I'm sure thats coming pretty soon. Especially in the wake of reports on how bad the Astros are doing on ESPN. The question came up again of when Roy is gong to be traded. The reporter giving the story (can't remember her name) basically said that Oswalt reiterated what he said last year that he would accept a trade if the FO approached him on the subject. Roy did say his preference would be to stay in the NL and joked about being on the same team with Peavy. As far as the talk of Gerry Hunsicker coming back, IMO there is no way in hell he would come back to work for McLane. I'm not too fond of Ed Wade because one of Tal Smith's guys, but I do like that Bobby Heck is the scouting director and assistant GM. Heck had a good draft last season and will hopefully have a good draft coming up next week, as long as McLane doesn't go cheap and listen to Selig.
Did you get "blasted" and "flamed" or disagreed with? I don't remember the previous exchange, so I can't comment on it. But what you've offered here is entirely reasonable; I agree with you here.
LOL great minds think the same! I would fire Cecil Cooper [my bud Don calls him Peencil Pooper HAHA], also trade Micheal Borne ,Wesley White Latroy Hawkings and maybr Carlos Lee.
I'd fire Coop today and name Art Howe the interim manager for this year and see how he does. If he sucks, hire Tim Bogar who is the current 1st base coach for the Red Sox and was a manager in the minor leagues.
after this current debacle with a first time manager, i don't know if drayton will go with another newbie. i'm guessing he'll try someone with more experience managing in the bigs than tim bogar, though i'd love to see him as manager. he knows the young players after managing in the stros system for a few year, he'd be great for the young players who will be coming up the ladder in the next few years.
Didn't you get the memo that the Astros do not have any "young players who will be coming up the ladder in the next few years"?
haha that was hilarious... But it is seriously time for CHANGE. The Astros have dug themselves into a hole by dealing away almost all of their young talent the last couple of years to net a bunch of veterans/botching a couple of deals. The patchwork moves they did this offseason was really unproductive in terms of trying to reach the "end-game" which is creating a competitive ball club for not maybe now but somewhere down the road. I viewed this past offseason as a fork in the road for the Astros much like a prestrategy to a game of Hearts, where you have two choices...try to win the game the long, smart way or to "go all in" and shoot the moon where you have zero room for error or you lose the game. The Astros definately went the route of trying to "shoot the moon" by keeping their aging core intact and aquiring guys like Hampton, Russ Ortiz, and Pudge (even though I know it was low risk) instead of looking to rebuild. Well after what we've seen this far into the season their attempt has failed it is definately time to rebuild. If you examine this roster and what it may bring if we were to do a firesale, we definately own quite a bit of assets, and our best players are about at the middle aged to the above middle aged mark so there's no sense in keeping them if we play to rebuild. I feel confident Roy, Berkman, and Valverde can combine to net ATLEAST 3 top tier prospects and a handful of second tier prospects. If you can find the right teams for guys like Tejada, Hawkins,and maybe even Pudge and Matsui (the Rays just lost their 2B and they are full of young talent), you could probably snag a couple of second tier level prospects. Right now we have some young bucks to keep in Pence and hopefully Bourne continues to develop, along with Bud Norris who is on the tip of cracking the majors. Im very excited about that group of young pitchers we got down in our minor league system that include Seaton and Lyles, that looks like a group that is promising to produce some major players along with Castro who is primed to be our catcher of the future. If you combine this group and the group of prospects you acquired by gutting our team, along with a couple more strong drafts, we would be primed to have a young, competitive team within the next 3 or 4 years. The only down about rebuilding is having to stomach a couple of losing seasons but by the way this team is built in terms of age and glaring weaknesses, that seems to be already inevitable.
Ive been watching the Astros from '72 lol. I KNOW who the good ones are..some of there names are hard to spell haha. I wish we could have good guys like Bill Verdon, Greg Reynolds and Terry Puhl the team but that aint gonna happen lol.
Good post and you always have to remember that the Astros are willing to spend money. If we build from the ground up, we can always pick up a solid vet or two in free agency once the foundation is set. I'd be willing to wait a few years if that is management's plan. If we don't, we are likely to face some losing seasons anyway. We might as well be moving in the right direction in the meantime.
I've only been watching the Astros since I moved to Houston in 2002. I'm not saying I don't believe you but that is some atrocious name hackage for a non-r****ded adult Astros fan. Just saying, man... Wesley White? LaTroy Hawkings?? How did you do that? Even alcohol can't produce that kind of mess.
HAHA Your a better man than me Leroy. You and Brooksballs might teach this old fart a think or 3 lol........................................... keep on truckin'
None of the above mentioned prospects may ever make a splash in the Big Show (or even make it there). You never know with prospects where their ceiling will be. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush. My preference is not to rebuild but to reload. We will have to be extremely lucky to be a playoff contender, until the next wave of prospects shows up.
How do you reload when your payroll is already on the high end of the range? Unlike the NBA or NFL, the real value in MLB is not talent, but cheap talent. In the NBA, for example, your goal is to get the best players and those are generally deemed untouchable and you build around them. In the MLB, though, top-tier free agents are available every offseason. So Roy Oswalt at $15MM or Carlos Lee at $17MM are easily replaceable (maybe at $17MM instead of $15MM or whatever, but ultimately, that's a minor issue). The real genius in MLB is getting the young talent. Having Roy Oswalt when he only costs you $500K or $3MM, for example So the beauty of trading Oswalt (or Lee or Berkman or whomever) for prospects is not just the prospects you get - it's that you have $15MM in salary flexibility to go out and get another Oswalt next year or whenever. A smart MLB team is going to build by collecting lots of cheap prospects and then adding stars around them, rather than building around expensive stars as in the NBA.
I love reading about what "smart" baseball teams do, always with the intention of stating that the Astros are not a "smart" team. However, considering the recent success of this team, I'm not willing to join the Drayton-bashers and give up on the team. I'm quite happy with how the Astros do business. Not many other teams have managed to match the Astros consistent success in the last decade or so. Maybe they're not the smart ones afterall.
You have lost me. We must trade Oswalt before we sign another Oswalt??? For that to be a win 1. One must get reasonable value in the Oswalt trade 2. The new prospects must have MLB careers 3. One must sign another Oswalt Three long shot propositions. I would keep the cream (Oswalt, Berkman, Lee, Wandy) and trade the win-now veterans (Matsui, Blum, Tejada, Ortiz, Hampton, et al) and promote from within. We would really suck hard in the short term, but not much worse than now.
