and that may very well be how it went down. but in reality that is your conjecture, or your opinion, of what went down. I saw some of that, too, and it wouldn't surprise me at all if this were close to accurate. but my point was, there is a difference between "truth" and anyone's opinion on how something may or may not have transpired.
i don't know how it went down...but McTaggart said that's how it went down. that there was no way the 'stros were gonna bring him back, because they never expected him to put in the kind of offseason work he did to get in shape for the Cards.
That just speaks to how talented Berkman is. He wasn't in top shape and he was a prime time hitter for many years. What would he be if he were more dedicated to his conditioning and how would that have affected our club? Would Berkman have a handful of MVP's, would we have won the World Series? Would Beltran have signed with us knowing he had a top 2/3 hitter in the game on his team? You can play that what if all day long. What would we have gotten from the Yankees for this Berkman rather than last year's Berkman? I guarantee you it would have been two or three of their top five prospects last year.
Congrats to Puma, guy had a fantastic season. If they lose Pujols, Berkman could easily slide to 1st and could end up being a bargain at 12 million.
Berkman back in town and on 610 http://houston.cbslocal.com/2011/11/08/berkman-i-was-frustrated-not-apathetic/ http://cbshouston.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/lance-berkman-11-8-11.mp3 http://houston.cbslocal.com/?podcas...=true&config_file=config.xml&dcid=CBS.HOUSTON Spoiler It's Josh and Rich, how you doing buddy? Good guys, how are y'all doing? Very good. I know you're in town with TriStar. . . . So tell me about it, you spend all those years here in Houston, first half of the decade very good, second half tailed off for you individually and the team, you go to St. Louis, you get in shape, it's a renaissance. How did that run feel in the last month and a half or so of the season? I felt great. Anytime you can win a championship like that, it's a feeling that you wish everyone could experience that plays. It's almost indescribable so...you have to be able to accomplish something like that, more than anything, it was a great team effort and enjoyed my teammates this year and hopefully everyone comes back next year. As the Astros started tailing off after the '05 World Series appearance, then missing the postseason by a few in 06, and kept going down after that, when you were here in those last few years, did you feel like if you stayed with the Astros, you guys would've had a possibility to get to that point, given the way things had been going? I think that's an interesting question. I think if they had held that 06 team together, if you'll remember that offseason in 06, there were some pretty dramatic moves made. They didn't re-sign Andy Petitte, they ended up trading a bunch of our farm system guys, which really truly didnt turn out to be a big deal but we had a pretty good group of guys in place. We'd been to the WS, we'd been to Game 7 of the NLCS in 04, and so the core was there. You had guys like Brad Lidge, and Andy, and Russ Springer. Even some guys like Orlando Palmiero, who was certainly just a role player but just a good group. It seemed like a team who knew how to win. Like you said, we miss the playoffs by one game, I think we were eliminated on the last game of the season in 06, John Smoltz beat us 2-1. The thing was there and just seemed like there were decisions made that started the domino effect that carried into 07, 08 and ultimately 09, 10 were not great years. I think you can look back to that very specific time in the last 5 years and say thats when it started to go down hill. Over the years, I'm not gonna say we're buddies but we know each other a little bit, so I think you're gonna take this the right way: I hate you man. (laughing)I can take that as good as anyone can when you tell them you hate 'em. Lance Berkman, 7 WS games, went 11-26, hit .423, with an OPS of 1093 in the WS. Had 5 RBIs and scored 9 runs. People may forget you hit .385 in that 4 game sweep at the hands of the White Sox. I guess you're comfortable in the WS huh? I've been fortunate to have 2 good WS. Comfortable isn't the right word. Scared to death is more like it. The good thing about that sorta external motivation is it really sharpens your focus. You end up getting the best out of yourself because you realize whats at stake. Thats hard to duplicate during the course of a long regular season. Some nights you got great concentration but over 162 games, you're really having to kick yourself in the rear. There's none of that in the WS. You understand what you're playing. Its the ultimate set of baseball games. The focus is amazing. You have it every night and I think thats what I attribute that kind of success to. We congratulate you on that. I made my little joke but it's certainly in the context of a 56-106 trainwreck for the Houston Astros. Been a little bit of a painful experience as I'm sure you can appreciate Lance. I understand. Tough time for the Astros. The reality is, it's very hard to maintain a level of success. Only a few organizations have been able do it. The Astros had been one of those organizations until recently. If you look back starting from the 97 season, which was the first Central division championship, going through the 06 season, you're talking about a ten or eleven year run of great success that the Astros experienced as an organization. Now you kinda cycled down a bit but I dont think its any worse than say it was in 87-88. Those years after the 86 team that was really good and I guess even the year after that, pretty good but you get in a dry period before the Jeff Bagwell, Craig Biggio, Steve Finley, Ken Caminitii, Darryl Kyle, before those guys came along, there was some down period there too. It's a similar deal. They made a decision to go young. Now it boils down to, did they make the right decisions in the draft, and how quickly can those guys develop. Lance, Let me ask on behalf of all the fans who call in and ask and I know you've addressed this before but just for the record: the last couple years here in Houston, you were not as productive player at the plate as you were this season in St. Louis and you appeared to be, I dont know what the number might be, maybe 20 pounds lighter than you were in an Astros uniform. Address that for us and address the questions of why wasnt he in better shape, why couldnt he had been a better player the last couple years with the Astros. Going back to 06, I had the best year of my career that year. 07, my batting average was down but still hit 34 HRs and drove in over a 100 runs. 08, I had a good year that year, maybe a MVP candidate until the last month of the season that year and we had a pretty good year. So you're really talking about 09-10. In 09, I missed more than a month with a calf injury, that basically if I had that month, my numbers would have been pretty close to what they always were. 10, that was a bad year, not making excuses but there were some extenuating circumstances. I didnt play a game in ST, had a knee surgery, started the season 2 weeks late, never really rehabbed, didnt get the opportunity to rehab to the point where I needed to. I probably needed to take another 3 weeks to a month off, similar to what Chase Utley did this year with a very similar cartlidge problem in his knee. He ended up missing half the season. I came back 2 weeks into April and consequently had a terrible year. I can tell you that, at the end of this year, I weighed 225. Stepped on the scale yesterday, actually 224. My entire Astro career I weighed between 220-225. The weight is identical to what it was. I think the perception was, suddenly this guy is in tremendous shape. I will say that I did work with a good personal trainer, Ben Fairchild. He helped me a lot in terms of the way I was running and that sort of thing. Weight and effort wise and production wise, you take injuries out of that, I feel like I was the same player when healthy. When I was healthy, I felt like I was getting on base, hitting home runs, doing what I did for 10 years in an Astros uniform. It is a little galling to have the perception out there that "Well this guy didnt do anything for the 10+ years he played in Houston and then all the sudden he gets motivated when he goes to the St. Louis Cardinals." That is chaffing to me. I feel like if you look at the body of work I put out there when healthy with the Houston Astros, it is virtually identical to the season I had this year with the St. Louis Cardinals. What else can you say to answer the critics? I know for me personally, I never stepped on the field in an Astros uniform where I wouldnt give 100% effort to try to win and we did win. We had a lot of success. I had a lot of personal success, a lot of team success. Not real sure what people would expect. Its one of those things, its unfortunate. Injuries are part of the game. Under performance is sometimes part of the game. If you play long enough, 10, 12, 15 years, you'll have years that are better than others. I can tell you its never been because a lack of effort. Do you feel this franchise after 06, Drayton in particular, as you see he wants to sell the team and has sold the team, do you feel like this franchise wanted to win and if you didnt, did that contribute to maybe an apathetic mindset on your part at some point towards the end of your run here? I think the organization always wanted to win. I dont think the organization always made good decisions when it came to personnel. Like I said, we had a good group in place there at the end of the 06 season. I think the worst decision ever made was to let Andy Petitte go back to the Yankees. That was the one domino that you know, that created a lot of the things that are where the Astros organization are now. I know Drayton wants to win. Really and truly, if you look at his tenure as an owner, he went out and got Randy Johnson, went out and got Carlos Beltran. He was willing to do things, he spent 100 mil on Carlos Lee. They were willing to do thing that they think would make us better so I have no complaints with the effort or will to win so to speak that you would feel from the Astros organization. Did they always make the right decision? No I dont think so. Part of that is why the organization is where it is. But at any point, when you saw they were making those bad moves, and it didnt help the team, did you hit a point where you as an individual putting up these big numbers, felt apathetic? No, I never felt apathetic. I never stepped on the field apathetic in my entire life. You dont step into the batters box and feel indifferent about whether you make an out or not. The game itself, if you have pride, you never want to lose a competition, even if you're frustrated where the team is, individually there is enough of an individual component in baseball that keeps you motivated. I will say, the 2010 season was very difficult because the injury, because from the very beginning Roy wanted out, he was a guy I competed with and thought a lot of, and was our ace, so then they trade him, you're kinda the only guy left from the years when we were successful. Frustrating is the better word, apathetic is not the right word. At that point when they came to me and said "Hey, We got a trade with the New York Yankees, will you accept it," I'm thinking "Yeah I'll accept it because this doesn't look like this is going in the right direction." Congrats on the success. We do mean that. We're very happy for you. Its a shame it didnt work out you having that success here in Houston but we're gonna move past that and start looking towards the future. We wish you best of luck down the road. Lance also calls the move to the AL a 'travesty' and 'shame'. Spoiler
I hope that we can now put to rest that Lance didn't try in his last two seasons. He basically spelled it all out. Milo was wrong when he said it. I was wrong for buying into any of it. This article didn't just open my eyes. I changed my mind not long after Lance initially answered his critics about his downturn in his last season or two in an Astros uniform. Perception is a helluva thing but perception of Lance not giving his best effort was just dead wrong. I'm happy for Lance and his championship. I just wish it wasn't in a St. Louis uniform. I can't knock Lance for going to the Cardinals, though, as he just wanted to go to a proven winner with the best chance. It doesn't seem fair to Astros fans at how it went down and what we got in return. He was traded at the worst possible time at the lowest value point in his career. In that sense, the Astros got ripped off and only they are to blame for that imo.
I'm pretty sure the Yankees would love to have Melancon and Paredes back in their organization. If anybody got "ripped off" and lost out big-time by that deal it was the Yankees. At least the Astros got two everyday players, and Lance got to go somewhere where he won. The Yankees got nothing.
Relatively speaking, the Yankees don't give a rat's ass about Melancon or Paredes. And assuming you were referring to Paredes, it's ridiculously too soon to call him an every day player. Starting for a handful of weeks for the worst team in baseball when your only competition is a struggling AAAA player means next to nothing. A bunch of genuine scrubs could (and will) be "every day" players on this team for the next several years. Paredes likely doesn't start on a single other team in the league and the odds still are that he turns out to be a guy that can't cut it at this level. He's too raw to be able to tell at this point. He may never be able to take advantage of his tools. In fact, I would expect that to be the case based on all available data. Let's see what his numbers look like, offensively and defensively, after 200-300 G or 1000 PA, assuming he makes it that far.
I still don't believe he gave it his all in his last few years here in Houston, but it's really not up to be to make that call. I'm still bitter about him not being part of the Astros, but I'm glad he got a ring. It sucks knowing he did it with St. Louis, and he carried that team throughout the year and playoffs.
Well done Puma. Will always be a fan of his. He was my grandmother's favorite player by far. When he got his ring I feel like my grandma was smiling up in heaven.
