Who cares. This team is in decline. My faith in management to put together a good team is gone. If Berkman, Lee, and Oswalt had any real drive to be on a real winner, then they would welcome a trade to a team with better prospects, i.e. an actual contender. And, we could get back some young talent in return to start building again. But, my expectations for that to happen are really low. No, what I see is just more mediocrity in our future. Start out the season blowing smoke about how good we think we will be and then let reality hit home about how good we are not as the season winds down. The idea of signing past-their-prime veterans to deliver for this team is pretty much a whopping failure. But, I doubt management actually learned anything from all this failure...and will repeat the same mistakes. Yea...go sign another Mike Hampton and take some huge gambles that you think a veteran can have a major turnaround season even though the odds are stacked against success. "So you go on and stamp your form, sonny, and stop wasting my time. Because to tell you the truth, I don't give a sh_t." - Red
Disagree...drayton, more than any owner in town i believe, is sensitive to empty seats. there've been lots of them...with more to come.
I wouldn't mind if Oswalt was dealt. I'd love for Lee to be dealt. I'd hate to see Berkman dealt. The Facts: Lee will not be dealt. Forget the NTC, nobody wants to pay $19 million a year for a left fielder. He is untradeable right now. The Astros would have to eat a significant amount of the contract at this point. Talk about trading him in the final year of his deal. Oswalt could be gone. Problem is he needs a solid first half to next season to build his value, but if that happens the Astros may remain in contention and not sell. Berkman is a good value at his current contract. He is the best player on the Astros, and is probably the 2nd best player in the organizations history. The only 1B I'd rather have in all of baseball is Pujols. You never hear any talk of him going anywhere. There have always been rumors of Oswalt being dealt, but Berkman never comes up. He is a local boy and will retire an Astro. If you wanted to rebuild, the guy to look at trading is Wandy. He is still cheap, but he isn't exactly young at 30 years old. There are 30 teams out there that could use a solid LHP Starter. His contract is at level that any team can afford, and he can't veto any trades. I'd look at trading both Wandy & Roy before the deadline next year. The team needs some Position Player prospects. Right now the team has some young stud pitchers in A ball, who are right out of HS. They need position players who will be ready when those guys are, along with Pence, Bourn, and Castro. Maybe we will get lucky and Johnson/Manzella will prove to be good players, but they project to be bench type players(that is being nice), not regular starters.
Pretty presumptuous of you to know what is in their hearts. Perhaps they like it here. Berkman is from the Austin area and went to college at Rice. Maybe he does not want to move his family. Lee is very close to his horse ranch. Maybe he doesn't want to leave that. There is much more to accepting a trade than winning games. It isn't like Berkman's day to day life would be unaffected if he got traded to Boston. How many quality prospects do you expect to get for aging stars. Oswalt is not Oswalt anymore. His body is breaking down. How many top level prospects would you give up for Oswalt right now? Berkman? Also, they are prospects. It is a 50-50 proposition AT BEST that a prospect (even a top tier prospect) will become productive at the MLB level.
Being sensitive to empy seats isn't the same as building a winning franchise. If Bob McNair was more sensitive to empy seats, he would have drafted Reggie Bush or Vince Young, which would have been a disaster. Drayton is TOO sensitive to empty seats, so he signs washed up crap like Tejada instead of spending money on draft picks and rebuilding the farm.
This is my biggest problem with trading your top players for prospects. There is a great deal of luck involved in the prospects panning out. The Billy Wagner trade jumps to my mind.
Dude, Drayton actually has built a winning franchise. The Astros have absolutely, positively been a winning franchise since Drayton took over. They're dealing with the downside of a crappy cycle right now. You don't rebuild overnight. The Tejada trade happened 2 years ago....a year removed from finishing 1.5 games out of first place in their division. It didn't work out. They're drafting and signing draft picks now. The turnaround will take a while.
To be fair, Drayton inherited a pretty talented young organizaton when he bought the team. He deserves credit for opening up his pocket book to keep some of them around, but biggio and bagwell, and other assets (the heart of those winning teams), were inherited from the previous adminstration. As for rebuilding through the draft, it's great that they signed most of their picks, but even with all those signings they were in the bottom 20% of spending in the draft. Given the state of the organization, the draft is last place to skimp on funding. That's part of the reason the team is in the bind it's in and i'm worried they haven't learned their lesson. They'll spend millions on washed up veterans to fill out a 72 win team, but won't adequately fund the draft and development arm of the franchise.
Shall I start a poll to see how many think this will happen? Dear G-d, no. I don't think I could stomach an outfield that included Carlos Lee and Gary Sheffield...which would ultimately mean they would have traded Pence or Bourn for a bag of balls.
so did les alexander. it's mind-bottling people can actively complain about drayton's tenure here. it's by far the greatest stretch in franchise history (and it's not even close), and you could argue its the greatest stretch of *any* houston-area owner *ever*. since 1993, they've been to the world series once, the playoffs 6 times; they've won three division titles and finished .500 or better in 13 of the 16 seasons he's owned the team, finishing 1st or 2nd in the division 11 times. during that stretch, we got to watch bagwell, biggio, clemens, pettitte, oswalt, berkman, kent, alou, johnson, caminiti, gonzalez, beltran - i mean, a host of *great* baseball players, all at a terrific downtown venue. as MadMax astutely pointed out (and has been pointed out countless times before): they're gonna have to spend a few years paying for checks they wrote years ago. they exhausted their resources to try and win with bagwell and biggio and if the pay-off is a few down years... it was worth every penny.
biggio and bagwell alone didn't win a pennant...they didn't win the first playoff series in franchise history. and he kept them around throughout their careers...something very rarely seen in pro sports, generally. there was a good enough atmosphere here that those guys wanted to stay. he was owner and president when this franchise was rated by Baseball America as the top organization in the game. if we're going to criticize him when things aren't going well, you have to give him credit for the success they've had. particularly success that speaks to how well this team was run for roughly 12 years. they are funding the draft now. they made mistakes...they're correcting them. at this point, that's all you can ask. complaining about not paying draft picks more even though they signed?? man, that sounds like good business to me. i wish we could sign all the best players for the least cash as possible.
Let's hope it's "signing the best players for the least cash" and not a matter of drafting guys who would command less money. And I do give credit to Drayton for all the good years. But you have to recognize the bad as well as the good. I know he's better than McMullen, but you've admitted he's made mistakes in the draft. Let's see if he'll correct them.
I got from your post that Drayton couldn't/wouldn't build a winning franchise. I responded to that notion. There is no question...every team has ups and downs over a 15 year period. I don't hesitate to criticize decisions made back then...but I have to say, I was a fan of the Tejada trade at the time. I didn't think Luke Scott would play that well...and ultimately Jason Hirsch hasn't amounted to much. We were a year removed from finishing 1.5 games out of first in our division...and we were USED to winning. It's very difficult to say, "eh..let's blow it all up" when you're still trying to sell tickets. Easy for people to say on the fringe...much more difficult if you're management. I'd be much more critical of McLane if he were the other way...if he were constantly trading away our best players to avoid paying them and getting nothing but prospects in return. As it is, I think he is TRYING to put a competitive team on the field at the same time he's trying to rebuild the farm system. That's pretty difficult to do. Maybe it can't be done.
I echo the sentiment that Drayton's tenure is underrated. The Stros have been a pretty good franchise for awhile now and are in a downward cycle right now. But it isn't like the Astros refuse to spend money. They spend a healthy amount, right now they are just in a spot where the spent money is on older veteran players locking up a large chunk of payroll and the minors have failed to replenish the majors with cheap good talent. That worm will turn.
I read on espn that this is only the astros 3rd season with a losing record since 1991. These arguments against Drayton are beyond me.
I agree 100%, I hear people call him cheap and I don't get it because he isn't. The problem with the Stros is what happens to most team not named the RSox and Yanks, the key is the farm system and thats where you can blame Uncle D as he let it go to hell by cutting corners. Uncle D surrounded himself with people he trusted and would be yes men so no one was there to tell him hey Drayton we need to start looking at 2010 not just 06,07 and 08. He was and is the best owner in the Stros' franchise history no doubt the key is the people around him need to make smart moves and sometimes need to hammer ideas into the guys head.
That happens in Houston only if a miracle happens and Lee is traded, or a serious injury occurs to Lee, Pence, Bourn, or Berkman(Though not sure he can play 1B, though he has before). Too bad he sucked when he broke in as a 3B. He'd have value for us then. He put up good enough numbers to play next year, but it won't be in Houston if he wants to be a starter.
