On the bright side, Wandy has 2 hits already this season. He had a career high 8 hits last year. Of course thats good enough for 9th on the team. One behind Pence and Lee.
The MVP of this game was Brad Mills for preventing it from being 10-0 and not barfing in the dug out.
Jesus this team is awful. I know it's the giants, phillies, and cardinals but show some ****ing pride out there.
65 pitches and not a single swinging strike? Wow! In other news, Albert Pujols has almost as many home runs (5) and the entire Astros team has walks (6).
Haha I think my criticism of that got blown out of proportion. My main issue is with those who were ranting on McLane and saying he should look at the stands and the 0-6 and do something, etc. I understand people wanting to see a winner - but this is just an ugly process the team has to go through to get back to winning. The last thing I want is for McLane to panic and go back to the band-aid strategy to make this a 2-5 team instead of 0-7.
I don't understand people. How could you not have seen this trainwreck coming for several years? Did anybody really think this team was on the rise? Seriously. Its like walking into a room and seeing that your dog left a big, steaming turd on the floor and not reacting. Then you walk up to the turd, take a big sniff, and get discombobulated because the turd stinks. Of course it stinks! You should have been able to figure out the general concept when you saw the turd from the other side of the room. Maybe it is a little more or less pungent than a reasonable person might have imagined, but the idea that a turd stinks being a shock? Really? Were all you people freaking out because the Rockets didn't have the best record and the #1 seed in the Western conference for the playoffs?
See I am hoping for the opposite, McLane seem to have a delusional point of view that people will want to come see the Stros if Puma and Roy are on the team no matter how bad they are. I just hope he sees that even in a Roy pitched game, vs the best pitcher in MLB, the game barely brought 20k to the ball park. I think you know were I am going with this...
Sad thing is there's not really a Jordan Hill type player to watch develop. Pence seems to have regressed, Towles is garbage, etc. At least we have the NFL draft and then NBA draft and offseason to look forward to.
Some people are hanging their hopes on names like Castro and Lyles but the reality is that for every Castro and Lyles, the majority of other organizations have 3 or 4 similar or better prospects. Most of the 29 other organizations have also been drafting as well or better than us in the last 2 years so they have a lot more depth in their farm systems. We were still in the bottom tier of spenders in the last draft despite signing a lot of players. When you are as far behind as us, it would be nice to draft big in terms of volume and dollars, even though it's so hard to predict talent. We should've saved every red cent this summer and spent it on future drafts instead of players like Lyons and Feliz. Those were pointless signings. If we somehow ended up killing it in the last 2 drafts, most of those players are still at least a few years away from making an impact at the ML level. Prospects generally don't quickly go through the system or become impact players in baseball like they do in other sports. It's really hard to find and develop ML talent. If we ended up doing just average in the last 2 drafts, it will be that much longer before we are able to field a competitive team. If we did poorly despite signing so many players, well... For all we know, Castro and Lyles and Seaton and whoever else may all turn out to be busts or low impact players or get injured... There are a lot of prospects that are highly touted that don't pan out for one reason or another. As hard as it is to find ML talent, it's critical to do so, even for teams like the Yankees. That's why it's imperative to scout, draft, sign and develop players consistently over time. For years and years, the Astros either neglected their farm system, didn't draft and develop well, or traded away talent for short term gains. It's okay to throw some chips in once in a while like we did on a couple of occasions, but you can't do it all the time while simultaneously neglecting the draft and player development. The key is to make a permanent philosophical change at the top and draft well year after year after year... and never allow the pipeline to completely dry up as they did over the past several years. That way, you can legitimately use free agency to fill in a remaining gap or two instead of having more holes to fill than you can afford in order to field a competitive team.
If we can Trade Berkman/Oswalt/Lee/Wandy+ Lock up the #1 Pick than it's our best season from an office managing standpoint in a long time. We already have the potential to draft some great talent this year and if we can get more picks from trades and our dismal finish this season, then there is hope. We have the ability to spend 90+million dollars per years and combine that with the ability to use our draft picks right, and hopefully we are back in 2/3 years. It's very rare to see Mid/Major market teams like the Astros struggle.
What I'd like to see for the next 3 or 4 years is the following: 1. Use all of our aging fringe prospects to fill in gaps, even if that means multiple seasons of 60-70 wins. 2. Continue drafting in volume. 3. Go over slot more often in an effort to lure in some better prospects. 4. Do not go after any big name free agents, even after 2 or 3 years of solid drafts because we are very likely much longer than that away from producing enough cheap, young talent for it to make sense to try to "fill in the gaps" through trade. 5. Do not even go after players like Lyon or Feliz. Slash payroll at the ML level and put that money into drafts and player development. I don't believe that McLane will spend big on both the ML team and the farm system. I think that a lot of the extra dollars that he spent on the big club in recent years came at the expense of signing prospects. As painful as it is to think about years of watching a horrible major league team, that is the fastest way to right the ship. Cutting any corners will just delay the rebuilding process and extend the suffering. However, I'm not sure that McLane or whoever owns the team in a few years will be able to resist going after a sexy name here or there to try to attract fans to MMP. If that is the case, I hope that they keep it to a bare minimum, despite the faulty logic, and don't cut too many corners when it comes to the draft. If they rebuild the foundation of this organization, they will be able to field a better product more consistently in the long run and that is ultimately how to draw fans to a team. Even a lot of diehard fans start losing interest when their favorite team is horrible and doesn't have much, if any, exciting young talent.
If they ever have a game at night again, I will watch starts by Paulino and Norris. Pence is reasonably young and fun to watch. I'm also a fan of Sammy Gervacio, having watched him pitch on FSN AA games a couple of years ago so I'll watch him. And I won't go out of the way to change the channel if I'm watching and Towles is at the plate or Lindstrom is pitching. Also, in most organizations, Castro and Lyles would both be top ten prospects, as would be Meir. I appreciate realism, but that is a pretty documentable fact.
