Astros fire Garner and Purpura... Cecil Cooper named Interim Manager

Tal Smith should have been canned as well. He sucks and the fact that he was named interim GM is scary. I'll never forgive the b*stard for his part in giving away Caminiti to help his son out in SD and getting us trash in return.

 

Wow! I watched the ceremony on TV and was thrilled with the way it was handled and I heard about the boos for Purp, but I had no idea that people were leaving the stands BEFORE THE GAME WAS EVEN STARTED. Now that's a slap in the face.

 

"See you in the unemployment office, Phil"

 

After hearing Cecil speak on 610, he is saying all the common sense things that we have been saying all season. If that is how he truly feels, then he is going to work out well.

 

Drayton's ownership coincided with the two best players in Astros history playing out the majority of their careers and a new tax-payer funded stadium cash cow. I am not demonizing Drayton by pointing this out. He has been a good owner in the sense that he has been willing to spend money and has developed a good relationship with the fans. The team has been one of the more successful franchises in baseball under his ownership, but there are structural problems with the organization that are also his responsibility.

 

great news for the sake of the Astros

 

good news...should have been done sooner, but i'm happy it finally happened

 

From Wikipedia:

 

I didn't know it would happen so soon. I hate Poopoora, but Garner was ok. Yes, he made some bad decisions that cost us a few games, but he wasn't solely responsible for the team's misfortunes.

 

I think Drayton got the message when everyone booed Purpura yesterday at Bagwell's retirement ceremony.

Astros dismiss Purpura, Garner
Smith, Cooper named replacements on interim basis

HOUSTON -- Citing a dissatifaction with the results put forth by the Houston Astros the last two seasons, club owner Drayton McLane announced Monday that he dismissed general manager Tim Purpura and manager Phil Garner and replaced them on an interim basis with Tal Smith and Cecil Cooper, respectively.

The team made a formal announcement at an afternoon press conference at Minute Maid Park.

"I felt it was time for a change," McLane said. "Our goals, our objective, is to be a champion. I just feel we need a fresh start."

McLane said he met with Purpura following the Astros' 5-4 win over the Pirates on Sunday and informed him of his decision. Monday morning, McLane called Garner and dismissed him.

"[Purpura] was disappointed," McLane said. "He certainly wanted to continue, but I felt, for a number of reasons, we needed a new direction, a new configuration. To play with more enthusiasm and to be a champion."

Garner took the news well, according to McLane.

"Phil has been a great manager and he, too, picked up this organization in 2004 and took us to the playoffs. We were just a game from going to the World Series. The next year, certainly his leadership as manager got us to the World Series.

"But we have not done what we should have done in the last two years. I felt we needed to put more invigoration, more enthusiasm into this organization."

Cooper, 57, was the team's bench coach for the past three seasons. He previously served as the bench coach for Milwaukee in 2002, and spent both 2003 and 2004 as the manager of the Triple-A Indianapolis club in the Brewers organization.

Smith, currently Houston's president of baseball operations, is a former Astros GM. The 2007 season is his 50th in the game of baseball. He started his career in the Reds farm department in 1958 and came to Houston in 1960, when he was named assistant to general manager Gabe Paul for the new National League expansion franchise that would become the Colt .45s.

"There is no one in America that has more experience in leadership and player development and helping develop a successful organization," McLane said. "He and I will get involved starting [Tuesday] in trying to do a search, the search that the Commissioner outlined a couple of years ago. Hopefully, by end of the season, we'll have a general manager."

 

That deal was a salary dump, nothing more. It was NEVER a trade intended to make us better. We were dumping Cammy's salary and getting cheap players in return.

 

I figured Purpura was going to get canned, and there was no way Phil was coming back after this year.

However, the real problem remains.

As long as drayton owns this team, the Astros will nevr be more than mediocre.

I don't really give a rat's behind how bad the previous owner was - it's irrelevant. If you replace a piece of crap (McMullen) with a slightly-less-bad piece of crap (McLane), he is still a piece of crap.

Fans need to start showing up to the games with big signs that say 'SELL, DRAYTON, SELL!'.

See, as long as Drayton cares more about counting beans than about winning a World Series, what we have had here in the past is what we will continue to get, with the exception that it will never be as good as it was, because we will never have a Bagwell and Biggio again, nor a Clemens and Pettitte.

Here's why: Drayton, and the people with whom he has surrounded himself, naively believe that the (relative) success this franchise has enjoyed over the last decade or so is due to 'their leadership'. It's not. That success was IN SPITE OF THEIR 'LEADERSHIP'. That is why Hunsicker left, he finally got fed up with McLane.

Here was Hunsicker, with arguably two of the better position players of the last 20 years, along with Berkman, and even managed to pick up Kent and Alou, but he was never allowed to go the extra step to keep those people together and continue to build around them. So he finally gets the hell out of Dodge.

Hiring jimy williams when Felipe Alou was available??? Drayton was either A: stupid, B: crazy, or C: a racist. Take your pick.

Drayton will do only what he thinks is necessary from year to year to try to fill as many seats as he can - that's his #1 priority. Stealing Clemens and Pettitte for a few years from the Yankees? Designed simply to drag fans to the ballpark; the fair amount of winning and squeaking into a WS was gravy, and gravy that made the owner think he had made good moves, unfortunately.

In reality, when Clemens could never get ANY run support, and when we had no starting pitching depth, forcing Pettitte to burn out his arm each year, those guys saw the writing on the wall and high-tailed it.

Doesn't anyone understand that even our wonderful WS trip was really the result of coat-tailing on a couple of Yankees, rather than anything this organization inherently ever did or accomplished on its own?

Ultimately, it doesn't matter who the new GM is, because he will never be given the control and the budget needed to field a true winner. Therefore, it also doesn't matter who the new Manager will be, because, just like Garner, when you are forced to trot out a bunch of scrubs and ought-to-be minor leaguers every day, you are going to suck.

So, he'll hire a new Manager and GM, and maybe make a couple of FA moves during the offseason, maybe one splashy one like Carlos Lee, and we fans will get all excited again, and fill the stands again, and have a crappy .500 team AGAIN, and Drayton will sell a million cups of $7 beer AGAIN, and we will have two or three years of that new regime, until the fans start staying home AGAIN, and Drayton will throw these new guys under the bus just like he threw Tim and Phil, and this whole stinking cycle will repeat itself AGAIN, until the fans finally wise up and stop coming to the park as long as he is the owner.

I am not saying Drayton is the worst owner in all of baseball, but he certainly is not one of the good ones. He is a small-market owner ripping off a big-market fanbase. YOUR ACT IS WEARING THIN, 'UNCLE DRAYTON'.

SELL, DRAYTON, SELL!!!

 

Oh, here's the link to the article.

http://houston.astros.mlb.com/news/...t_id=2173196&vkey=news_hou&fext=.jsp&c_id=hou

 

We also Boooed him at the Biggio 3000th hit celebration...

 

Not to mention all the lame moves he made with Detroit....

I thought Randy was his brother though?

Edit - I guess it is his son after all.

 

Playing the race card on a day when they hire a black manager. Priceless.

 

it always amazes me the lengths people have to go to convince themselves of an opinion they formed in 1996 and steadfastly refuse to revisit. for some reason, i found this statement to be the most egregious:

do you honestly and sincerely believe that a rotation that featured oswalt, clemens and pettitte (not to mention a bullpen of qualls, wheeler and lidge at the top of their games) had no "depth"? really? you're ok hanging your hat on that conclusion? and you've honestly convinced yourself that pettitte burned out his arm... despite the fact he posted a sub-3 era after the all-star break in both 05 and 06?

 

When you find fault with an owner that consistently added the pieces needed for the stretch run, and kept the team competitive for 10 years in a row - probably the best team in the National League over that stretch - you either: (a) are delusional, (b) hate him for personal reasons, or (c) don't understand baseball. Stick to fiddling, my emperor friend.

 

I just found out about Garner and Purpura being canned and I'm guessing the mood here is that most are glad to see them go. This was a terrible season but I'm sad to see Garner go. I know he did a lot of boneheaded moves but I still can't forgive the fact that he got the Astros to their first World Series and also for two, almost three, incredible late season comebacks. They couldn't quite pull it together this season but to me Garner showed that he can be a very good manager and I wish he could've gotten another chance.

 

That's class right there.