I enjoyed the 100 losses with future hope seasons much more than the 07-10 dead farm, WTF are we doing years. The 11-13 seasons always felt like they were at least serving a purpose.
I think owners would love if their fans were more long-term thinking like this. Many of us (shoutout to the ClutchFans) saw the merits of the plan (#TrustTheProcess) but a lot of fans get disgruntled and turned off by the tanking. The three examples most cite are the (old) Marlins, Pirates, and Astros/Cards. Marlins fans hated the quick build and subsequent teardown while Pirates fans bemoaned the prolonged rebuild due to missing on draft picks. The Astros didn't nail all their top picks, but hit on about half (Springer/Correa/LMJR/Bregman) and missed on others (Appel/Aiken/Cameron) with a couple of TBDs in Tucker and Whitley (and maybe Cameron but he was moved in the JV trade). They have shown a willingness to spend and trade to keep the window open which was the biggest question mark we had with the Crane leadership team. Definitely lucky that the duo of Crane and Luhnow laid such a solid foundation. Astros 2.0 under Click will hopefully make the right decisions to extend this run out another ten years versus expiring in the next 3-5 years. The run from 2015 to 2019 has been amazing with 3 ALCS appearances (nearly 4), 2 World Series, and a title (nearly 2). Hope they can continue to add/retain pieces to extend the run. As an aside, for all the good Will Harris has done, he's going to be unfairly remembered for a terrible 8th inning in Game 4 of the '15 ALDS and the 7th inning of Game 7 in the '19 World Series. Baseball sure is a cruel game.
I enjoyed watching Oswalt pitch, watching Berkman hit, and watching Pence get promoted and hit... and the Biggio 3000 drive, while very painful at times, was ultimately necessary to boost his HOF chances. Most teams don’t just automatically shut it down and sell off everything at the first downswing... what plagued those teams was the total lack of farm system more than anything else, based largely on bad drafts (based on signability), and short term trades while Drayton was actively trying to boost the value of the team to sell it. From that standpoint, Drayton would never of ok’d a complete rebuild.
Here's to players forgotten.... Who the bleep was Ángel Sánchez? Jason Micheals...wasn't he in Wham!?
Yorman Bazardo is my favorite from those years. Hell of a name. Jeff Fulchino pitched in 111 games over 2 years and I have no recollection of him at all.
My feelings exactly. There was something liberating from having no expectations of success. We even tried to have fun with all the losing. Remember these?
I agree the lack of farm and not signing our picks is was killed those late 2000's teams. But also don't forget there were certain youngsters that showed some flash that just didn't make it - Willie Taveras was a ROY candidate, Jason Lane mashed then fell off a cliff, Ensberg fell off, Everett never learned to hit, Burke didn't pan out. If those guys remained consistent that 2007 - 2010 era would not have been as awful. It feels like every one of those dudes fell off at the same exact time, with nobody in the farm to step in and take over. Add to that some bad trades - a young Zobrist for Aubrey Huff, Luke Scott as part of the Tejada deal that was done RIGHT BEFORE the damn Mitchell Report. That had to be the darkest Astros run in my lifetime.
Funny how things work out If those guys don’t all fall off, we might be in the middle of a 15 year period of mediocrity instead of perennial Championship contenders
