[Buster Olney] Insulting, but sadly true video blog

Well, that was depressing to listen to.

 

**** him. Astros will not finish in the bottom 5 of records in MLB this year and will not be the worst team in the AL.

 

Quoted! Will be revisited come September.

 

I almost went a step further and predicted the team that would be worse than us, but I'll just stick with this one.

I imagine you are one of the few Astros fans that don't mind the move to the AL so you only have one team in each league.

 

I can't comment on the Astros projections or any of that, but woudl just note that this isn't rocket science.

Replace these teams from the Western Conference of the NBA - Thunder, Clippers, Spurs, Grizzlies, Trailblazer, Nuggets, Warriors, Lakers - and replace with these teams - Wizards, Bobcats, Cavs, Raptors, Pistons, Sixers, Bucks, Magic...

and I'll take my chances on the Rockets finishing with a top seed!

It's just math.

The Astros are not likely to be a perpetually crappy team. Even the Clippers managed to avoid that. But I'd argue the Astros are likely to be better than worse over the course of their future.

Still, they are now 7 years from a playoff run, have posted back to back worst records in franchise history and are likely at least a few years away from being seriously competitive. The current state of the franchise is one of the reasons I'm not generally interested in baseball anymore.

 

Barring any major signings between now and then, I would think the Astros will again easily be the worst team in baseball. We're basically taking last year's team and removing half-a-season of the few good players we had (Wandy, etc). And nothing about last year's team suggested it was on the verge of an upswing.

 

Other than going 15-15 over their last 30 games?

 

Yes - teams go through hot and cold stretches over the course of a season. Right before that, they went 1-13. Did anything substantively change for the team between August and September that would suggest it was anything but random?

The 2010 team also went 15-15 over their last 30 games, and then proceeded to have the worst record in baseball the next year.

 

It's always easy to pile on a bad team.

Surprise players happen all the time in all sports. Who's to say the Astros won't have one or two of them this year and improve to say...85-90 losses? That's a marked improvement over the previous two years. That's all I'm looking for.

Besides, the drastic improvement is taking place in the minors, not the majors. Luhnow will admit as much. I don't think we are 7 years away as some have mentioned, but I do think we are still 2-3.

 

Getting Lowrie back helped, I'm sure. That new 3b from Florida seemed to do well also. I'm not predicting this from any sort of sabermetric angle, it's just a gut feeling that the Astros will not be one of the 5 worst teams in the league. Maybe I should've just gone with not the worst.

 

i have to agree with you theres something about these young men that may surprise some people.

 

I hope we are the worst. Carlos Rodon looks like he could be that type of franchise pitcher that teams crave with the first pick.

Remember how the AFC South used to be the toughest division in the league? Then it became the easiest? Now it's right in the middle?

These things are cyclical. I'd rather us be terrible when the division is as strong as it is now. No use having a pretty good team that has absolutely no shot at the playoffs.

Looking at the future, there's a good chance we will be on the rise when our division mates are stuck with aging players with huge contracts. I'll take that.

I like Olney and understand he is paid to put out fresh baseball takes every day, but looking at the small picture like this is what got the Astros into the place they were.

 

It's certainly always possible that the team produces a statistical fluke (see the Orioles last year).

I think the 7 years that was mentioned was the time since we were last in the playoffs, as opposed to how long it would take to get there again. I think 2014 is likely the get-out-of-the-cellar year (hopefully) and 2015 is where they can realistically become relevant again. This, of course, is without knowing what kind of free agent signings they do, etc.

Fair enough.

I would just say that this thread last year made the same arguments, and when we were 14-16 this year, people said the same as well. Ultimately, if you look at the talent and compare it to the other teams in MLB, it's pretty clearly the worst - probably by a fairly good margin too. They can always overperform - but that's true of any team. And the opposite is of course true as well.

 

But honestly, I'll take another year of being the worst as long as it's not due to anything that will hurt our future like a prospect not panning out. I don't really think that's possible since most of them aren't MLB-ready this year. I have a lot of faith in how Lunhow is approaching the rebuild so having a farm system stocked with players taken at the top of each round three years straight sounds pretty awesome.

 

I don't really see any reason they should be noticeably better than last year. We're not really bringing our best prospects up and we're not adding high impact free agents. I think they stand a very good chance at being the first team to finish dead last in 3 consecutive years since the expansion Mets had the worst record 4 seasons in a row.

 

This is what I see, too. I think it's particularly true of the Rangers and Angels..less true of the A's and Mariners.

 

September callups, roster stability, & healthier. Fernando Martinez and healthy Castro/Lowrie is an improvement over midseason. I hate Mills, so improvement there. Losing Wilton Lopez hurts.

 

True, but the one variable (and its a big one for the Stros) is growth of young players. On paper, I agree with you that no new talent added probably nets similar results...unless some of the young players with upside actually start trending upward.

I think we know what we are getting with players like Maxwell and Lowrie, but can Dominguez, Altuve, Castro, Lyles, Wallace, and JD start putting it together and prove to be steady ML players? I think the jury is still out on players like that. None of them have been pros long enough to completely write them off yet.

 

Rodon might be the favorite for #1 in 2014, but will the Astros suck enough this season for a 3rd straight #1 pick? The Marlins and Cubs are probably right there with them.