Drayton has been so deseperate to hang on a bit at the major league level that the team has trashed their minor league assets. All of them are fairly barren.....good teams build from the ground up, the Astros, under McClane have trashed their own foundation. DD
You are correct. Now, are you going to equally give credit for the building of one of the best systems in MLB circa 2001? Because he oversaw that, "from the ground up." McLane has brought mixed results. He could certainly have done better, especially recently. But these things are cyclical. Settle in; the Astros will be back.
Again, back up your claims with evidence. What minor league assets were trashed? Who have the Astros let go of that has fundamentally undermined their foundation? Yeah, there's Ben Zobrist, but that's pretty much it. Isn't it funny how the same people who've make statements about the Astros farm system sucking are the same ones who b**** and whine whenever a Reineke, Cusick, Sutton, or Bono gets dealt for solid ML talent? If the farm is so bad, how is it that the guys on said crappy farm elicit such a strong reaction of outrage whenever one of them gets dealt? When they're a member of the Astros organization, they're career minor-leaguers. When they get dealt for an actual MLB player, they're the next Ben Zobrist. So predictable.
You cannot judge the man unless you look at his total body of work. And you can't possibly endure 10 years of success despite a terrible owner. And I really don't understand how it's the owners fault that the incredible teams we had in the late 90's shriveled up and choked in the playoffs. I think the fair assessment, as has been said, is that McClane is an average owner...he's had some incredible highs and now incredible lows...and perhaps his legacy then will be defined by what happens in the next half-decade before he sells. Is he gonna leave the team in shambles or will he work to get them back to at least respectability. Right now, they seem to be heading down a better path.
Regardless of the quality of the "prospects", the Astros *have* plundered their farm system terribly since 2004. They may not have been five-star prospects, but when you keep trading away without replenishing, either via trade or by drafting with even a modicum of competence, you get what we have today. So DD is correct in his assessment of the farm. The Beltran deal, the Hoff deal, I believe the Jennings deal, the Tejada deal, and several others--all trading away talent while we didn't *sign* any. It's turning around now. Let us hope they build with the same excellence they did in the late '90s.
Well we kept losing prospects via trades for half-season rentals or for signing Type A or B free agents. Zobrist is one...but how bout Tejada. Where would this team be if we had instead kept Luke Scott and Aubrey Huff. Honestly I don't care what they did prior to the WS, cause I wouldn't have traded that run for anything...but after...they should have stopped.
Going to msn's point, the issue with the treatment of the farm is while these prospects turned out badly, they had value. We trade something like 10-15 prospects/young players in the trades for Tejada, Valverde, and Jason Jennings along with Huff, Wigginton, Hawkins, etc. The issue there is everything we traded them for was: old, expensive, and/or short-term. If the Astros had realized a few years ago what they know now in terms of where the organization was headed, they could have focused on on younger, cheaper, club-controlled instead of short-term rentals.
Crazy that a little over a year ago people wanted to sell whatever we had left in the farm to get Jake Peavy.
One point that nobody has addressed: During our key playoff runs, particularly the year we went to the WS, we were one piece short -- a big bat. I ding McLane for not having the vision to sieze that moment and do whatever it takes to get that bat. It goes back to an old Billy Wagner statement -- about how McLane just doing enough to keep the team competitive but not enough to win big. I wish I had that quote. The funny thing is -- I bet that Drayton now wishes that he had been more aggressive then. He could have tasted championship champagne and been the toast of the city. bottom line is that he is not a horrible owner, and not a great one.
He went after Beltran. But really, would one bat have made that much of a difference in the Series? Only in game four (and end of game 3) did our offense take a vacation. By then the hole was too deep.
2004 was pretty much the season that the Astros went for it all. Pettite got hurt. That might have been one of the best all-around Astros teams I've seen in my lifetime next to 1998. If we could have run someone out there other than Pete Munro in game 6 maybe it would have been us getting swept by the Red Sox instead of the Cardinals.
Wagner was only one of the guys that complained. What about Bagwell? Darryl Kyle? Year after Year they're giving us everything they got (including doping up on roids) and we stay barely competitive. Randy Johnson? He was here for half a season. Half amazing, half a season, half the farm system. Kile, Hampy, Lima, Johnson. Yep. Boom shakalaka, gonzo. And to whoever is pumping the farm system, just show me all the great players we got working down there. Last I checked the AA team was in the cellar of the whole league. They got like one pitcher over .500 with an era less than 4, maybe two pitchers at the most. Everybody else is over 4 ERA, at the AA level. Don't be surprised if we see Koby Clemens come up to play first base as a gimmick to sell tickets after we trade Berkman. He'll come up here and strike out all over the place, hit about .225, and stink it up. This team needs a complete overhaul, new owner, new gm, new scouting department, and new minor league coaching staffs. Get rid of all the good ole boy network and bring in baseball people. Somebody go get Whitey Herzog out of the nursing home to get this organization back on track.
