Purpura Perplexed

Well, most of us here knew that Houston overpaid for Jason Jennings. It's time to trade him for some prospects and try to rebuild the farm system. If we can get anything for Morgan Ensberg, then do it. That guy sucks. Chris Burke is an inconsistent piece of crap, and he needs to be let go as well.

I would hang onto Lamb and Loretta simply because they are two of the only consistent players on the team.

 

you have to get rid of both of them if there is a market out there because neither of them are probally gonna be in the Astros "long term plans" Loretta-age and Lamb-is just not that great.

If the Stros could compete next season then yes you should hold on to them but there is no way this team will compete next season without overspending on free agents because after Troy Patton who is gonna step in from the minors? Josh Anderson, I don't think so.

 

I find it absolutely hysterical to watch the haters pat themselves on the back, slam the offseason acquisitions, and then somehow act like Berkman and Oswalt are what's right with the team as far as that "core" group.

More than anything else, I'd love for another Willy to come along so I could watch certain posters scramble for excuses when the wins don't come. It doesn't matter if Jennings never got hurt... if Willy had been around... etc. The foundation of this team is on Berkman and Oswalt. This season, Berkman's hitting around .260 with limited power, while Oswalt is a barely better than .500 pitcher with an ERA around 4. Unless you somehow bring in one or two more ace starters and an Adam Dunn type to the offense (not financially feasible), you're not going to succeed with that kind of production from your stars.

When it comes to this season, those guys significantly underachieving are my problems 1A and 1B... by far. That's why I wouldn't get rid of Purpura... the biggest issues this year (imo, of course) are things completely out of his control and just random, terrible luck.

Oh, and no, the Astros are not searching for a defensive CF who can hit at the top of the lineup. Sorry.

 

You still fire Purpura because the moves he did make were just awful. (The same moves you thought were so obviously right in the offseason).

Even if Berkman and Oswalt perform how they should, they are barely a .500 team. This isn't an average team right now, it is a horrible team.

 

If they're a .500 team or close to it, is that worth Purpura being fired? Not to me. Every team goes in cycles, and the Astros don't have the kind of payroll where it's reasonable to expect a 90-win season every year for the next 20 years.

Also, the moves he made were awful? If not for signing Carlos Lee and Mark Loretta, where would this team be? Williams hasn't worked out and Jennings has fallen off the pace in his last three starts, but those are two moves -- not everything he did. Every GM has his hits and misses, and while the Astros missed on Woody, I don't think it's worth firing him over. Yes, I understand his road splits were mediocre. However, on the whole, the Astros needed pitching, he came at a cheap price, and he was 10th in the entire league in ERA last season at 3.65. I can't imagine any GM who wouldn't give it serious thought if they had the Astros roster at the time.

Of the three most consistent hitters on this team, two of them (Lee, Loretta) were Purpura's primary acquisitions while the other (Pence) was rushed to the big leagues when many said he wasn't ready and most teams would've waited.

 

what are you talking about? Haters? Many of the people who are being critical of Purpura, Garner and Drayton are the real fans who live and die with every pitch, game and season.

Garner is not a good manager period, he never has been and never will be.

Purpura has no clue how to buy low and sell high. He has no clue how to put a roster together and he either get's scared and backs out of deals or in the case of the Jennings deal he pulls the triggor to fast because he is scrambling to do something.

Drayton should of realized his best two seasons ever in his public tax dollar stadium was in 2004 with a healthy Clemens + Oswalt and a decent lineup and in 2005 with a "big three" of Clemens + Oswalt + Pettitte (healthy)

In 2006 the lineup was even worse than the 2005 lineup and your dominate closer in Lidge was not as good and Clemens did not pitch the whole year.

So what do you do? Bring in two bats, check! Lee and Loretta and then you KEEP PETTITTE AND CLEMENS WITH OSWALT. All he had to do was pay Pettitte and not make that trade and things are different.

As far as your point about Berkman and Oswalt not being Berkman and Oswalt your right but the point is if Purpura had done his job than this team would be a disapointing 500 club not a embarrassing 15 games under 500.

Oh and Purpura looks like a fat slob and can hardly string a sentance together do we want him representing us?

 

You know you look back on all the moves Purpura has made since he's been here and seems the majority of people agreed with the signings and trades at the time they were made...he certainly can be faulted for not doing a whole lot and stubbornly sticking with the same guys year after year...but if memory serves people generally liked the Preston Wilson signing, the trade for Aubrey Huff and the Jennings deal...at the time. Can the guy be faulted for those three performing below expectations? And of course can he be faulted for underachieving of guys currently on the roster? And what about the Lidge situation...he wisely (or stubbornly) chose to hang onto Lidge and now he's re-emerged as our most dominant guy in the pen. He went out and snagged Loretta for cheap, too. And him and Garner stuck with Everett when so many people clamored for him to go, thinking more offense at that position would be the saving grace for this team. Now I'm not defending the guy; I think him, Garner, the rest of the coaching staff and the players should all be thoroughly evaluated in the offseason to determine the best direction to get this team back on track.

I just think it's way too easy to point blame at him or any other one guy on this team.

 

Garner's not a terrible manager and not a great manager...but I would say he's a pretty good manager that's gotten more out his rosters this past few years than most other guys probably could.

Pettite has a 2-3 record with a 5.64 ERA over his last 10 starts.

Eh, a losing record is a losing record. I felt roughly the same the past two during their slumps as I do now.

And can we cut out the fat comments already...hardly makes him incapable of doing his job.

 

790 keeps playing this cut of him on Pallilo's show yesterday saying how they had hoped Morgan Ensberg would have a bounceback year this year and return to the form when he was fourth in the MVP balloting.

Look, I'm not a huge baseball fan or anything, but if the Astros were seriously banking on Morgan freaking Ensberg this season, they are morons. It's painfully obvious that Hunter Pence should have been on the major league roster last year (maybe even part of the year before that) and he didn't even make the club for a month despite batting .500 in spring training.

What a train wreck.

 

Billy Beane has had a minimum of 87 wins per year in Oakland over the last 8 years with a payroll significantly less than that of the Astros.

 

And if we operated our team like Billy Beane is forced to do, Oswalt AND Berkman (let alone Pettite and Clemens) wouldn't have been playing for us in the 2005 World Series.

 

That's not the point.

 

Huh? Are you sure you're not confusing Hunter Pence with someone else? He was a pretty good AA hitter last year, and the year before that, he never hit above A ball. The Astros were incredibly fortunate and lucky that he was major league ready this year... asking him to do anything in 2005 or 2006 would've been completely unreasonable.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/bbw/columnist/winston/2004-06-10-minors_x.htm
CHRIS SAMPSON, Salem Avalanche (high Class A)

When you take a glance at right-hander Chris Sampson's career statistics, it looks like there's a mistake.

How else to explain a page which lists the first line of stats for him as a shortstop at Auburn (New York-Penn) back in 1999 and the second as a pitcher, four years later, at low-Class A Lexington in 2003?

Perhaps the most baffling part of the puzzle is Sampson's 2003 stats in his mound debut: a 1.90 ERA in 31 games, just 19 walks and 72 strikeouts in 94 2/3 innings and a .226 opponent average. Where had this guy been the last three-plus years? Even more important, why wasn't he a pitcher to start with?

Sampson, now 26, walked away from baseball following the 1999 season but came out of self-imposed retirement in the winter of 2002-2003. He returned to the game that his heart had never really left, and a year later has emerged as a prospect.

When the Astros drafted the Texas native in the eighth round of 1999 out of Texas Tech, it seemed to be one more step on the way to realizing his lifelong fantasy. It was not a fantasy shared by his fiancée, however.

After his debut season, in which he hit .239 for short-season Auburn, the two discussed their future and decided that maybe life in baseball wasn't the answer.

"My priorities in life have always been God is No. 1, my family is No. 2 and baseball No. 3," Sampson said. "(My fiancée) was concerned about the fact that I didn't have my college degree. Baseball wouldn't always be there, and we'd be married with a family, and then what would I do to support that family?"

Sampson agreed to retire and return to school, meanwhile getting a job as an assistant baseball coach at Collin County (Texas) Community College. The couple married in spring 2001, but there was always a hole in his life where playing baseball had been.

"I thought I had made the right decision at the time, but maybe by not playing and missing out on everything I could have been doing it made me more unhappy," Sampson said. "So the marriage couldn't be happy either and we eventually went our opposite ways."

The two divorced in the fall of 2002 and, almost immediately, Sampson called the Astros' scouting department to inquire about whether it was too late for him to return. He was put in touch with Ralph Bratton, the scout who'd originally signed him. Bratton asked if he could still play shortstop.

"I told him I didn't run as fast as I used to and I hadn't swung a bat in a while, but my arm was still in good shape," leading to the possibility of his coming back as a pitcher. It was not a totally foreign idea for Sampson.

While working as a coach, he had thrown batting practice and, one day, pitched in an intrasquad game when one of the teams ran out of pitchers. After Sampson struck out five of the six guys he faced, Collin County coach Greg Dennis sat him down.

" 'What are you doing here?' ", Sampson recalls him asking. "I asked him what he meant, and he said 'Well, I think you should still be playing. Why don't you go back and give it another try?' "

Sampson was invited to Minute Maid Park to try out in front of the Astros' player development brass, including assistant GM Tim Purpura who, admittedly, was a little skeptical about the comeback.

"The idea of a 24-year-old coming back and starting to pitch for the first time, well, the odds are pretty slim of that working out," said Purpura, who remembers the organization actually toying with the idea of moving Sampson to the mound back in 1999. "The thing we've come to grips with is that when you make that transition, you're ripe for arm problems."

Purpura saw enough of the raw package at that Houston tryout to invite Sampson to spring training in Florida.

"He has an aptitude for pitching that even some longtime pitchers don't have," Purpura said. The Astros sent Sampson to Lexington, where he pitched relief for his first eight games before moving into the rotation in mid-June. In 14 starts, he posted a 1.08 ERA.

This year at Salem, the 6-0 170-pounder was 3-3 with a 3.08 ERA through June 4. He had walked 13 batters in 64 1/3 innings on the season.

And in case you were wondering, he is currently dating a girl from back home in Texas who is a big baseball fan.

"I think that was one of the first things I asked her," Sampson laughed.

 

There, fixed it for ya.

 

Ok, we know he did well as a talent evaluator.

We are talking about the job he has done as GM.

 

Right... he only took over a mediocre club and had it finish 36-10, while taking it to the World Series and the first championship in franchise history the following year. Garbage.

It's irony that people have this complaint with Purpura, because that's exactly what he did (sell high) in the Jennings deal. Taveras wasn't the principle... he never was and never will be. Hirsh was. Hirsh built a reputation as a top prospect based on his minor league results, but the Astros knew he was overachieving and that his talent likely meant he wouldn't have the kind of results some people were anticipating. So Purpura dealt him when he had the "top prospect" line attached to him, which is quickly fading. The roster is put together fine. The problems come from a combination of star players underachieving, the Biggio issue and a limited farm system, which is directly at the hands of Hunsicker.

Pettitte was not going to stay in Houston. Period. Anything you've heard to the contrary is spin from his agent to control the perception. Pettitte was dying to be in New York, and he's there. He never really was an option. I have that on pretty good authority.

Not really. If you trade Jennings for Taveras, there's a hole at SP and maybe a marginal upgrade in RF (though I think Scott will be the better player by the end of the year). The W/L differential would be minimal. With Woody, did you see how much most starting pitchers in free agency went for? If you don't sign Woody... well, you're not going to sign much of value for $12 million over 2 years. So it's not as simple as pointing out that that money could've been spent better elsewhere. As far as starting pitching goes, that was minimal.

If Purpura hadn't done his job, signed Lee and Loretta (despite people arguing against it) and taken a huge risk on Pence that most teams wouldn't have taken (sorry, Jeff), this team would be about 25 games under. Sad, but true.

Got it. Baseball knowledge is irrelevant. You want someone who looks pretty. Should Drayton call Hollywood for his next GM? As for "stringing together sentences," Tim is a very articulate man. I find it pretty ironic that someone who misspelled the words "dominant," "sentence" and "trigger" and uses "to" instead of "too" is calling out other people for hardly stringing a sentence together.

 

Oakland has arguably the best GM and management system in all of sports. While it'd be nice if the Astros could find something comparable, I don't think it's realistic to expect that.