And you think things are bad now? Roy might be tradable from a no trade clause perspective, but Lance isn't going anywhere. Yeah...what the hell does he think this is....a business?
good lord... since the end of the 2004 season, they've lost: carlos beltran, jeff kent, jeff bagwell, roger clemens, andy pettitte, craig biggio and brad lidge - i looked it up: that's 35 all-star appearences, 9 GGs, 7 CYs, 3 MVPs & 2 ROYs. and in the last 4.5 years, they've gone to the WS once and been in the race for the division title in the season's final week two other times. that's not an optimum result, per se - but given the turnover and their go-for-broke attitude for much of the late 90s/early 00s (which gutted their farm) - it's pretty remarkable. but sure, yeah - let's b**** up a storm about a crappy start to the season and start dismantling the whole damn thing, in the process dealing two of the best, if not THE best players in franchise history for a bunch of unproven, unpredictable prospects.
During that whole Roger Clemens & Co. era, Drayton did exactly what was best for the that team at THAT TIME. Roy, Berkman, Lidge were all in their prime so he fielded high priced competitive ball club around them, and it was successful. That was then and this is now, how can you argue that Drayton should approach this team at this moment with the same strategy when Roy and Berkman clearly aren't the same Roy and Berkman from years ago? You can actually say the same about alot of our key pieces....Tejada, Matsui, Hampton, Ortiz to a name a few..but alot of the people that like this approach are OK with filling our ball club with these over the hill guys that can play stop gap roles to maybe provide that extra boost along with our core of guys to MAYBE put this team in contention. Drayton's "go for broke" attitude may not have affected us then but it affects us now. Our ball club truly has little room for growth, how many up and coming prospects do we have in our farm system that gives us the potential to make our major league team better? And how many guys on our current major league team have still untapped potential? Roy? Berkman? Lee? Tejada? NO, I can see maybe 3...Pence, Bourn, Wandy, I like Paulino so go ahead and throw him in there too. And dismantling the whole thing? You act like our team is a perfectly put together club that is going to be a force for the next couple of years. This year we saw a bunch of new starters in our lineup and rotation and I'm pretty sure we're going to see the same thing next year.
He's not saying that at all. He's saying that he'd rather watch a team "try" to be competitive, while they cultivate the young talent they actually have in the low levels of the minors, rather than suffer through for-sure losing seasons with a bunch of no-name talentless "possibles". I'd also rather watch the current Roy and Lance rather than trade them for a potential future Roy and Lance, who aren't just being given away by any teams. Going back to how they amassed the young talent like Roy, Lance, Lidge, Wade Miller, Carlos Hernandez, Pence, etc... it was through scouting and the draft. They've apparently made a re-commitment to that, after getting away from it towards the end of Hunsicker's era. I'll give it a chance to see what can come from it.
Except those aren't the two options available to them. The actual options are: 1. Try to be competitive with the current crop while rebuilding the farm system. 2. Use the $50MM freed up (or $60-70MM if you added Tejada/Valverde to the mix) in trades to sign free agents and try to be competitive with that crop while rebuilding the farm system faster. This idea that the team is doomed to suck miserably if you lose Roy/Lee/Oswalt is nonsense. I'd argue that distributing that money amongst 5-10 free agents could actually make this team better than it is now, even ignoring the future simply because it would allow the team to eliminate holes.
Yes, they FINALLY made the commitment to start building through the draft but that commitment was made LAST YEAR. In baseball, it usually takes guys atleast 3 or 4 years to go through the system and crack the majors. In my opinion, position players move up faster than pitchers, and our ball club is begging for pitching! I'm all 100% for building through the draft, but that strategy doesn't help our current ball club with it's "win-now" build. Right now, we have 2 legit starters, and in the offseason we signed 2 over the hill guys for cheap and kept Moehler who pitched extremely well last year, but is an average major league starter at best, to fill out our rotation. For the next couple of years this is going to be how our rotation is going to look like, cheap signings because we cannot afford to bring premium talent. I'm thinking next year our rotation will look like this: Oswalt, Wandy, Moehler, Odaliz Perez, maybe Pedro Martinez? That should make us pretty competitive right? And say we actually get two young guys to step up and crack our rotation, how competitive do you think we'll be with Oswalt, Wandy, a wild card in Moehler, and two inexperienced wild cards in the 2 young guys? We have all this aging talent in our lineup but no pitching to back it. Some people keep saying that we need to keep our team intact..well im wondering what exactly are we going to do this offseason to improve our club? Who are we going to sign in free agency? Average pitchers nowadays are asking for 8 million a year, we can't even afford to spend half of that. In fact, I'm afraid we won't even be able to keep Valverde when he's an upcoming free agent, how are we going to compete with out a closer? It seems people that like this strategy are content with 3rd or 4th place finishes just to keep the fan favorites, while not doing anything to improve our future(besides the draft)...which leads to the argument, if we're going to not be competitive in the playoff hunt and are going to finish in 3rd,4th, 5th place anyway, why not restock your team with younger talent? And to note: I, along with several other people, have been calling for a rebuilding since last season. Last year's improbable run gave out too much false hope that is now getting exposed
Probably not suck miserably, but if we're not going to be competitive, I'd still rather want to see Lance/Roy as Astros... and finish their careers as Astros. In fact, their contracts are more than reasonable for the quality of players they are. Lee/Tejada/Valverde all have ridiculous contracts, and I'd be fine if the Astros had never gotten any of them. You never want to overpay for a closer, unless you're getting a year-in/year-out lights out pitcher, and you have nobody else that could possibly replace him. Valverde was never that guy... and I would have taken my chances with a Hawkins-type or some young flamethrower in the minors (hell, even Paulino). Granted, turns out they didn't loose all that much in Burke/Qualls (but still, as you say, that's $$$ that could have been used elsewhere). I'm just not going to buy into the "we have to trade both Roy and Lance to have any sort of success at rebuilding" mode of franchise salvage. You can be like the Cardinals, and keep your one-two quality guys, while scouring the minors for the Ankiels and Ludwicks of the world. The key there is that you don't go out and overpay for a hit-only OF (Lee), an over-the-hill SS (Tejada), and you'll have all the flexibility you need to remain respectable while you let the draft/scouting take care of the rest. Also, look at all the teams that have dumped star players for prospects and what they've actually gotten back in return. Besides the Brewers-Indians trade that you bring up time and time again, there are plenty of awful ones that result in prospects who don't turn out to do much. What do the Oakland A's have to show for themselves for giving up on Harden, Mulder, Hudson (Zito was the one they kept, and he left as a FA)? What do the Pirates have to show for the countless of guys they gave up over the years? I count Freddy Sanchez, and that's it. Hell, even the Astros weren't able to get much of anything for Wagner, in a huge sellers market from the Phills who were stocked and desperate for a closer. Buchholz, Astacio, and Duckworth is exactly the type of mistake-move the Astros currently can't afford to make. In reality, only one team has consistently "rebuilt faster and successfuly" using the trade everyone approach... the Marlins. And still, a lot of that has to do with their draft and player development system.
So you think Drayton is a good owner? I think the guy is a big phony, who spends just enough to sell tickets, but not enough to win championships. Are there worst owners in baseball, yes, but that really doesn't make me feel any better about it. The big problem is lack of long term planning. This team really doesn't have a philosophy. None of their deals ever seem to be part of a bigger plan.
Name any recent champion that won simply because the owner "spent more money than everyone else"? And even then, everyone knows that you can't win consistently that way. My beef in him is that he either hires yes-men (Pupurra) to carry out his bidding regarding the fundamental core of this franchise's farm system (and he then influences how much he pays draft picks, or simply picks players who are signable).... or he meddles too much with an established GM (Hunsicker) that it ultimately drives that GM away. Other than that, he's a better than average owner.
The difference between those teams and our team is that teams like the A's, the Marlins, the Pirates are all small market ball clubs that don't have the ownership/budget to have a large payroll and and spending money. In most instances with those teams, their young players that are emerging are on the brink of getting new contracts and the teams can't afford to keep them so they have to deal them, ontop of that they can't spend money on free agents to fill out the rest of their ball club. Drayton has proven time and time again he is willing to spend money, which is why I think rebuilding will work here
McLane does indeed spend money, when he knows it will draw the fans and he stands to profit. However, he tends to keep the purse strings tight when it comes to the draft and player development, which is what is helping contribute to the plight the franchise finds itself in at the minor league level. Last season seem to be a turning point in regards to player development and the draft. I applaud McLane for allowing Heck and the scouting department to draft Ross Seaton and go over slot to sign him. Hopefully the team will continue to draft well and according to talent and not signability.
Still doesn't change the overall quality of prospects these teams get, on average, for players who collectively have a bit more potential than Lance/Roy do at this point (those teams trade players before they get their big contract, not after). My argument was that fire sales, by itself, don't inherently work. We are a mid-market team, thus we should rebuild like mid-market teams do... and that doesn't alwasy involve trading away your best players.
here’s the issue with taking the free agent route – and it’s a mistake *a lot* of fans make: you’re assuming the astros have control over the process. they don’t. you have to compete with 29 other clubs and you're the team that just dealt away 4 of its best players so you can fast track a rebuilding process. and since you've limited the budget to $70M, it's not like you can just throw money at players. that's how you end up with the kaz matsui's of the world. on paper, this is certainly viable – but in reality: $70M doesn’t buy you as much as you think. here’s a list of signed free agents from last year – remarkably underwhelming, isn’t it? assuming you’re not going to replace bloated contracts with *different* bloated contracts, let us know the 5-10 free agents you’d sign – for $70M – that would make this a better team when you take away berkman, lee, oswalt, tejada and valverde. go ahead… as bad as this team may be right now, i promise you the team you build from that list would be considerably worse. and if you miss on any of the prospects you just got for berkman, lee, oswalt, tejada and/or valverde....... oh boy. i've said it before, i'll say it again and again: the likelihood of building a competitive team around berkman, lee and oswalt is considerably higher than the likelihood of finding, developing, successfully promoting and then building around the next generation of berkman, lee, oswalt. it's not optimum - but that's the bed we're sleeping in right now.
pardon me for jumping into this so late, but Ric... you crazy boy. As currently structured, we are not anywhere close to being competitive for a championship and our farm system is a couple of years away from producing any relief. As you stated in your previous post, building from free agency is a poor way of building a team (bloated salaries, crap shoot, etc.). As it stands, if we keep our beloved "Good Guys" until help arrives, it will be Biggio/Bagwell redux. Over the hills ex-stars getting paid too much mixed with a few talented young guys. At least by trading (granted the price has to be right) one or more of these guys, we increase our chances at rebuilding properly (through young low-priced players), and provide the traded players a chance at winning now. Is there a chance that the players we trade for don't pan out? Yes. Just like there is a chance that Castro, Seaton and Norris don't pan out. But right now, we've got too many eggs in too few baskets. Plus the product on the field is disenteresting at best. Some of my favorite Astro memories were watching the development of the youngsters back when we had a farm system. Caminiti, Gonzales, Biggio, Bagwell. Hell, Yelding for that matter. It was at least fun to see the desire and dream about what could be. Right now we get to hope that we turn it on in the second half so that it passes time until football season. Whoopee.
Sure: $10MM - Adam Dunn, 1B $5MM - Bobby Abreu, LF (or $8MM - Pat Burrell) $4MM - Orlando Cabrera, SS $6MM - Trevor Hoffman, Closer $23MM - CC Sabathia, SP That's $48MM to replace the 5 positions lost, leaving us with $22MM for other spots. $2.5MM - Joe Crede, 3B $3.8MM - Orlando Hudson or Felipe Lopez, 2B $5MM - Brad Penny, SP $5.5MM - Andy Pettite, SP $5MM - Randy Wolf, SP That's $21.8MM. Those 5 players would replace Blum, Matsui, and our random scrub SPs. The offense downgrades while the rotation has a massive upgrade. Our starting rotation would be: Sabathia, Wandy, Pettite, Wolf, Penny Out of all the signings, only Sabathia is signed more than 2 years, so it's all low risk and leaves you the flexibility to start over if it doesn't work out. If you prefer, don't take Sabathia and instead go after a lesser pitcher and upgrade your offense or get an elite bullpen. It also gives you the flexibility to not sign Hampton, Blum and Boone and trade Matsui, saving you more money or letting you invest in a few more bullpen arms. And, best of all, that's all from just ONE offseason. If you do it over a few years, you have more options to choose from in free agency. Oh boy, what exactly? Even if you missed on every single prospect, you'd have the exact same team in 2-3 years as if you didn't trade those guys. And that's the absolute worst case scenario in which case you're assuming the same scouts that you're relying to rebuild through college and high school players can't identify talent in the minor leagues.
The flaw in this is that those players will have to want to sign with Houston. First, Sabathia would not sign with Houston for the same amount he signed with the Yankees. The Astros offered Wolf 3 years at around $28 million and he did not accept. They eventually pulled it off the table. I doubt Pettitte would have come back. Have you seen Dunn play first base? There is no way he can be considered a first baseman.
dunn, cabrera and abreu all represent downgrades (at least offensively in the case of cabrera; he may be a better defensive SS – i have no idea – but tejada’s a better hitter by a pretty decent margin). and cc sabathia would no sooner sign with the astros than he would the milwaukee brewers. again, it's a 2-way street - only, in his case, it was actually a 1-way street and it led directly to yankee stadium. pettitte's not signing here, either. what sucker did you get to take on the roughly $10M we still owe matsui, major? no, in the real world, it'd be wandy, wolf, penny (who's awful) and ???? LOL! again, there's no way he'd sign here - but let’s say we outbid the new-stadium having, endless-revenue-streams-earning new york yankees and brought in cc sabathia… your plan to rebuild the astros includes giving cc sabathia a 7-year, $161M contract?!?!?...... do you realize we owe the three weighted anchors we absolutely, positively must trade right now if we have any chance to rebuild a grand total of $140M through 2012? sabathia – by his lonesome - makes $21M more and would be on the books through 2015! no, major, you wouldn't – that team wouldn’t have lance berkman or roy oswalt on it, arguably the two best astros in franchise history. they’re off playing elsewhere while we’re cheering for adam dunn and brad penny. i think we all agree these next 2-4 years(ish) are going to be rough. but you still have to play the games and, more importantly, sell tickets in the interim. whatever mclane’s motivation, he’s absolutely right that he’s much better off trying to make something out of a foundation of berkman, lee and oswalt than he is dealing those guys, signing a bunch of nobodies and hoping the rebuilding process – which is very nearly starting from scratch - doesn’t take too long. i don't think too many fans - die hard or otherwise - would have a problem with them dealing tejada and/or valverde; they're hired guns with no legacy here. lee will never waive his NTC, and i don't think he'd have as much value on the market, given his contract, weight/age and defensive liability, but you could probably deal him, too, without turning off too many of the valuable casual fans. but trading berkamn and/or oswalt... that's a receipe for disaster. you do that if you have berkman and/or oswalt 2.0 ready to go. otherwise, you'd turn off too much of your fan base.
we were in playoff contention the final week of the 2006 and 2008 seasons. in bagwell’s final two years, they came within a game of the WS and then went to the WS; in biggio’s final three years, they came within a game of the WS, went to the WS and were in contention to win the division on the season’s final weekend. and trading the two best players in franchise history would make it more interesting? yeah, watching future hall of famers, MVPs and perennial all-stars usually is fun. PS they don’t have guys like that right now in their system. not anywhere even remotely close. good news! the system is filled with a slew of eric yelding-types – i suggest headin’ down to corpus!! you don’t seem to grasp that the alternative is much worse. none of the astros prospects with any kind of future are ready to make the leap to the bigs; the really good ones are all in the lower ranks of our system. so these next 1-3 years would be spent watching players worse than berkman and oswalt hold the line while the youngsters get ready. i can’t for the life of me see how that’d be a more interesting team.
