I agree on Valverde, and agree that we messed up with Hawkins. But Oswalt & Berkman would fetch substantially more than either of those guys. With draft picks, you're getting prospects that are total questionmarks. With trades, you at least get 1-2 years of minor league data to evaluate. On an unrelated sidenote, with Baltimore winning today, the Astros are now the only winless team in all of baseball. Woohoo!
I'm not sure that's really fair - he made really one bad hire that did an incredible amount of damage. He owned the team for about 12-14 years before the farm system really fell apart.
I don't know, that's just my opinion. I'm not sure that some people understand just how bad the state is of our entire organization. That list of prospects somebody listed a couple of pages back is comical compared to the list of top players from every other organization. Johnson's huge ST has led some people to think that he's something that he's not - a good hitter. His years and years of minor league numbers translate to him being an awful hitter at the major league level. He's a major hacker with no plate discipline and all kinds of holes in his swing. I'm guessing that if he ever does get to stick around for a season or two that we're looking at about a .250-.260 hitter with league-leading strikeouts for his position and a very low OBP and OPS. Manzella may end up being just as bad as Everett as a hitter (he won't be much better on the high end) and he won't touch him, defensively. As much as I love guys like Berkman and Oswalt, I would strongly consider trading them ASAP to the highest bidder. Even if only one prospect we get in return amounts to something, that would make it worth it because we aren't going to contend for the rest of their careers in Houston. On the other hand, I wouldn't feel awful we keep them for sentimental reasons. It's going to be a long rebuilding process either way so maybe keeping one or both of them will ease the pain a little bit. Drayton or no Drayton, I just hope that the organization has made a PERMANENT philosophical change in terms of how they scout, draft, sign and develop players. Everything will be in order at some point, whether it's 3 years or 5 years or more, if they pay attention to those areas on a consistent and permanent basis. Build a strong foundation and keep it that way this time.
I hope Oswalt gets traded,love the guy but I can't stand him finishing his career this way. The guy can still pitch and probably can still be an ace on alot of staffs. After all he has done I want to see him go to a contender instead of stay on a team where if you give up one run you are going to lose.
I think we all pretty much understand how crappy the organization as a whole truly is lol, I mean the list of players you mentioned aren't even prospects except for Norris. The farm has talent but its in A and ,somewhat, AA which could mean maybe by 2012 before we start seeing mass returns. They have already changed their philosophy, nothing more then can do at this point but pick good players and sign as many as they can. Brooks, in response to your earlier post about Drayton, to be fair Uncle D didn't just walk into a great farm system and great organizational people. Hunsicker was hired in 95 under Drayton and while the club did have a good farm system in the early 90s it wasn't until the late 90s when we had the best farm system.
Drayton is not the Mr.Burn-evil man his worst critics portary him to be, BUT he walked into an incredibly young and talented organization. The amount of young talent on 90-91 astros had is mind-boggling and, in part, was the basis for the next 10+ years of success.
I seriously doubt this organization had high hopes for Tommy. They understand that the organization has made some horrible decisions in the past which has basically put us in the situation were in now. However, we are making strides which is basically the one thing you want to see at this moment. We signed all of our draft picks last year, which was a -huge- first step for us. Now as for this upcoming draft, boy is it going to be a big time for this club. We have 3 picks in the top...50 I believe, probably better than that. This will be Wade's time to prove himself. Main thing right now, stay -way- away from any type A free agents in the next few seasons, and basically just deal with the fact that we may struggle for the next few seasons. We have some promising, currently pitching in AA, that will help this team out I believe in about 2 to three years. More along three. In my opinion, were heading in the right direction. However, we can't really get any worse, organization wise.
Sure we do. But, if you're going to blame him for the state of the organization now, then you must give him just as much credit for the state of the organization in the early part of this decade, when the Astros were *consistently* rated among the *best* organizations in all of baseball. And it's not like McLane inherited that and got lucky, either. He hired the right people and made the right business decisions. In light of what the Astros accomplished under McLane's ownership compared to the full body of their entire pathetic existence before, this statement: [rquoter]Drayton McLane is probably among the worst owners in the history of modern baseball when it comes to managing a farm system or managing the people who manage the farm system, depending on how you want to look at it.[/rquoter]is absurdly unfair. Major said it best: one bad hire dude (and sticking with that one bad hire too long). One bad hire. You can say he ran off Hunsicker if you like, but Gerry had a long run in H-town and left on his own. Everything else, while there may be merit to it, is just speculation. These statements: [rquoter]I'm not saying that he hasn't done good things but he inherited some good players and good baseball people and the further that we get removed from the time when we took over, the more that the current product fully reflects his management philosophy.[/rquoter][rquoter]He inherited it then destroyed it and ran the good baseball people out of town.[/rquoter] ...are amazingly inaccurate. Do you realize when McLane bought the team? Do you honestly believe running Bill Wood out of town was a bad thing? Do you remember who hired Gerry Hunsicker, and who made him the longest tenured GM in Astros' history? McLane has a lot of things we can criticize, so I don't mean to say he's exempt from criticism. But please, for the love of all things decent, criticize accurately. ...talent that was there as the result of an absolute fire-sale, not due to good management of an organization. The 'Dome looked almost as bad as Montreal in attendance. McMullen, who had been *great* in the early 80s, was public enemy #1. And McLane made a good hire *before* Hunsicker, too: Bob Watson.
I will offer this up as a fair criticism of McLane. McLane inherited a team with terrible attendance after a firesale and four bad seasons and some great young talent (thanks to said firesale). Over the next ten to fifteen years he oversaw the building of the Astros into one of the best-run, most well-respected organizations in all of baseball. Then, in only five agonizing years, he oversaw the royal screwing up of that great organization and is directly responsible for some of the decisions that made it that bad. Now he's hired some good people again. Let us see what will happen. Fair?
Interestingly, I think most people here (myself included) were thrilled with the hiring of Purpura as the logical extension of Hunsicker, and the genius behind what had been a fantastic farm system. What went wrong there, I have no idea. My criticism of McLane is different - that he couldn't recognize a few years ago the direction the team was headed. And as a result, he made bad decisions trying to prop up a sinking boat, which only delayed and worsened the inevitable. For me, it started with the Jennings trade which was simply an example of trading away minor-league / club-controlled talent (as crappy as that talent may have turned out) for short-term gains. This continued with Tejada and Valverde. Between those three trades, we traded away about 10-12 club-controlled players/minor leaguers for talent in years where it was going to take a miracle to be any good anyway (to their credit, a miracle they almost pulled off in one of those years). The Huff and Wigginton rentals fit the same mold. An organization on the clear downhill should be trading FOR prospects and/or young club-controlled MLB talent rather than the other way around. I know lots of things would be different and not all of this can be predicted several years ago, so I don't blame the specific results on management. But had it not been for those trades, we'd currently have our closer for the next few years in Qualls. We'd have a superstar at either a 2B or SS in Zobrist. You'd have a couple of solid relievers in Buchholz (assuming no injury) and Albers (a good 7th inning guy to go with Gervacio, the 8th inning guy being groomed to replace Qualls).
Pretty fair, but I'm not sold on Ed Wade. Plus McLane is still meddling, as evidenced by the non-hiring of Acta, so I'm not sure if he gets it.
Good points. Somebody also has to mention the huge failure this team has had in the DRAFT over the last decade, which included part of Hunsicker's time here. Reaching on players like Sapp and Bogusevic, picking Stiehl for signability issues, picking Burke as a potential replacement for a franchise icon who was going to play everyday till 3000 hits, etc. The draft failures are often overlooked but are every bit of a culpret in this mess.
Me, too! That crow was *nasty* tasting. I see where you're coming from, and actually some of these things are what I was thinking when I crafted my one-line summarized criticism. I went toe-to-toe with you discussing a couple of these trades, too, Major, and you were correct.
