This is primarilly because of Hunsicker, one of the best GM's in the game. Nobody gets it right all the time (losing Johan Santana). However, Hunsicker has been amazing given his payroll limitations.
hunsicker is only empowered to do what mclane allows him to do. he paid the money to keep biggio and bagwell around. the pieces after that are mixed together from year in to year out. and in the end, this franchise has seen its best days from 94 to present. and it's not even close really. they've never been so competiive for so long as they have been in this period. on more than one occassion, this team has had the firepower to get it done on the field, but has come up short. that's not the owner's or the gm's fault. it's just not. what owner or gm wouldn't have signed bagwell and/or biggio to the deals the astros signed them to? what franchise would not have built their future around these guys?
Most people fear that the Stros will lose Beltran then lose Berkman the following season. If that happens then you have a good reason to bash him.
The '81 and '86 teams were much better. They actually had a chance to advance to the World Series. That was quite an accomplishment given the fact the Astros used to use baseball periodicals to draft players.
absolutely. unless those guys don't even give houston a chance. i certainly don't think that will be the case with berkman. we'll see with beltran. but preemptive bashing? hell, that's all justice's article is.
i know both of those guys personally and count them among my friends. no denying that. but we also disagree on a whole host of issues....both here and in person.
are you serious?? both the 81 and 86 teams overachieved. they were scrappy and fun as hell to watch. but in terms of talent, they were not as good as the 98 or 99 teams, in my opinion. those 80's teams had great pitching...and then fought like hell to scratch out runs. the 98 team that won 102 games...particularly by the time they had Randy...was better than any Astros team I ever saw. that lineup was stocked and their pitching rotation was fantastic. they got buzzsawed by kevin brown and the padres, coming up short.
Those teams were underrated. They had dominant pitching and were much more competitive because they had just the right blend of pitching and clutch hitting. The 81 team was robbed by Vern Ruhle's "no catch" trap. The 86 Mets was one of the best teams in the history of baseball. That team was stacked. If not for Dave Smith's choke jobs, we would've won. We all know that in the postseason, if you have 1 or 2 dominant pitchers, you can win it all no matter what type of hitting you have. Ryan was unbelievable in 81 and Scott was unhittable in 86. This era of Astros has 0 clutch hitting. You can say whatever you want about Biggio and Bagwell, but they are not clutch in the playoffs. How many playoff games did the 90's Astros win?
fair enough. i just disagree. the team i saw in 98, in my view, was a far better team than the ones in 81 or 86. in 98...before the playoffs...did you know bagwell, biggio, alou and everett wouldn't show up in the playoffs?? i sure didn't. the only history we had on that by that point was the 97 playoffs where we faced the braves.
