so being a 90-win team for very nearly half a season is completely and totally irrelevant? no one is arguing they ARE a 90-win team; no one is dismissing the 31-game stretch. but those 79 games (which, right now, constitutes 72% of the season) indicates they *may* have a foundation good enough to be a 90-win team. at the very least, i would think, while they rebuild their minor league system, that that’s more encouraging/entertaining than watching a bunch of AAAA-level never-weres play out the string. what’s the risk? they dealt two prospects that might go on to have decent major league careers? oh, no! baton down the hatches and prepare for armageddon – no team, with their roughly 200 some-odd minor leaguers, could EVER overcome such a devastating blow….. the prospects were marginal, the cost minimal, the short- and long-term goals still intact. and, maybe, just maybe, they’ve made the major league team better. to b**** about it is utterly silly at this point. here’s the concession: maybe having an owner that wants his team to be competitive and win at all costs, regardless, isn’t such a bad thing – so long as that directive doesn’t impede on the pressing need to rehabilitate the farm system. i would have thought this weekend would have underscored that point.
YES, absolutely! Because you'd be better off in the long run with the 10 prospects than the 5 prospects + Wolf + Hawkins. It ends when the Astros stop wasting money on 2 month acqusitions to be less-mediocre. They should be putting ALL available resources into rebuilding the farm and making long-term investments. If they had money for Wolf/Hawkins, they should have invested it elsewhere. It's the quickest way to get out of mediocrity. Except that it does. By definition, that's $4MM that they can't spend elsewhere, this year, next year, whenever they found a good use for it. Every dollar spent has an opportunity cost - it's basic business / economics. Surge? They won 3 in a row. The worst teams in baseball win 3 in a row. In fact, the worst team in baseball (the Nationals) are also on a 3 game winning streak right now. It happens - baseball teams get hot and cold. But beyond that, I don't care if the team is 4 games under 0.500 or 8 games under 0.500. If they somehow end up in the midst of a playoff race, then that's one thing. If it helps us win a few more games - and made convince Drayton that we just a few players away - that does nothing for me.
once again, major, perhaps (hopefully) for the last time: wolf and hawkins are not preventing anything other than these made-up hypotheticals about some fruitful south american land where prospects grow on trees and cost a million dollars each. if you want to deal in basic business/economics, here ya go: mclane has a budget for his various operations. if one - the major league roster, let's say - comes in $4M under budget, he doesn’t turn around and put that money into some other venture associated with the team. it's put into his pocket. so, major - as an owner, he has no obligation to season ticket holders and/or fans to put the best product possible on the field? they are - all the money they've budgeted for rebuilding the farm will be used to rebuild the farm. you're being a fan, not a businessman here, major - he has to put a respectable product on the field; he can't simply ignore the major league team and ask fans to come back in 2 or 3 years when it's all fixed. the casual fan will disappear. besides, when did spending money on ANYTHING guarantee it? spending $4M on four unproven south american youngsters might prove just as wasteful – stop pretending it’s some golden ticket. they've won 7 of 9 games, and 4 of 5 series, including victories against the cubs, brewers and now mets. they play three more against the cubs and then 7 against two of the worst teams in baseball. but sure - let's chuck it all and plan for 2011.... major, they've played 110 games. if you extrapolate their horrible 31-game stretch in may/june, they're 44-35 in the remaining 79 games. i'm not arguing they're a 90-win team. good teams don't go 9-22 over that long a stretch. but... is it inconceivable that with some continued tweaks (like adding ben sheets; maybe jon garland, too), they can be good enough to avoid 9-22 stretches and maybe play at an 80-85-win pace and be in contention? as long as drayton has a) allocated enough funds needed to rebuild the farm; b) he doesn't start cutting that budget because the mediocre major league team is way over budget, there's nothing wrong with them trying to fix what's wrong with the team. they needed another starter; they needed another bullpen arm. they gave up marginal prospects and very little money - those are the kind of moves you appalud; it's not like they sold the farm (as if they have one) to get mark texeria.
Not true. Yes, it would go to his pocket - this year. But businesses don't start from zero every year. If you take a $4 MM extra profit this year, that frees you up in the future to take a bigger loss. As I mentioned earlier, we saw this in reverse in the 1990's. As long as you look at this as a one-year thing, you're not looking at it from a business perspective. Absolutely not. If you did, you'd be required to sign every free agent on the planet. According to this standard, Drayton should trade every prospect he has to go get every possible aid he could for this season. After all, otherwise, he's not putting the best possible product on the field, right? Your obligation is to balance short and long term considerations. And here, the short term benefit (winning a few extra games) is minimal. Irrelevant, as I've already stated many times. Budgets can always be grown. Or money can be saved for the future. Either is more useful to the Astros than Wolf/Hawkins. Except that Hawkins/Wolf is not the difference between a respectable product or not. Winning 3 more games this year is not going to cause more fans to come to the ballpark. Winning 3 fewer games is not going to cause fans to go rushing to the exits. Having 5 more top Latin prospects has much more potential to bring fans to the team if one happens to pan out and make the Astros better for 5 years. Hawkins/Wolf won't bring in one dime of revenue. So from a business perspective, this is a truly stupid move - and as a waste of $4MM. I've never pretended it's a golden ticket. What I have said, multiple times, is that rebuilding is about having options - the more you have, the more chances one will pan out. If you have the option of having x prospects or x+5 prospects, the latter is always better. No one has EVER said spending money on anything guarantees it. What it does is make it improvement more likely. Yes, and? You don't think bad teams win 7 of 9? You don't think bad teams beat good teams? Overreacting to 10 days of the season is exactly how teams screw things up. I'd prefer to extrapolate based on the 110 games, given .. well, because it's more data that we don't need to extrapolate because we know exactly how they did. The sucky games are part of how the team plays, just as much as the "win 7 of 9". They also went a stretch in May of 16-6. If you take out that great streak, they are 37-51. That would be the worst pace in baseball. I'm not sure the relevance, but if you want to start taking out streaks, why pick your 31 game stretch instead of that 22 game stretch? 80-85 win pace is only in contention if your division sucks. The NL Central doesn't. I don't want to aim for mediocrity and hope for a mediocre NL Central. That's a good way to be the 1997 Astros. But regardless, none of the moves you suggest - Ben Sheets, Jon Garland - are the moves I'm talking about. Those would be difference-making moves. If you add those guys, you're making a multi-year long-term investment. That's perfectly fine, and I'd have no problem with that move. There's nothing in my plan that requires it to take 3 or 4 years. My problem is moves for 2 months in a lost season - trading longer-term assets (players or money) for short-term junk. Except (b) WILL happen. Maybe not a particular budget or area of the organization, but somewhere along the line, he's going to make up that $4MM. You'll never see it, but as a business, that's what he'll do. He has target profits over the long-haul - you can trade them from year to year, but unless he's terrible at business, he's probably going to make it up somewhere down the line. It may be as simple as being less willing to make a particular trade that takes on salary. Or raising ticket prices $1. Or it may be he's less willing to pay for some free agent in 2012. You'll never see it because the decision is not independent of everything else - it's not like he's going to say "I need to make up $4MM somewhere" - but it will happen in one form or another - because that's how businesses work. That's the drawback of wasting $4MM now. Call up someone from AAA. Sign a minimum-wage out of work veteran. They are a dime a dozen. It was a waste of assets.
well they finally called the game...astros won...but why did castro close the thread? I guess sometimes the internets is serious businezz
then prove it, major. plain and simple. i need some kind of verification that latroy hawkins, randy wolf and their roughly $3M in salary are going to - in any way - set the astros back and/or take money away from the team's plan to rebuild its minor league system. a quote from mclane, maybe a news story about them canceling several scouting trips - SOMETHING. i quoted liberally from an article (about the astros going above and beyond salary slotting to sign a third round pick) that said *the exact opposite* and you termed it, i believe, irrelevant. so if you're going to continue to argue, i'll need more than hypotheticals you make up. this team needed a reliable starting pticher and help in the bullpen. wolf and hawkins may prove to be epic fails, but they DID address both of those needs. and ultimately, wolf is better than anyone within the organization and hawkins has a pretty good track record (good enough that the yankees signed him not seven months ago). if either or both get back on track, this will be a better team. the astros are going to draw 30+K a night for years, regardless, because of the corporate investment, not to mention, games are still relatively affordable for most families and MMP is such a draw. what wolf and hawkins could do - if they pitch well - is make this a better team and keep interest up, which is especially important right now because the texans and rockets look poised to make a giant leap this year. a .500 ball club flirting with the idea of being in contention (like 2006) is infinitely more relevant than a sub .500 ball club languishing in last place. i agree; but you continue to operate under the assumption that mclane runs a rob-peter-to-pay-paul operation. he has a budget; it's likely not impacted by the major league roster, and certainly not by a minimal $3-ishM investment. it's no more or less likely than wolf/hawkins making this a better team. it's now 8 of 10. and i'm not overreacting. note: i've said repeatedly i don't think this is a playoff team. i've also said, repeatedly, that good teams don't have 9-22 stretches. you are what you are. but i think they're closer to being an 80-85-win team than they are to being a 70-75-win team (they’re currently on pace to win 79 games). so why not make small, inexpensive moves to try and get to that level? the brewers, an NL central team and current wildcard leader, is on pace to win 89 games. the past 4 wildcard winners won 89, 90, 88, 89 games. so 80-85 wins gets you, as i stated, "in contention." so tying up $25-$30M/year for the next 5-7 years and forfeiting draft picks for two pitchers is fine and dandy but dealing two marginal prospects who didn't have a future with the current regime for "junk" that only costs you a one-time check of roughly $3M is ruinous? OK... you keep acting like it's $40M; it's $3M and change; it's, in the grand scheme of things, a drop in the bucket. they're printing money over there; i just can't believe he's fretting about $3M. they tried both - how did you enjoy the shawn chacon (available, btw!) and runevlys hernandez era? brought back fond memories of 2005, i'm sure. btw, you keep ragging on wolf and hawkins... did you ever stop to think about the other piece to this puzzle? what does it say about the guys we dealt that they were only able to fetch us "junk"? do you think either would have landed us sabathia? as soon as these deals went down, suddenly, rieneke was the next oswalt and cusick the next biggio. in reality, reineke is a 26-year AAAA pitcher; he has no present and no future. other than a september call-up here or an injury replacement there, he'll never make any mark in the major leagues. cusick, while younger, is of the same mold. i've read reports on his performance for us, i read scouting reports when he was dealt - he's a poor man's chris burke, a small white guy with no one exceptional skill - but he's scrappy and works hard. these were not "assets" and they will not be missed. and i'd trade them every single day for seven consecutive days if i could get back cheap pieces that make the current club better.
Why on earth would the Astros ever publicly admit that these signings would set them back on rebuilding? Why would they ever admit anything negative about their signings? $3 illion spent on crap is $3 illion they can't spend elsewhere. It's not complicated. By the way, first David Carr, now Ed Wade and Drayton McClane. You sure like to bet big on guys who have been doing a crappy job. Not saying you are wrong, hope you are right, but I find it hard to agree.
McLane's team has made the postseason more times during his tenure than everyone except the Yankees, Braves, and Cardinals, and Red Sox I believe, and he's taken his team to the WS. And you're grouping him with Carr???
I'm talking about the last couple of years. The tanking of the team, the non-signing of draft picks, the hirings of Purpura and Wade, the hiring of Cooper, the recent FA signings... But if you just want to put Wade in there, that's fine with me.
Ugh. To repeat for the 17th time, ITS BASIC FUNDAMENTALS OF RUNNING A BUSINESS. It can't be "proven" because money isn't put in neat piles like you try to do. You don't start from 0 every year as you tried to do. If you spend money, it's gone - FOREVER - no matter if it comes off the books next year. There's no "I spent $4MM on Hawkins/Wolf so therefore I will cut it from here and here". I honestly have no clue anymore how to explain this to you. If you think an organization that has $4MM less is just as well off and has just as much flexibility to improve as an organization that it otherwise identical but has $4MM more, there's nothing I can do. And no, comments by the owner of the team saying he's happy with the team does nothing for me as "proof" that it doesn't affect rebuilding. That's nonsense, and I suspect you know it. Or you're ridiculously gullible. It IS irrelevant, because I'm not argung that they weren't able to sign their picks. Sucks for you. Except the team didn't need either of those things to continue being mediocre. Woohoo, 3 more wins! MMP will only be a draw for so long. This is true of every new park in sports. If they suck for another 2 or 3 years, they won't draw nearly that much. Yes, they'll sell 30+K for a while because they are well above that now, but it won't stay that way forever. There's not a person on the planet that is going to say "ooh, I'll go to the Astros game because they were 3 games better last year!" Unless there's a *qualitative* difference, it's irrelevant as far as attendance goes. And yet, unless they play WAY above expectations, Hawkins/Wolf isn't the difference between those two options. No, I continue to assume he runs a business on the same basic principles that millions of other people in the country do. Yes, but it IS more likely than wolf/hawkins making next year's team better - which is the goal. It's also 1-2. This is what happens when you pick and choose time frames. The more data, the better - and the most data is 55-59. Unless there was something in there to suggest a turning point instead of just regular ups and downs, there's no reason to look at less data than more. Because there's no point to winning 2 or 3 more games this year, especially when it has a cost. Why not try to make next year's team an 85 win team, and if you feel that a Hawkins is that good, trade for him next year to make it a 90 win team? YES! Because the point is to make those future teams better, and those moves do that! Spending $3MM to make a crappy team less crappy by adding free agents that leave at the end of the year contributes nothing at all go that goal. No, I keep acting like (and repeating over and over and over) that its $4MM. You keep making up the rest. The Astros are no more or less enjoyable to me today than they were 3 weeks ago. They are mediocre in both cases. I'm no more or less likely to go to a game, and I don't believe they are any more or less likely to make the playoffs. So the options are crap or Sabathia? WTF? They could have fetched a Randy Wolf or Latroy Hawkins next year when the team might have been within reach of the playoffs. No one - except maybe you in trying to create extreme strawmans - has argued any such thing. The fact is that prospects are not either worthless or the next Oswalt/Biggio. There's an entire line of options in between. And yet having them is better than not having them. If that were not the case, they could have been released months ago. If they were not assets, how did they fetch major league players that you believe to be decent? That's basically the very definition of an asset.
So with a payroll above 60 millions dollars, less than 4 million dollars will destroy our future. Seems like a bit over dramatized reaction. Ric and Major both make good points but I just don't believe getting marginal talent for bags of peanuts and players that will never see the light of the majors is a franchise killer move. Seems like they did what they could to try and see if they could catch lightening in a bottle. It appears to be a low-risk, high reward type of move. Wolf and Hawkins will not turn this team around by themselves. After the recent stretch run by the Astros, it is apparent that all this team needs is pitching. Unfortunately this last off-season, no pitching was available without throwing piles of cash which definitely would hamper the franchise for years to come or trade for a top level player with top level minor league talent. The problems with that are, no pitcher available at the time was worth their sticker price and the Astros did not have alot of trading chips to acquire said talent. We just need to keep the faith and make a run at any pitchers that might be available this off-season. Bottom line is that 4 millions dollars just does not equate to a franchise destroying debt. Or even hamper any type of move for the future.
you keep talking about basic common business sense and then ignoring a vital component of that: budgets. if he's budgeted $10M to spend on rebuilding the farm, he's not going to add to that in any given fiscal year no matter what; it's fixed. so this idea he'd could have dumped wolf/hawkins salaries into rebuilding is not a reality - if he has $3M left over in his major league budget, it's going ito his pocket. and yes, you do start over, more or less, with each fiscal year. he owns a major league baseball team, ferchrissake - it appreciates every single year. it's not like he has $200M total to EVER spend on his organization, so $3M on hawkins/wolf means he's down to $197M. he's only going to take away from his farm budget if he starts hemorrhaging money elsewhere. and there's no indication that's happening or will happen. this is it's 10th year; and they're now three-years, and an overall losing record, removed from the WS... and they're going to make a run at another 3M this year. the corporate investment is simply too large for MMP to suffer dramatically, regardless of the results on the field. i know, because the vast majority of its attendance is corporate. and yes, there's a significant difference between a team passively playing out its string and finishing last, and a team trying to finish strong and make a run at .500. the first team is irrelevant and ignored; the other offers a reason to still watch/attend games and a nice launching point into next season. i'm shocked i have to explain this, let alone defend it... they needed another starting pitcher and help in the bullpen. if they do their jobs well, it will make the team better. nor does it prevent you from pursuing that goal. major, your entire foundation is made-up - hypothetical south american prospects, an insight into how drayton intends to spend his money.... there's been NO indication mclane's not willing to do what needs to be done to the rebuild the farm. the team has stated its commitment and has acted on it: it's gone above and beyond to sign its draft picks, opened an academy in venezuela, swiped one of baseball's best, most-respected talent evaluators from a division rival.... sucks for you; i appreciate my favorite team not giving up and playing hard. it’s admirable. why are playoffs the measuring stick? they're not gonna make it... so, in your world, 73 wins is the same as 82? there's NO difference, no reason to play for one nor lose interest when they settle for the other? did 8-8 last year mean nothing to the texans because they missed the playoffs and finished last in their division? should they have packed it in and not cared how many games they won? did finishing the year .500 leave a bad taste in everyone's mouth?.... i'm at a loss why fans would be upset with a team... trying to make itself better! absolute. loss. UNLESS they’re doing it at the expense of the big picture; but there’s been NO reason for concern in that regard. the prospects were not highly regarded and part of a regime that was an epic fail; one everyone complained about it endlessly (and rightfully so) until these deals went down when suddenly everyone was up in arms. reineke and cusick were the 7th and 8th-ish players dealt from their system in the last 6-7 months; pretty obvious wade is wiping the slate clean. i disagree; i'd rather watch my favorite team try get to .500 than track the progress of never-were prospects.
look, we can endlessly speculate... or we can consider the FACTS. he hired bobby heck from the brewers, who was an integral part of building that team; he financed the opening of an academy in venezeula; he has gone above and beyond salary slotting to get top picks into the system this year. EVERYTHING mclane has done in the past 12(ish) months indicates he is fully commited to rebuild the system. so to think/argue that trading for wolf/hawkins in any way derails that is really silly, imo, and flies in the face of mouting evidence. but people LOVE to b**** about mclane; love to call him "crappy" when one could argue (quite effectively) that he's the best owner this city has ever had; he's certainly owned the most consistently successful team. they drew a conclusion about him in 1995 and refuse to budge.
I dont think Major is one of the guys who drew a conclusion about him in 1995 and now refuses to budge. Look, Drayton may very well be doing some good things in hiring Heck and investing in Venezuela. That doesn't mean he never screws up. That doesn't mean he doesn't make bad moves. That doesn't mean signing Wolf and Hawkins was a good idea. It's simple, spending $3 million on two scrubs like that isn't smart. It's a move you make when you are in the pennant race, not when you are battling for last place. Instead of picking up garbage, he should be looking on unloading some salary and picking up youth for future flexibility and potential.
NO ONE HAS CLAIMED THIS IS A FRANCHISE KILLING MOVE. It's simply a bad move - and it does hurt the team in the long-term. You may argue that it doesn't hurt it much. But $4MM is $4MM and that is money they cannot spend down the line. By definition, that hurts the team. This idea of taking everything to the extremes has gotten way out of control. There are lots of shades of gray between franchise-saving and franchise-destroying, just as there are plenty of shades of gray between next Roy Oswalt and scrub. Trying to put everything in the category of one extreme or the other is nonsense.
This is not true. That is not how budgets work. Budgets are guiding documents - making them into rigid definitions is the classic reason why businesses fail. A perfect example of this is a marketing budget. You designate a certain amount of money to a marketing budget as a guiding principle. However, if an opportunity arises, the stupid business says "I have set my budget, therefore no". A smart business looks at it and adjusts the budget as needed. No - again, this is exactly how businesses do not work. I've repeated this multiple times, but you saw this in the 1990s when Drayton took losses knowing that he would make profits to make up for it when the new stadium opened. No successful business looks at every year as an individual unit. None. Again, not true - that's not how businesses work. They don't put money in neat little boxes. 3 years removed from the World Series is why they are still drawing plenty of fans. Get them 5 or 6 years out, with a successful NBA team that makes a deep run into the playoffs in May or June and you will see that change eventually. In the mid 1990's, people thought the same about the Rockets. 8-8 means nothing if you only got there with players you don't intend to keep for the following year. The benefit of 8-8 is that it shows that your team is progressing down a path to improvement. If you only got to 8-8 by renting some players that you won't have the following year, then you really didn't make any progress and it's not nearly as meaningful. It requires no insight to understand the fundamental principals of money and business. This discussion is getting silly, so I'm going to bow out and give up. We'll just agree to disagree.
Sorry to bring this abortion of a thread back from the dead. But for all of you genuises who were convinced that Chad Reineke and Matt Cusick were junk who would never grace a MLB stadium.... you are already wrong. [rquoter] Reineke shines in debut as Padres top Phillies San Diego, CA (Sports Network) - Chad Reineke did it all in his major league debut, earning a win while getting a hit, an RBI and a run scored to lead the Padres to an 8-3 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies. Reineke (1-0), acquired from the Houston Astros in exchange for Randy Wolf, allowed just three runs on five hits in five innings while striking out five and walking three. "He was really nervous in the first inning," Brian Giles said about Reineke. "It was the third inning when he left the guy on third base with less than two outs, (which) kept us in the ballgame. We had some good at-bats, and got a big hit to give us a little cushion." Giles drove in four runs and scored once while Jody Gerut went 3-for-5 with two RBI and two runs scored for the Padres, who have won four of seven. Kyle Kendrick (10-7) got hammered for the second consecutive start, lasting only 3 2/3 innings and allowing six runs and six hits. He walked five and struck out two in the loss. Shane Victorino went 2-for-4 with an RBI and a run scored to lead the Phillies, who have lost five of six. Ryan Howard and Greg Dobbs added an RBI apiece for Philadelphia, which fell two games behind the streaking first-place New York Mets in the NL East. The Mets defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates earlier Saturday. The Phillies got on the board in the first. Jayson Werth worked a one-out walk, and Chase Utley singled to put runners at the corners. Howard grounded out to first, and Werth scored on a nice slide to elude the tag at home. After Pat Burrell walked, Victorino added an RBI single to put Philadelphia in front, 2-0. San Diego cut its deficit in half in the third. Gerut hit a leadoff double, moved to third on a groundout by Tadahito Iguchi, and scored on Giles' sacrifice fly. Philadelphia extended its lead to 3-1 in the fourth when Dobbs hit an RBI double to plate Victorino, who had singled. The Padres exploded for five runs in the fourth. Chase Headley opened the frame up with a walk, advanced to second on a groundout and to third on a wild pitch. With two outs and a man on third, Reineke got his first major league hit and RBI, singling home Headley. Gerut followed with a single, and after Iguchi walked to load the bases, Giles smashed a three-run double to left, giving San Diego a 5-3 lead. Adrian Gonzalez was then intentionally walked, and Kendrick was taken out in favor of Clay Condrey. Condrey immediately allowed a single to Kevin Kouzmanoff, plating another run for the Padres to make it 6-3. San Diego got two insurance runs in the eighth. Headley led off with a single, and three batters later pinch-hitter Edgar Gonzalez worked a walk. Gerut followed with a double to deep center, scoring both runners to extend the lead to 8-3. [/rquoter] source
Wolf's Astros debut was 4.1 IP, 3ER, 7 hits and 3 walks, so the 26 year old nervous rookie with several more years under team control in his first ever MLB start doesn't look so bad by comparison. Fundimentally, the point was that several people were discounting Reineke and Cussick as obvious career minor leaguers who were junk that no sane team would put on an MLB roster. That argument has been proven wrong. The Astros did give up 'something' to get Wolf and Hawkins.
