Be Honest: Before this season, how closely did you follow the astros since 2010?

As someone who was around during the lean times, we would literally have entire series go by with the thread struggling to get to the 2nd page.

I really never minded when people lost interest, they were terrible, it's easy to quit caring. But what bothered me was people constantly running down the franchise, and saying how terrible they are, even though we have clearly been laying the building blocks for this season for a while now.

In 2011, and 2012 we lost 213 games, we were abysmal, and that's all people saw. But during that time we drafted George Springer, Carlos Correa and Lance McCullers, and we also saw the MLB debuts of Dallas Keuchel and Jose Altuve. Having watched this thing slowly come together, while not always easy, it is extremely rewarding right now.

 

I kept up with them in the years that I could actually watch them on TV. The years I couldn't, well, I wasn't given much of a choice.

This year, I was so happy to be able to watch them on TV again, I made it a point to spend the entire year reacquainting myself to them - no matter how bad they were. Lucky for me, they turned out to be pretty good.

I've watched almost every game this season, even though those west coast games are murder for an old man like me. Don't know what you've got till you lose it for a few years, I suppose.

 

I completely lost interest. Apparently I wasn't alone considering one of their TV broadcasts last year(or was it the year before that?) got a 0 rating.

I was a loyal follower of the team from 1994-2005. I was PO'd after the strike killed the '94 season, but eventually in '95 I did start tuning into games again. Once they started sucking again in the latter part of the past decade, I tuned out. Plus the whole steroid scandal was a big turnoff. I know pretty much everyone was doing it, but it did cheapen some of those deep playoff runs since Clemens was a big part of them.

 

For the 100 loss seasons, this place was much more about the minor league thread than any game threads. A handful of us were around a lot during those times, but not necessarily keeping up with the game threads and only looking at box scores since the games weren't televised.

 

I would always follow the team and went to 10-20 games a year. During the down years they astros had some great ticket deals. You could just walk down to the field boxes.

 

Well, in 2013 i went to Minute Maid and saw our team be demolished by the A's, Coco killed us. The first game Straily pitched almost 7 innings and did now walk and K over 10 astros. Also remembered how bad Harrell look.
I did not mind the Astros losing because i follow minor league games, and we were doing the RIGHT THING, going young, lose now, win later.

I prefer to see a young Altuve playing 2b than an old Biggio struggling, playing to get 3,000 hits.
Losing is not bad if you are re building, but losing with an old team is frustrating. Once we got Luthnow everything changed, i finally felt we had a GM with a real plan for the organization. I liked Hunsicker a lot, but Luthnow is even better.

 

I quit following in 2006, not 2010.

 

I remember there were times where the highlight of my baseball week would be refreshing a Corpus Christi box score online to follow how many batter Foltynewicz was striking out.

Yeah, this is way better.

 

^me too, i think. what happened in 2010?

 

I remember being excited for Brett Wallace's first game

Yeah, of all the teams in town, the Astros are the one closest to my heart. My firm has had season tickets for the last 5 years or so.

 

I had to switch to Comcast so I could keep watching the Rockets and the Stros. That being said, a lot of those games you really only had to watch for a couple of innings because they would be over pretty quick. But watching/keeping up with them over the years has made this year just so much more sweeter. Keep waiting for that sweetness to come to the Texans though........

 

I have followed them religiously since 1962 - as a 5 year old with the radio on, to going to a lot of games when I got a license, to splitting some season tickets in my early 30s, to watching most every game from Minnesota regardless of playoff years or 100+ loss seasons.

 

Pretty good if i could have watched them on TV I would have been a better fan.

 

I tracked the Astros game by game but I spent more time tracking the Astros minor leagues.

 

Really hard to keep up with every game the past few years. I would attend the home openers go to a handful of games and keep up with the farm system. I remember being excited when they finally called up Springer. Took them long enough.

 

Believe it or not, the lean years probably intensified my interest... they truly did what everybody always says you should do (get rid of anybody established, be as bad as you can, find out if you have any potential talent, and start building when everybody was ready), but they actually had the stones (and the soft media market with a out of sight/out of mind fan base) to do it.

Everybody knows I would have particular issues from time to time with certain aspects of the rebuild... and I think many here have recalibrated their minor league expectations after seeing as much of these guys as we have (not every highly touted prospect is going to make it... many will be used in trades to get established MLB players).

Last year was really fun... and I'm glad they continued to add MLB parts for this year (even though some of them haven't worked out as well as expected). Now, that they're fully committed to maximizing the MLB team, its going to be a really fun time to be a baseball fan in Houston... and its totally sweeter having stuck around to see it how it happened first-hand.

 

Felt that I followed more closely, especially after the front office changes. the nice thing about baseball, unlike the nba or nfl, is that the teams minor league system allows fans to follow and dream on the team's future. Honestly, being a fan of the Astros during 07-11 was tougher since not only was the mlb team bad (and old) but the barren minor league system did not give one a lot of hope for the future. Hope in the teams prospects and front office helped keep me invested the last few years and makes moments like these even sweeter.

 

I'm somewhere in between the last 2 options. I've been intrigued by Lunhow since he came on board, so I kept tabs. honestly knew more about our prospects than our ML roster.

 

I'd check boxscores in the paper, tracked the minor leagues online regularly, but rarely watched games. It was just not entertaining to me to watch a team intentionally lose games. I totally agreed with their plan for the franchise, but that didn't mean I wanted to actually see it on TV (uh, yeah, that wasn't an option either). I got my baseball fix via going to the local HS and UT games. Started paying attention again for real last season.