Yep. 'Los and RoyO both missed the playoffs. I believe Miller had a sick winning streak that year as well. Roy was headed for a certain ROY award, until he got hurt and of course was eclipsed (injury or not) by the 'roider up in StL. Walt Weiss, 2001.
Better to use his full name, Walt F'ing Weiss. Stros got a bit of karmic retribution in '05, when AE & Bruntlett made a game-saving play they had no business making.
Of course it was--Hampton pitched that series, if not that game. Getting old. Wasn't that the game that if we could have just won it, Scottie was up the next day?
If we're talking about what might have been...imagine had we protected Johan Santana instead of Richard Hidalgo back in that fated Rule V draft. Roy O and Santana as your 1 and 2 pitchers. Sigh.
The Hidalgo decision, was Hidalgo vs Abreu in the expansion draft (I still don't understand their either/or scenario and why they could not have kept some other player unprotected). Still the wrong decision. In other words, the Astros management chose to lose both Abreu AND Santana.
You know what's worse about Miceli? He was on the 98 Padres and when he came out in relief in that series, the Astros couldn't hit him either.
That '01 team was the first that comes to mind for me in terms of "what might have been." Oswalt pitching out of his mind, Carlos Hernandez not giving up a run in something like his first 16 innings of work and then not giving up more than 2 runs for a good number of starts. I think that was also the same year Wade Miller and Oswalt each won 10 or 11 starts in a row (though it might have been the next year). The hype bringing up Tim Redding. I thought we had a pitching dynasty on our hands. Woody Williams is now our #2 starter heading into spring training.
Its a cycle, and this problem with our farm isn't something that's new. The farm system was pretty much depleted for starting pitching after we called up the kids in 2001 (Kirk Sarloos fizzled, Jeriome was lucky, and Jared Fernandez had a knuckle ball that didn't knuckle... unless he was pitching against the Astros). Then, after we called up Lidge/Qualls, the farm was pretty depleted as far as elite bullpen candidates go. Thus, Drayton decided to go the free agent route and bring in Pettite, Clemens. They still were patching things together for the rotation in 2004, with Pete Munro starting TWO freakin NLCS games. They also got some low risk/high reward trades out of getting Backe and Wheeler... who were both big contributers on the team that did not come from the farm. As far as position players go, since 2001 the main contributers called up were Ensberg, Everett, Bruntlett, Lane, Willy T. Out of all these guys, currently only Willy T has a chance of being a consistent everyday player (with Everett having an outside chance as a dominant defender on an otherwise offensively fine team, or a pitching dominant team). Within 6-7 years, you'd think you'd produce at least one bonafied everyday player out of your farm... they may have finally got that in Hunter Pence last year (who was finally fast-tracked last year), but even then its not all that productive. The blame for all of this lies on Gerry and then Tim... they kept some guys who turned out to be huge dissapointments (Hidalgo, Lane), which in the process blocked the progression of the current farm, as well as dissuaded them into trading some established vets for younger guys. They also fell flat on the Billy Wagner trade (the one tradeable vet who was still in his prime), with just Duckworth, Zeke, and Buchholz in return (none of them likely to make a future ASG). And since the Oswalt/Miller/Hernandez/Redding days, they pretty much were barron until the uprbringing of Hirsh/Patton/Albers.
Why does everyone blame Kevin Brown and not Bagwell/Biggio for choking like they did many times? How did the Yankees do against Brown? Nothing will ever top the '86 team. Mike Scott most dominant pitcher ever that year. I think Knepper blew it iirc.
I blame Hal Lanier more so than Knepper. Knepper pitched 8 shutout innings and then Lanier inexplicably left him in too long in the 9th. He gave up 3 hits and 2 runs before Smith came in to allow the tying run to score (charged to Knepper). Another head scratching decision was to have Ashby attempt a suicide squeeze in the FIRST inning after the Astros had knocked Ojeda around easily in that inning with 6 of the first 7 hitters reaching base. He missed, Bass was a dead duck and those were the last runs Houston scored until extra innings.
We were there. As a matter of fact, the first game of the series, someone attempted to steal my wife's Firebird but the crack Astrodome security team, prevented it from happening (although not soon enough to prevent a broken window and busted steering column).
Biggio & Bagwell hadn't really developed that reputation yet - going into that series, they'd each only played 3 postseason games. And in that series: vs. Kevin Brown, they went a combined 0-12 vs. everyone else, they went 4-13 w/ 3 walks (0.307 AVG, 0.437 OBP), with 3 runs and 4 RBI's.
