Ha ha!! I walked right into that one. I guess I should've said, "Don't you wish that Drayton would over pay just ONE MORE TIME?"
Atleast with a pitcher I don't have to see them loaf down the first base line on a grounder and play clown car defense in the outfield. $100+ million. Can you even fathom getting paid that much to play a "game" and half-assed at that?
Brian Bannister (Royals) declined to be outrighted to their AAA team so he's a FAgent. I can see the Stros giving this guy a look, at least an invite for Spring Training. He was crappy last year but has had some success in the past, see if Arnsberg can turn him around.
Are people seriously whining about Drayton not paying players.......... He spends more than enough for this team to be successful and just about more than 3/4 of the other teams in the league.It's all about where the money is allocated on the roster.
I agree with all of this - but I don't think any of it is mutually exclusive with getting Lee. You can do all of the above and still acquire Lee if you wanted to. It would be different if we were talking about acquiring a catcher or first baseman, who would get in the way of Wallace or Castro's playing time. But I don't think we have 5 SPs that we think are part of the future, so you're just really replacing an empty slot in the rotation. I assume Wandy's gone next year, so you could really just sign Lee and trade Wandy. Get some more prospects to develop, offset some of the salary cost, and you don't take up any additional spots in the rotation. The main reasons NOT to do it would be: 1. If you feel you have potential aces in the minors, meaning you wouldn't need to spend money on an ace. This would leave the money for a position player when the time comes. 2. You don't think you'll be competitive in 2012. At that point, you're wasting 2 years of his 4 or 5 year contract. All this said, if I'm Cliff Lee and just got so close to a WS last year, I want more of that. No more pitching for Seattle or Cleveland - I want a contender, and that means not going to Houston.
I'm just dreamcasting... he's got enough money to pay Crawford and Lee and make us division contenders next year. He won't (and shouldn't) do it... but I've gone a bit delirious from watching less than stellar baseball of late. I just want them to be good again. It's so fun when they are.
you aren't "wasting" any years. if they signed him, the goal clearly would be to be competitive in 2011. and they would be.
The Astros aren't one starting pitcher away from being competitive. They have one of the worst offenses in all of baseball right now.
I tend to agree with you but they wouldn't be acquiring just a starting pitcher, they would be acquiring one of, if not the, best pitchers in the game. That rotation would be dynamic and win you a lot of games, enough to compete for the division next season..don't know?
giants just won the world series with a bottom-half of the league offense. we are in a garbage division and would be favorites with cliff lee (hell, jayson stark claims we are favorites to win it without lee). and anything can happen in mlb playoffs. don't even understand what you are saying. if we sign lee, we'd definitely not be able to compete in 2011, but would definitely be competitive in 2012?
Compared to the beginning of last year, this team would have switched out Oswalt for Lee and Berkman for Wallace. That's basically a wash at best from what was a terrible team. The Giants offense was substantially better than the Astros. They scored 90 more runs. Their team OPS was 60 pts higher; they were 6th in Home Runs. And that was with their 3 of their 4 best hitters - Burrell, Posey, and Ross - all there for only a part of the season. Not to mention, their pitching was light years better than the Astros, and we're only upgrading Oswalt to Lee, which doesn't help at all in 80% of the games. I didn't say we'd definitely be competitive by 2012. I said that's the target date. Rebuilding is a multi-year process, and the Astros farm system should be bringing up talent by 2012. As I said, if it doesn't work out and it looks like it's going to be longer, then they can always trade Lee.
If getting Lee assured us a playoff slot then I say you go all out for the guy. But I'm not sure if Lee can put us atop the division. We would probably be close though. And once your in the playoffs in baseball it doesn't matter what team you are, you have just about as good a shot to win it as every other team.As we know the playoffs are all about who gets hot at the right time (Beltran/Ross) in recent years. And we've seen Cliff Lee single handily carry two teams to the WS in the past two years.
Maybe but the truth is Lee was pitching better then Oswalt, Johnson had not established himself as a major league hitter yet, Wandy and Norris were jokes and our SS/2B situations were horrible. This year, assuming progress, Wandy, Norris and Happ would make up a much better rotation then what the Stros had to start last year and Johnson is established at 3rd. Assuming we either enter the season with a new middle infielder or Sanchez/Manzella and a full time Keppinger, we should have the makings of a decent team and adding Lee MIGHT be enough to keep us in contention. Any other pitcher and i'd agree completely but in Lee's case, he is a special guy that might make all the difference.
Spot on, as usual. I completely agree that we have the makings of a decent team, and I think we're just going to have to accept that for the time being. As wonderful as it would be, I think Cliff Lee is going to be in New York. I say we give short contracts to Javier Vasquez, Bill Hall, and Marcus Thames and roll with that.
I'm down with your signings. But I would rather have a lefty instead of Marcus Thames since our lineup is so righty heavy.
Didn't think about it that way, but it's true. He's also well below average defensively. We would have Michaels as our righty off the bench... so who would you get as our lefty? Hopefully someone who could pinch run.
http://blogs.chron.com/sportsjustice/archives/2010/11/i_sure_hope_dra.html November 12, 2010 I sure hope Drayton doesn't sell the Astros Oh we've had our little spats through the years. There was this one time where he invited me and my bosses to lunch, and then tore me apart. Went through a column line by line and pretty much said every word was a lie. He pointed to something I'd written about Craig Biggio and said, ''That's just not true. Where did you come up with something like that?'' ''You told me,'' I said. ''Did not,'' he said. ''Did too,'' I said. ''Did not,'' he said. After a few minutes of this, Chronicle editor Jeff Cohen said something like, ''Children!'' This thing really got ugly. Drayton was mad as a hornet, and then I got mad, and it went downhill from there. But here's the thing I'll remember most about that day. When it had ended, and when my bosses were headed out the door in front of me, Drayton took my arm and said, ''Let's have lunch.'' I wanted to say, ''We just had lunch, and you spent the entire lunch trying to get me fired.'' He'd already moved on. He'd had his say, and he wasn't going to hold a grudge. He's a salesman, and salesmen never stop selling. In the six years since, he has returned every telephone call and helped me with my reporting more times than I can tell you. No matter how I've beaten him up, he has never stopped being gracious and available. This simply doesn't happen in my business. A couple of years ago, I was subbing for our beat guy on a trip to Milwaukee—that was the weekend I sneaked into the Commissioner's backyard to see his new rock garden at 8 one Sunday morning—and the Astros signed a kid from South Texas who'd slipped through the cracks during the draft. I wanted to know how much money they'd given the kid. As I remember it—and I could be wrong—I either couldn't reach Bobby Heck and Ed Wade, or they were reluctant to give me the number. The scout, Rusty Pendergrass, wouldn't give it to me, either. I finally called Drayton and he said he didn't know the number. ''I'll have to check with Ed and see if he's OK with you knowing it,'' he said. That's when I used a tactic I learned from John McClain. ''Drayton,'' I said, ''this makes you look good. It's not signing Drew Stubbs and Brett Eibner that make you look bad.'' On a slightly related note, a scout with another organization phoned from a bar the other night to say he'd been hearing how Brett was doing in the Instructional League. ''Five tools,'' the scout said. Thanks, I told him. ''Five tools,'' the guy said again. ''Aren't many of them out there.'' Thanks, I told him. ''Drew Stubbs,'' the guy said, ''he's five tools, too.'' Thanks, I told him. Anyway, Drayton said he'd get back to me, and a few minutes later, he did. ''Ed will call you with the details,'' he said. ''It's $165,000.'' That's the number as I remember it. I could be wrong, but what's a few thousand sawbucks between friends? I can't imagine any other owner in professional sports answering my call on the second ring, then caring enough to research a relatively unimportant signing bonus for a high school kid. Drayton not only did it. He was happy to do it. He understood that writing about this kid meant a few extra lines of Astros coverage in the newspaper, and that was important to him. In the debate over the struggles of the newspaper print product, Mark Cuban volunteered to let the Dallas-Fort Worth newspapers ride free on his team plane, promising never to complain about one word that was written. He said that the Mavericks needed the newspapers at least as much as newspapers needed the Mavericks. He said newspaper coverage carried a credibility other media outlets don't have. When Drayton and I were discussing Cuban's essay a few days later, he said, ''You can fly on our plane. Bring John McClain and David Barron along. If they're writing about the Astros, I'll pick up the travel bill.'' When the Rangers won the American League pennant a few weeks ago, I called up Drayton the next day and said something like, ''Now you're the other team in Texas.'' I told him I was going to have a little fun with him, and we talked and talked, and I tried to make him stick his foot in his mouth, and he wouldn't do it, and I kept trying. Finally, exasperated, he said, ''I'm thinking about Baylor beating Kansas State, and you're distracting me!'' People ask how Drayton reacts when I criticize him or poke fun at him. Ninety-nine percent of the same, he says nothing. He tells me he's OK with criticism as long as it doesn't question his integrity. He gets mad at times, but he never stays mad. No team owner, perhaps not even Bill Veeck, has ever been more accessible. He's there on good days and on bad days. He never ducks an issue. One day a year or two ago, he's going through his pockets looking for something, and he pulls out four or five small note cards and lays them on the table. I reach over and pick them up, and on each one is written a series of Bible verses. I asked why. He looked back at me as if to say, ''Why not?'' I took the cards and put them in my pocket, and I still have them. When people tell me Drayton is a phony or Drayton isn't sincere about his faith, I think about those note cards. Another thing I'll remember about Drayton is walking with him across Discovery Green to Minute Maid Park on game days. No man—no candidate, no general, no beauty queen—ever enjoyed a walk more than Drayton did when it was close to game time and people would call out his name. When he's visiting spring training, he rolls through the complex saying a big ''Good morning!'' to every player, executive, trainer, doctor and clubhouse attendant he sees. He stops for everyone, has a kind word for all of them. You can hear him coming from a mile away, and we all poke fun at him, but that's just Drayton. And if you think he's a superficial phony, just get him alone and ask him a question about his baseball team or the business world or MLB in general. He has amazing insight, telling you things you never guessed he'd know. I would imagine a lot of his peers have taken their measure of him by the Gomer Pyle routine, and gotten their clocks cleaned. He makes a tour of the Astros clubhouse before most games, and goes down the line of lockers visiting with each player. Sometimes his read on players—for instance, Lance Berkman—seems wrong. But he appears to be right more often than he's wrong. It's his team, and he wants a feel for each player, coach and redhead. You don't have to tell me he has made mistakes through the years. Lordy, he has made mistakes. He ran off Gerry Hunsicker, fired Phil Garner, traded Billy Wagner. He spent too much money in some places (Carlos Lee) and not enough in others (Drew Stubbs). He has also done some brilliant things. His $117-million investment in 1993 is now worth at least $600 million, and owning the Astros has enhanced his ability to make money in his other businesses. When the baseball people wanted to give up on the 2004-2005 seasons, Drayton refused. He didn't see the club for what it was. He saw it for what it could be. And his faith was rewarded. Now it seems the Astros are headed in the right direction. Drayton has a good GM and a good manager and a good scouting director. Ed Wade has convinced him that the Astros must invest in scouting and player development, that it's the only way a mid-revenue team can win. Now I have a feeling Drayton's time as owner is nearing an end. He's listening to offers, and at some point, someone almost certainly will plunk the $600 million ($650 million?) on his desk. Drayton says he's open to selling for estate planning, and to get on with the final chapter of his life, to charitable endeavors. But I also think he'll do it with great sadness. Owning the Astros has been a real good financial investment, but it has brought him fame. There aren't many other businesses he could be in, and be treated like John Glenn when he's taking that walk across Discovery Green. When he leaves, he'll morph into an anonymous Temple businessman. Maybe he's OK with that. Maybe it's what he wants his final chapter to look like. But for those of us who've gotten to know him, who've come to love his smile and his optimism, it'll be a sad day. He ran the Astros when they were one of the winningest teams in baseball. He led the push that resulted in the construction of a beautiful ballpark. And there'll never be another one like him.
