in baseball, then talk to several baseball people not directly involved and make a decision on everyone - Brown, Espada and the guy that sells peanuts.
I REALLY liked Mark and the way he broke film down and what he saw from a far with our team. He got what Crane was trying to do and had the utmost respect for the way the org was run. Add to that he never got into the pearl-clutching over the scandal. When he didn't even get an interview, I moved over to Buck.
