Lock or move if necessary. I suppose it could go in the hangout but I wasnt sure. Anyhow Backe is headed for surgery and Astros will pay for it. From Alyson Footer's twitter: http://twitter.com/alysonfooter
The dude is garbage and this teams/the fans love affair with him has been ridiculous. Dude pitched two meaningful games in his career. Get over it. It makes me sick that a garbage pitcher like him, who hasn't done s#$& for like the last 3 years, STILL earned a million dollars this year. This is the kind of crap that makes the Astros a middle tier ever single year. I dont care that Lance, Roy, Backe or whoever is a Texas/ Southern boy. Everyone in this organization tries too hard to tug at everyone's heartstrings when they should have one goal in mind.... winning a championship. Baseball is a cutthroat business and you have to make tough decisions constantly. Its not going to matter if the fans are going to like a Brandon Backe over Albert Pujols. Or if you have a locker room full of jerks. You put an ELITE winning product out there and people are going to show up. Whatever extra revenue they think they can get from having local boys here is extremely overrated. Im tired of this team looking for the next Craig Biggio or Jeff Bagwell or great locker room guy who's jock Richard Justice can ride. How about actively looking for your first championship after fifty some odd years of existence and nothing to show for it? F&*# having the Good Guys. I want the Bad Guys who win. That's my rant on the Astros.
Funny rant coming from a guy with a monicker of "big shot bob" Brandon Backe is the closest thing to being the 'Robert Horry' of MLB.
Robert Horry wasn't a local product that we kept giving chances to time and time again. He delivered on several different occasions. A better comparison to Backe on the nba level would probably be a dude like. A ton of hype those first couple of years and when he finally gets minutes, you find out he just isn't that good. And his team held on to those hopes for a while before letting him go.
I don't recall Darko doing anything. Maybe a more apt comparison is to Cato. Living off a couple of monster games. But then Backe never got a huge contract like him. In any case, Backe was about on par for a 4th or 5th starter prior to last season. No team can have a rotation full of aces.
i think your rant is in the minority. and pretty ridiculous.. paying a guy 1 mil is over the top and ridiculous? It's freaking arbitration..after a certain # of years, it's higher salary or nothing. It's not like they signed him longterm. And it's not like they give homegrown products huge contracts that aren't deserved. If you want the Bad Guys who win, go find another team to support. I enjoy not having assholes or clubhouse cancers on this team. The Texans are trying to do it that way, too
The only clubhouse cancer is the owner and thats a big problem...btw higher salary or nothing he deserved nothing
I agree and the point I'm trying to make is that the more that Houston fans buy into his Good Old Boys showcase, the more likely he is to keep making the same mistakes over and over again. In response to that other dude. I honestly don't give a damn if they are a cancer or a choir boy. That shouldn't matter in the scheme of things. If a player wins then they win. Its just ridiculous that we avoid that sort of player all together though. And what makes me sick is that this dude led the league last year in home runs allowed and had a sky high ERA and we decided to give him a million dollars this year. That would be like giving your worst salesman a nice fat bonus just because he's from your neighborhood. I mean its a business, if he's underperforming consistently for 3 years, he needs to go. I've been an Astros fan for some 20 odd years, and seen them be successful for only two of those years despite having talented teams. Everytime that a team like the Cardinals, Cubs and Rangers go for someone with question marks all over them but a chance to reap high rewards, it makes me hate Drayton more and more for not even considering those types of players. I wouldn't compare the Texans to the Astros at all by the way. Completely different sports with completely different player issues. You don't have baseball players involved in murders, gambling, fighting and the other crazy ***** that football players get into.
How do you define sucess? They won the division in 97,98,99,2001 and the Wild Card in 04 and 05. And given this team's lack of pitching talent this year, it made complete sense to give Backe a shot during Spring Training...and he most likely would have been cut then if he didn't get injured. And I'd find it quite hard to root for a team with a bunch of a**holes on it. There's no reason you can't be a champion and sign classy, professional players at the same time.
They already cut him loose. And their not paying for it out of the kindness of their hearts, he got hurt playing for them so there are probably legal and MLB rules involved.
Legal issues aside, it would have been the right thing to do even if Backe did insult management on his way out.
