Last year we could actually got 3 starters deep (which is very weak) and a solid hitting third baseman. This year we can go 2 starters deep (no way you contend like that) and have a platoon system at third lead by Geoff Blum. And that was the past by the way, our players have aged and will keep aging. That's exactly alot of people's points! There is no help coming from the minors and we can't bring in substantial help from free agency, so where is the help going to come from? Basically our roster now, is the exact build of our roster for the next couple of years..that wreaks of 3rd,4th, and 5th place finishes. If you look back in history a 4th place team is a 4th place team and a 5th place team is a 5th place team, people don't go back and say "Boy that was a great 5th place team in 2009...they had Oswalt, Berkman, Lee..man they were a solid 5th place squad!" Whether your team is littered with All Stars here and there and finish in 4th place or is full or young and up and comers and finish in 4th place..you still finish in 4th place! I know you're going to say "there goes all the fans", please...the Astros have felt several dog day type seasons and the fans still come back. Why would you want a celler dwellar squad filled with aging stars who have nowhere to go but down opposed to a cellar dwellar squad full of youngsters that have potential? Say we miss on all those "prospects"...we still wont be paying guys like Oswalt and Berkman 15 million plus when they are approaching 40 years old
unless they can turn berkman, lee and/or oswalt into 3-4 legitimate major league-ready talent (which they can’t), they’re likely going to be finishing 3rd, 4th or 5th regardless these next 1-4 years. i don’t disagree leveraging the stars you have could, potentially, speed up the rebuilding process. at the same time, i understand mclane’s perspective: he doesn’t want to give up on the present for a chance – and that’s all it is – on the future. he wants to win today *and* tomorrow – what’s the harm in that? i’m at a loss why fans – fans who supposedly want their team to succeed – would be against that kind of commitment/plan. i know people love prospects, OK. i see everyone go gaga for the nfl draft and the hot stove league, etc. when you're no good, dreaming of piecing together a young, exciting team is a lot of fun. but these prospects bust far more often than hit (i mean, there are *50 rounds* in the major league draft) and the % that turn out as good as berkman, lee and oswalt is even smaller. so you're far more likely to build a competitive team around berkman, lee and oswalt than you are finding, developing, successfully promoting and then building around the next berkman, lee and oswalt. where are these youngsters coming from: they don’t have any! it’s not like berkman, lee and/or oswalt are blocking the path of the next generation of berkman, lee and oswalt. no one worth a flip in their system is ready to be moved to the major league roster – are you suggesting we rush the talent we do have and potentially ruin them? you have, essentially, two choices right now over the next 1-3 years as you rebuild your farm system: 1) maintain status quo, build around 3 of the better players in baseball (including two all-time astros) and hope for the best; or 2) mortgage the present, trot out an equally bad team (only minus 3 of the better players in baseball including two all-time astros), hope fans don’t desert you since there’s nothing to presently cheer about at all, and pray you get lucky with the rebuilding process, which is never as easy as people seem to think. to me, this is pretty close to being a no-brainer.
Fighting for a wild-card spot is different than being a championship contender. Don't act like its the same. Our pitching is not good enough to compete in a series. That doesn't mean the team can't get hot and make the wild card race interesting in the final weeks. Yes, the team made the world series and NLDS in the late Bagwellian years, but be honest, it was a fluke. Two (not one, but two) premier pitchers fell into our laps and we got hot at the right times. That will never happen again, and it was building through free-agency which you point as being a poor method. If we traded some of our commodoties, we would get an infusion of minor league talent. The team would be in a position to play some of the younger guys and evaluate where we are. We would have another draft that would hopefully follow in the footsteps of the reasonably good draft last year. We would be conceding this year and next, but we could move some youngsters through the system with the hopes of a handful being ready the following year. Salaries would be under control and then we could make a schrewd acquisition or two. And btw, Cami was mediocre in H-Town and flourished afterwards (padres and steroids) and Gonzo was mediocre to poor in Houston and only flourished afterwards. I'm not a revisionist re-writing history. Those years were painful in the win-loss columns but fun to watch because the effort and energy. We already have Bourn, Pence, Rodriguez and Maysonett. Plus two or three position players that may not be too far. Our problem lies in the fact that all the pitching prospects are in high A. Trading some talent could bring in some AA, AAA pitiching prospects.
This was a hypothetical exercise - you gave me a list of players to spend $70MM on. In every case, I matched the price they were paid by the highest bidder. He went to the Yankees because they paid him the most - I matched that price in every case. If you didn't want a list of players based on free agent salaries that they actually got, you shouldn't have asked for the list. I didn't - I benched him. That would just be extra money if we were able to move him. Given that rebuilding is a 2-3 year process if accelerated, then sure, why not? But as I included in the original post, I gave you an alternative if you didn't want Sabathia. Yes, and? In 2-3 years, you're not going to have Roy, Lance, or Oswalt either - they'll all be free agents. If you want to keep them, you're going to have to sign them to new deals at market value. You can trade them and still go do that in a few years if you want them back. In the short term, yes. In the long term, he's absolutely wrong. Fans are fickle. They want to see wins. That's why attendance is down something like 20% this year and why it will continue to drop. The ultimate cure for attendance is getting back to a winning team as quickly as possible rather than floating around in mediocrity. It's only a no-brainer because you distorted the raelity to make your point. Why does option #2 including getting lucky with the rebuilding process but #2 doesn't? Your actual options are: #1: Trot out a mediocre team with popular players and rely on a rebuilding process in which you are on equal footing with every other team in baseball, while being behind in terms of actual prospects in the system. #2: Trot out a mediocre team without popular players and rely on a rebuilding process which you infused with some AA or AAA top-tier prospects to give your rebuilding a better chance. If the rebuilding process fails, you're going to have a crappy team in 2-3 years anyway. You might as well give yourself the best shot at rebuilding.
I'm talking about the youngsters you would obtain in the whole "fire-sale". No, if they aren't ready then don't throw them in there, but play guys who have reached their max potential that you don't mind regressing if they are terrible (i.e. Abercrombie, Quintero, Jason Smith..)
Because the fans that want us to rebuild the farm system so we have a future to compete are serious fans that realize how deep the Astros problems are. They aren't fooled by McLane/Wade's attempt to put a "competitive" team together by bringing in "high name" veterans to try and fill the many holes this team has. An average fan may have glanced at this year's roster and looked at our lineup and some of our pitchers and said "wow, we can really make the playoffs this year"...no chance! The problem doesn't lie in our lineup or offense, it's our pitching! We have NO starting pitching..how can anyone compete with only 2 starters and an overworked bullpen (an aftershock from your other 3 starters that are terrible)? This isn't a recipe to succeed...its a recipe to be in last place, and guess what..that recipe has been perfected! Last year, I was calling for the same thing, said that too much money is centered around a handful of players and there is not enough balance in terms of money/talent on our roster and that our farm system is disgustingly terrible...then the astros overachieved and went on that improbable run (I still wanted them to firesale) so McClane, instead of looking to add younger players with upside infused our team with older players. McClane may make it appear like he's added talent and production to our roster but he hasn't and many of us knew Hampton, Ortiz, Moehler would fizzle. Also, so what your saying is your "O.K" with us finishing in 3rd,4th,5th place each year as long as "THE 2 best astros in history" are still wearing the Astros uniform and McClane continues to sign cheap free agents (he has no other choice)? Then ultimately your "OK" with being mediocre each year as long as "the 2 best astros in history" retire as Astros while not only getting nothing for them, but their replacements are guys we got from the "crapshoot" draft? Wouldn't you want that pool of guys to be larger (guys you would get from firesaling) since "so many of them miss" that our chances of missing are smaller? i’m at a loss why fans – fans who supposedly want their team to succeed – would be FOR that kind of commitment/plan. (We are doing a good job at succeeding...)
And Ric, it is really easy to argue AGAINST having a firesale but I would like to know exactly which moves you plan on making to fix the Astros? Not just now, but in the future
i'm aware it was hypotehtical; as i stated in my initial response, "on paper, this is certainly viable – but in reality: $70M doesn’t buy you as much as you think." sure, it's easy to hypotehtically spend $70M; almost as easy as hypotehtically rebuilding the farm system overnight by trading your 3 best players. hypotehtically, you're competing with no one & every player says yes. baseball, unfortunately, is not played in a hypothetical world. cc sabathia is not going to be offered, nor is he going to accept, a large contract from the houston astros. it's not realistically viable. you can't, and mclane's not swallowing that money. again, maybe he would *hypothetically*... committing $161M to one player doesn't "accelerate" the rebuilding process, it hamstrings you significantly as you try to build a team around all the young prospects you're hoping don't bust. it's flat-out stupid. he's only "absolutely wrong" if he passes on the next berkman, lee and oswalt to keep the current, older, considerably more expensive berkman, lee and oswalt. can you or anyone else guarantee that's what we'd be getting in return? of course, i've never said otherwise. both factions - the dealers and the non-dealers - want to get to the same finish line; we just have a different approach to getting there. because, major, option #1 doesn't send the message to your fans - especially the casual fans - that you've all but stopped trying to win in the interim. die hard fans can accept a rebuilding process; they're die hards after all, which means they're also going to watch and support a mediocre team built around berkman, lee and oswalt. those aren't the fans mclane's worried about losing. how do you sell a team of nobodies, has-beens and never-weres to casual fans in the middle of an economic crisis? his one and only play, right now, is to hope the team led by three of baseball's better players can turn it around and generate some excitement... like they did 2 of the past 3 years. the best shot at rebuilding is to invest in scouting, overseas developement and draft picks. the astros didn't rebuild the biggio/bagwell era through big-time trades: they scouted and drafted extremely well.
and some of their personnel decisions last year, at least on paper, are encouraging in this regard. I certianly hope it plays out as good as their resumes suggest it possibly could.
nick? hello?... where'd you go, man - i can't do this all myself....... if you win the wildcard... you're a championship contender. it's interesting to me that a team primarily built through the astros' system (either via promotion or leveraging those assets to obtain players) is considered a "fluke." honestly, that's just silly. bagwell, berkman, biggio, ensberg, lidge, oswalt – key components of just the ’04-’05 teams – were all homegrown. there was nothing flukey about it. what evaluation are you using to label last year’s draft “reasonably good”? we have no way of knowing how good it was and won’t for several years. and there are no “younger guys” – this team does not have a gaggle of promising prospects waiting for their chance. drayton mclane just hung up on you. from everything we’ve been told, he doesn’t know what the word concession means. it’s posted elsewhere in this thread, but if you think the years in the late 80s/early 90s were painful, you’re the one rewriting history. they averaged, i believe, 76 wins and had only one truly awful season (1991) between division championships (86 & 97). FYI, rodriguez is just 16 months younger than oswalt, and maysonet’s a 27-year old getting his first ML experience. if you’re talking about a future 1-3 years down the road, i doubt either are going to figure prominently in it.
i recognize that; so, too, does drayton – he’s not really concerned about what’s necessarily best for you because “serious fans” aren’t as likely to abandon the team as casual fans are when you concede a season or 3 and trade away the only players they’ve ever heard of. they’re going to be mediocre regardless. if you deal your 3 best players, they’ll be worse than mediocre. so yes, i’d prefer to watch berkman and oswalt finish their careers here than desperately try to leverage them in a game that fails far more often than it succeeds. and the draft isn’t as much of a crapshoot. it’s 50 rounds. 50! the odds of hitting the lottery in one draft are much, much greater than the odds of hitting with 1 or 2 trades for 3 or 4 prospects. my only suggestion would be to make the rebuilding of the farm system their tippy-top top priority. no more squandering of resources, no more cutting corners – if you want to try and build a competitive major league team today, fine – but it better not come at the expense of the farm. invest in scouting, invest in overseas academies, invest in draft picks and give your baseball people room, stability and time to make it all come together. frankly, what they do in the interim is very nearly irrelevant to me. they’re probably not going to the playoffs no matter what they do - but if drayton wants to try – have at it. otherwise: rebuild, rebuild, rebuild.
Congratulations!!! you've once again become a champion for all cause's against common logic! Mr. constantly against what ever popular view is being held about a sports team man! you are a real man of genius.
translated: "I have no more actual argument, so I concede." I for one see where Ric's coming from on this one.
translation is, I disagree with Ric on all points, but don't want to waste more time going tit for tat. Moreover, he has a history of continually arguing the weak side of debate and never letting up.
I'm here... I just think everybody is going around in circles... my points weren't addressed, your points aren't being directly addressed, and all along the people for "fire-sale type rebuilding" have no real attachment to Berkman/Oswalt, thus will defend their point till the end. If you guys see no value in keeping guys like Berkman/Oswalt as life-long Astros, there is no more need to have this debate... because you're not going to see things any differently no matter how much Ric explains it. We're mediocre now, will be worse than mediocre without them, and you can't always count on a slam-dunk from the prospects you recieve for them... thus, why not enjoy what we have? Again, name the studly cy-young-type and perennial all-star types that Oakland has gotten over the years for all their home-grown talen that they've traded? You can't... because as soon as their luck in the farm system dried up (which happens, its cyclical), they became largely irrelevant again. And that's with Billy Beane running the show... not your average MLB talent evaluator. Same goes for the Pirates, Reds, Mariners, and any other team dumping all stars for salary/rebuilding purposes. The Cardinals are a prime example of what Drayton and the Astros should be trying to emulate. Hang on to your "treasures", don't overpay for free agents that aren't complete difference makers, and instill a level of "institution" in your minor league system that allows you to develop a "trust" that your homegrown players were trained the right way, regardless of their minor league stats. I don't think the Astros come close to having an organizational "mantra" that extends to the lower levels... it seems some of their players make certain progress at one level, abandon it at the next level, and come to the majors (at age 26-29) and the club has no idea what they'll be getting. You do need talent in the farm system... and yes, trading your prime players is the "most likely" way of getting a minor league talent. However, it becomes a lot like the NBA draft lottery... where tanking it to have the worst record in the league still only gives you a 25% chance of getting the #1 pick. I would say obtaining a prospect on the level of Berkman/Oswalt in trades for them is even less than that.
i'm guilty of many things... knee-jerking, however, is not one of them. so i rarely, if ever, align with the masses that practice it on a near-hourly basis. and you know what? taking a longer-term perspective has placed me on the "right" side of things far more often than the "wrong" and, as an added bonus (because who really cares who's right and wrong), i've found it to be a much more enjoyable, more open-minded way to experience sports. and i'm not even that contrarion on this issue, anyway - i agree that the current team is poorly constructed and that they've been mis-managed the past 3 years. hell, i even advocated, when they hired cooper and brought in wade, that it was the ideal time to clean house and let the new regime start fresh. i agree rebuilding the farm should be their tippity-top top priority, even above decisions about their major league roster. but i understand drayton's perspective, too; as a fan, i respect it. we have a owner who, given limited resources, is trying put together a competitive team on the field. i think that's admirable.
What I find odd is that your second paragraph parallels my current view. I'm not advocating trading Oswalt and Berkman as a priority. I'm merely stating that for the right price, you must entertain the option. Chances are, no team would be willing to pay my percieved value for Oswalt or Berkman. I would love to get something for Tejada. His hot start may even make that possible. I would love to get something for Carlos Lee. His contract says that's not possible. With where we are in the bigs and the minor's, it doesn't appear that we will be legit for a few years. Maybe I'm wrong. My fear is that by that time, Oswalt and Berkman are washed up. I like those guys alot. They have embodied professionalism and character. I would not mind seeing them get a chance to succeed elsewhere if it also benefited the home-town. Chicago's reported price for Peavy would be something I would consider for Oswalt.
They should trade Carlos Lee to Boston because Ortiz is done. Trade Matsui anywhere for anything. Trade Tejada since we won't resign him anways. Bring up young guys like Bogusevic, go after pitching next offseason. Give a Berkman & Roy O led team one last year to see what happens and if it isn't working by trade deadline next year, then just blow it all up. Oh and fire Coop, he looks like he hates this job, he's got a contract extension so he'll get paid, the players don't seem to like him. Just rip the band aid off now. Is it true Selig really pushed for Drayton to hire him? Just another example of Bud screwing the Astros. What managers are available right now btw? Who would you guys hire?
Clint Hurdle is now available... seems like just the sort of GOB that Drayton, Lance, Roy and most Houstonians would like.
message board discussions can often splinter into a million different directions and blur some of our perspectives and opinions. one minute, we're discussing building a 2009 team; the next we're on to building a 2012 team - we start getting spread here and there and our messages gets stretched as well. i don't like what the astros have done. but they have to sleep in this bed of theirs. drayton believes he can build a winner using berkman, lee and oswalt as a foundation... i imagine there are quite a few FO people who would agree with him. i, not being a member of any FO, would agree, too. but signing the matsuis and hamptons of the world, trading for the tejadas and valverdes... that probably isn't the best way to go about it. then again, i prefer it to committing large chunks of cash down the line and giving away draft picks to sign the cc sabathias of the world. (HOLY CRAP! how could i have forgotten to include the loss of draft picks as another reason to NOT sign FAs?) i prefer it to definitively downgrading the current major league roster and, more or less, conceding defeat these next 1-3 years. and even if drayton fails miserably, and all we get out of this is a chance to say good-bye and thanks to berkman and/or oswalt... i'm ok with it, because that has more value to me as a fan, and to drayton as an owner, than chucking those guys to save a buck and gamble on some unpredictable prospects.
