The Astros were in position to win every single game of the Series (aka, a title) and pitching is what let them down in three of the four games, not hitting. They scored 3, 6, and 5 runs in the first three games against arguably the best pitching staff in MLB.
And they scored a big zero in the last game. 14 runs in 4 games? Another bat would have helped, and possibly pushed us over the top. 3.5 runs/game isn't championship caliber.
stop it. you're embarassing yourself. i wouldn't argue with you in an economics debate...but this is just silly. the NL Champion isn't of championship caliber? that's utterly ridiculous.
Nice try. The statement I made was that scoring 3.5 runs/game is not championship caliber -- World Championship caliber. We have been talking about run production in the World Series, not the NLCS. Please stop taking the discussion backwards with comments like the above. We needed a bat last year, we didn't get it.
So, according to you, the Cardinals were not championship calibur either... because they didn't make it there. Same goes for the Braves, Mets, Phillies, Marlins, and any other team that you said was going to be infinitely better than the 2005 team. I guess the same has to go for the Red Sox, Yankees, and Angels... they couldn't have been championship calibur... because if they were, they would have won it all. Few teams in the history of the game have ever maximized opportunities as much as last years team... the fact that you'll never enjoy it, or appreciate, is really sad.
you're missing my point but it comes from your complete lack of understanding of baseball, in general, so i forgive you. looking at a team's performance over 4 games...and judging them on 4 games...after they gain entrance to the post-season, win the division series and win the league series...is ridiculous. in baseball...any team can beat any team over the course of a series. a few breaks here and there. more than any other sport, baseball is like that. the astros didn't win the world series because they flat out got beat. the white sox ran the table on the entire season. they smoked the red sox and they smoked the angels. they smoked the astros, too. the astros didn't choke. they just got beat. now i'm sure matt lawton would have made all the difference for our hometown 9. but, sadly he was busy with other engagements. bottom line..your criticism started before last season began. and you were made to look foolish. others agreed with you then but came around enough to say, "hey, i was wrong...but i'm loving this!" we didn't see you at all, TJ. but i'm not at all surprised to see you today.
Baseball is a team sport, where pitching, defense and hitting combine to create a team. This invalidates your rather silly argument about the Yankees, Red Sox (nevermind they are in the AL), Cardinals, etc not making it to the WS. The Astros had championship caliber pitching. They did not have championship caliber hitting. Virtually every baseball analyst, columnist, etc said as much. Why you are ignoring that is quite puzzling to me. Why are people in this very thread (including some Drayton apologists) wanting the Astros to add a bat? Because they need more hitting. Simple as that.
Ok, your personal attacks are unwarranted. By the way, I know baseball much better than you do. I have played at a high level, am good friends with several professionals, and have actually worked with the Astros' senior management. I'm sure that you have picked up quite a bit by sitting on your couch and watching, but it doesn't hold a candle to my experience. Sit down.
Because according to you, that team (even with its championship calibur pitching) should not have been good enough to even make the playoffs... let alone win the national leauge. Maybe if you would have said that "this team will get only to the World Series, but then they will fail... they need a bat", you wouldn't be so controversial around here... but you said flat-out that this team would not even be in the playoffs. Also, by your logic, every team that doesn't finish as world champions has deficits... well, if it was that easy to fix those deficits, why doesn't every team do it?
Easy, it's called the collective bargaining agreement. Baseball doesn't have free labor markets and hence free labor movement. The Astros had the team in place, after last season to win it all, as they had Kent and Beltran, and Pettitte coming back. All they needed to do was keep that team together, or if they didn't want Beltran or Kent, replace them in the lineup. They didn't. They needed a bat -- every agrees on that -- and they didn't get it.
So, how come the Cardinals didn't win it all last year? They had the Cy Young Award winner, the MVP, and one of the best defenses in the game... isn't that the three requirements for a great team? They also had, statistically, the number one pitching staff... and the number one offense. And if that wasn't enough, they had a great bullpen... complete with lefty specialist, righty specialist, and closer. Why didn't they win?
But the one thing we know for a fact is that the team the Astros had last year made it to the World Series. Everything else is just pure speculation. I would rather have cheered on the team that actually made it to the World Series than speculate about what "might have been". Who knows, had they added a bat, they may have won it all, but we don't KNOW that. We DO know that the team they had did go to the World Series. I'll take fact over speculation any day of the week.
Are y'all back to the bat argument? Simple fact is that any bat that would have been added to last year's team would have replaced Chris Burke or Mike Lamb in the lineup (whichever one was playing). They had a combined OPS over 0.900 in the postseason and were better than any other player in the lineup except for Berkman. Neither Kent, nor Beltran, nor any bat available at the deadline would likely have posted those kinds of numbers, so any added bat would have, in fact, likely made the net result in the postseason worse. We may not even have made the World Series if you take Lamb/Burke out of the lineup. So no, adding a bat wasn't going to make last year's team win the World Series.
Buster Olney doesn't seem to think the Stros will make any more moves...here's today's blog on Clemens Roger Clemens' willingness to go through his strenuous workouts between starts has astounded teammates. He hasn't merely tolerated the strain of lifting weights and going through an aerobic regimen, as most others do; hell, he has thrived on the workouts, with more enthusiasm than most other players take into the actual games. But every year, the body pain he feels after each start has increased and the enjoyment he derives from the workouts has declined. Clemens has reached the age when working hard doesn't necessarily ensure that he will excel, or even feel good. Even before Clemens was injured in the '05 playoffs, you could see that he was hurting. He didn't bounce up the steps of the dugout, like teammate Brandon Backe. Rather, Clemens seemed to haul himself onto the field, pulling on handrails, and when he returned to the dugout, he moved gingerly down the steps. Another time, third baseman Morgan Ensberg rushed in to field a ground ball, and Clemens dropped to his knees on the mound to ensure that he wasn't hit by the forthcoming throw to first base. When the play was over, Clemens used his glove hand and his pitching hand to push himself off the ground. That was the first moment when I thought that Clemens would not pitch another season. He won't start the season in Houston for sure, now that the Astros declined to offer him arbitration, and while Houston executives maintain that they needed a decision from Clemens sooner rather than later, I think it goes deeper than that. The Astros are not going to spend $18 million on Clemens, but they also have made it known that they aren't going to spend that $18 million on anybody. In effect, the decision on Clemens was completely separate from anything else going on with the team; not re-signing Clemens will have little impact on other roster decisions, other than to create an opening in the rotation. So why didn't the Astros keep Clemens? Maybe they decided that Clemens wasn't worth his high salary; maybe, in spite of all the buzz he created for the Astros, club executives determined that the move didn't make good business sense. And maybe they saw Clemens struggling physically at the end of the season, and they have doubts whether he can get through another summer. I don't blame Clemens for not giving more hints about what his intentions were, in any event. After watching him in the last postseason, I think he has serious doubts about whether he wants to pitch again. He's earned the right to work according to his own timetable, just as it's the Astros' right to cut him loose. He's won seven Cy Young Awards, been part of two championship teams, and the milestone numbers he might chase -- such as Warren Spahn's post-1930 record of 363 career victories -- are a couple of years removed. The biggest lure for Clemens might have been to play with his son Koby, who was drafted by the Astros last summer, but that probably isn't going to happen in 2006, unless the Commissioner's Office allows him to take the mound in a spring training game for Houston (a good idea, for all parties involved).
No, that is not a simple fact, because the assumption that Garner would have replaced hot hitters is simply invalid. Garner showed that he was not unwilling to tinker with the lineup in the playoffs. Had we added a bad, we would have had much greater alternatives for position players, DH's and pinch hitters. Simple as that.
