Are the Astros about to go on the meaningless run?

No one has any clue what their draft picks will be doing ten years down the line. All draft picks are "educated guesses". We don't even know what Stausberg (sp?) is going to be, since his arm fell off.

The point, again, was that for every Harper there are a dozen Pujolses, Berkmans, Beltrans, Bagwells, Biggios, etc. Hence, the #1 pick, while nice and not entirely meaningless, is generally WAAAYYY overvalued by your average NBA/NFL fan who casually follows MLB. Hence, losing just to jocking for draft position is stupid.

Losing is for losers.

 

Quiet you. Some of the best players have been 32nd round draft picks. Some of the biggest *busts* have been #1 picks, too.

Losing is for losers.

 

i'm on msn's side on this, the #1 pick is pretty meaningless in baseball. Plus, this team needs the young guys to grow and get better as players.

What's better? your young guys getting worse as they get more playing time or getting better?

 

I agree that no MLB draft pick, regardless of order, is a sure thing.

However, we're already the worst team in baseball.

Ideally, our young guys perform well, but our garbage guys perform poorly enough to lose us the required amount of games to retain our #1 pick.

Losing is for losers, and the Astros have been doing a whole lot of losing these past few years, while avoiding the rebuilding stage.

If we have to be losers, it should at least be with hope for the future.

If the draft is about luck, as some have suggested, then we have the same chance whether we draft first or last.

If the draft is about evaluating talent, then it definitely helps us to draft first.

In either scenario, it does not hurt us in any way to finish last and draft first.

This is already a season beyond repair or salvaging. We're the joke of baseball.

Might as well make the most of it and shove it down all their throats in a few years.

 

If your team is evaluating talent well, they have about forty guys they have their eyes on, not one Bryce Harper. Even at the top of the top, they're looking at half a dozen guys. This isn't a Jordan-Bowie-Hakeem or Bush-Young-Williams type of deal. It simply isn't. The only thing you gain in baseball by losing games is, well, losses.

 

I agree that it looks like the Baby Stros are going on a little run, but I'm not too worried about it. Not only is the MLB Draft a complete crap shoot, but there isn't a clear #1 pick at this point. There is no Strasburg or Harper in this draft. You can say that we don't know that yet and you might be right, but at this point in their respective "draft years," we already kinda knew that both of those guys were going to be the first pick.

 

If the GM is REALLY REALLY good at drafting and the team has boatloads of money, then the #1 pick probably is actually quite important IMO. But with Ed Wade at the helm and Crane being somewhat of an enigma at minor league spending, I have my reservations.

I'm of the opinion that a lot of baseball draft data can't be looked at without context because

1. Signability issues: i.e. The Astros once had Jeter pegged as their #1 guy but money issues forced them to take Phil Nevin, and all Scott Boras clients

2. Team grabbing any and all HS talent regardless of their actual likelihood of success: Imagine an NBA draft where every high school player is available. You'd have the likes of Melo, Wade, Bosh, Bogut, DWill, CP3 all capable of being drafted before they showed something in college. Where would they go? I guarantee at least half if not more would not have gone in the top 5. Some team will pick them with a mid 1st rounder when no one knows their name and pray they turn out well. And while most of those picks would end up being lesser-known Darkos or Shuan Livingstons, some will pan out simply due to sheer volum. Yet at the same time, your Lebron James and Dwight Howards would still be #1 picks. Hence why #1s are still important. You still have the ability to take that kid with otherwordly talent even in high school. You just don't have the ability to take a more polished gem because they've already been drafted earlier back when they're raw.

But alas, even if there is a great talent staring at us in the face, I'm not sure Ed Wade will take him. Such is the fate of a team with a horrible GM.

 

eh, #1 pick is something to look forward to and brings excitement. that said, i certainly root for us to win every game we play. would love the #1 though.

 

If it wasn't for the #1 pick, we wouldn't have been able to argue Reggie vs. Vince for months...

 

While I doubt a continued run will lose us the #1 pick in any case, im in favor of it because I think it helps the kids develop. This is a time when player evaluation is very important. And having some positive energy in the clubhouse will help us see our players playing their best. Give us better indicators of what guys can do than in a gloomy hopeless scenario. They are building connections with each other, getting to know one another. Learning to function together. And most of all, they are learning to win together.

 

I don't agree that the only thing we have to gain by losing its more losses, but I would still like to know what exactly we have to lose by continuing our losing ways.

Again, we're already losers.

I would like to know your problem with us getting the #1 pick.

 

It's been charted the % of players making the big leagues/all-stars/etc by pick and by round and obviously the top of the first round has the lowest amount of busts. There are obviously some but at a much lower rate than in say the 32nd round. It's a linear regression.

No one expects success from a 32nd rounder. It's cute, but no one relies on it. The same can't be said of the 1st overall pick.

 

I would rather have a Major League team full of good young players that can win games than to lose games with bad young players. If Altuve, Paredes, and JD can get the Stros out of the cellar, they are worth way more than the #1 pick.

 

I despise the tanking mentality. By all means if you have been out of the playoff contention since June start some young guys, see what you have....but if you can just be abysmal instead of an all-time-joke, by golly be abysmal.

If you can be the second worst team in baseball instead of the worst, you do it...especially if you somehow get some young players some confidence.

How would you even go about tanking this season anyway? We already are pretty much going with the youngest guys we can. Do we shut down Wandy with some kind of trumped up "injury"?

We are already on a pace for about 110 in the loss column, wouldn't it turn your stomach to be all-time bad?

That said I don't want to see Carlos Lee starting a lot when we bring Brett Wallace back as a September call up.

 

I'm truly sorry you can't figure out how precious little difference there is in any of the top handful of picks in the MLB draft. I've explained my position ad nauseum here. Tanking is for losers -- especially in a draft like MLB. Most people on here advocating for the Astros tanking follow football and basketball more closely (of course! this is a Rox board after all), so I don't blame anyone. But the drafts, and the way the talent develops over time, couldn't be more different.

Given: but you're discussing the value of the entire first round over the 32nd round! I'm not advocating giving up our first round pick--I'm stating that losing games on purpose (when you should be teaching your young talent what it takes to win and evaluating what you really have in a *competitive* environment) just to get the 1st pick over the 3rd or 2nd pick is stupid, stupid, stupid. Stupid.

Losing is. For. Losers.

Indeed. God forbid we discover that some of our younger players know how to win baseball games. The horror!!

And I fully agree about benching El Fatness. Start the kids to see what you've got (not to "tank"); fatboy is obviously not part of the future picture.

 

It would take a significant stretch of good baseball for the Astros to not have the #1 pick. That would show promise for the future for the youngsters on the Astros. For me, as a fan, that's a lot more important than Ed Wade getting his first choice for Lexington instead of his second choice.

Losing is for losers.

 

I'm truly sorry you don't seem to understand the very simple question I'm asking, so I'll ask it again as simply as I can (again).

If there is very little difference between the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd picks, what is the HARM in getting the 1st pick?

Instead of answering that question, you keep talking about the very obvious facts that no draft pick is a sure bet and that it doesn't matter which position we draft from because of it.

So I'll ask one more time just to be safe.

If it doesn't matter, what is the HARM in having the first pick?

Because "Losing is for losers" and we might instill a loser's mentality in our clubhouse?

If they were that worried about that, Carlos Lee would have been out on his ass a long time ago.

Also, nowhere did I say we should tank. I said ideally, our young guys perform well and our garbage guys lose games for us. That's it.

I'm an Astros fan first and foremost (by a very large margin). I believe that we have good young talent, and I hope they continue to develop. But I also hope we don't miss out on a franchise cornerstone player because someone else got to him first.

Yes, I understand (because you've been kind enough to repeat it over and over), the odds of us missing out on a first pick star are so low that the #1 pick is practically useless, right?

But if we miss out on the next Ken Griffey, Jr., Chipper Jones, Alex Rodriguez, Adrian Gonzalez, Joe Mauer, or Justin Upton because we didn't pick first, you're going to eat those words.

 

It's not that I don't understand your red herring question, it's that I usually pay no credence to red herrings. But, to make you feel better: the harm isn't in "getting the 1st pick", it's in losing on purpose to get any pick whatsoever. Losing on purpose (listen carefully here) is stupid.

I'm with you on Astros first and foremost, by a very large margin. I think you and I probably see the draft and player development differently. Very, very differently.

Not necessarily "instill a loser's mentality", but in tanking (tanking is what I was speaking of, even though it seems you weren't) you piss away an opportunity to train guys on doing what it takes to win--even if you don't succeed at winning. Additionally, it's just wrong to engage in what should be a competition--especially charging money for said competitive activity--and then not compete. It's unsportsmanlike, cheap, and (sorry for the redundancy) for losers.

As an aside, that guy has looked better this year. Hustling a bit more, working harder, and a bit more productive. Still can't wait until he's wearing another jersey or a golf polo, though.

My fault entirely. I misunderstood your intent. If the boys just keep losing and net the 1st pick, for me that's just not good news. Not because we got the first pick--but because we sucked so historically. We're on pace to lose 109 games. The Astros have never lost 100 games. You mention some names at the end of your post, which I assume are all first overall picks. I'll say this: to make it worth enduring this 100+ loss meltdown of a franchise that was in the freaking world series within the last decade, it had better be Babe Freaking Ruth or Willie Freaking Mays. None of those other names do it for me, sorry.

No, I won't. I'll see your Griffey, Jones, A-Roid, and those other three whose careers won't live up and I'll raise you a Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell, Albert Pujols, Mike Piazza, Pudge Rodriguez, Roy Halladay (sp?), Joe Morgan, Frank Thomas, Nolan Ryan, Roy Oswalt, Randy Johnson and, what the hell, a Barry Bonds.

 

Question for you Ender120, now that I correctly understand your take (again, sorry for misunderstanding your intent).

If the kids *were* somehow (*not* likely) able to throw together a nice run at, say, .500 or .480 over the last few weeks, and some nice things fell into place looking toward the future, would you enjoy it? Or would you lament that we now only get the 2nd pick of the draft?