Don't worry, AB, I'm sure the Astros will ask for a black prospect in return. The last thing the Astros need is more bad press from being the "team without a black guy" again. Besides, don't all the black guys playing for the Texans and Rockets kind of balance out the Astros whiteness?
I am in fact being harsh, fellas. But, c'mon. I'm just saying what every other minority baseball fan in the world is saying . . . The Astros Organization doesn't cultivate good minority ball players. They just don't. The mere fact that you can actually keep count of the minorities on our team does not speak well. I'm not being bitter about it. I'm just being honest. It's sad because every other quality team in the league has significant minority impact. They just do. Please don't hate the messenger!
Depends upon what you mean by "significant". Do you realize that at the beginning of spring training there were only 76 blacks in all of baseball on the 40 man rosters?
While not intentional, it would be funny to see. With a few minor changes, the entire starting roster & pitching staff could be white: Starting Lineup: C - Ausmus Inf - Lamb, Biggio, Everett, Ensberg Out - Berkman, Huff, Burke Starters - Clemens, Pettitte, Oswalt, Burke, Buchholz Bullpen - Springer, Miller, Borkowski, Qualls, Wheeler, Lidge (I have no idea where Albers is from) I wonder when the last time that happened was.
Yeah, because we really need to base our lineup on Affirmative Action and not on actual talent. I agree that we don't have many minority ballplayers, but what do you have to say about how we've been trying to acquire Tejada???
If they are pursuing Tejada, thats an assanine assumption, if I am not blind, he is a hispanic man!! What about Beltran, they tried to keep him......Octavio Dotel, Derek Bell, Richard Hidalgo. If I am not mistaken, they weren't white, and were here a long time. Nieve was on the roster for a good while, as well as crappy Wandy. The Astros are not supremacists......lets get the whiners off this board.....
Who said anything about blacks? Domincans, Puetro Ricans, Cubans, Japanese, Korean, Chinese. Those are the minorities of which I'm talking. This is no "angry black man" opinion here . I'm just a baseball fan wanting to see my team do well. And when the rest of the league is bringing in all-star talent from overseas and across the pond or wherever, I'm disturbed by my own organization's lack of progress or lack of dedication to compete in the same. I'm talking about winning. Just reasonably, if the all-star games and festivities and the top teams in baseball demonstrate such a specturm of racially diversified talent, it stands to make perfect sense that our team would be structured similarly.
And yet, our team of nearly-all-whities made the World Series last year. Shouldn't other teams should try to emulate us?
Then all those people are effin idiots. They can kiss my Astros loving and equal opportunity dating a*s!
What franchise do you think revolutionized taking players out of venezuela and other south american countries?????
Please forgive me for the misunderstanding. In no way am I in favor of affirmative action, and I consider myself quite a conservative individual. The Preston Wilson trade potential was just an opportunity to discuss our organization's . . . operations (if you will). While I don't believe Wilson is the problem with our club (having pitchers batting 7th, 8th, and 9th is a start), I'm not especially attached to him one way or another. If we land Tejada, I will be pleasantly shocked. I will be even more shocked if he does well. And I will be shocked to the nth degree if he actually plays here for a long while. I just don't get the feeling from the current executive side of our organization that they're very interested in cultivating and embracing and maintaining minority talent (I am anxiously and sincerely hoping they prove me wrong).
You've hit on an absolutely beautiful thing here, NJ. This is exactly why it's so disappointing with regard to where we are today with our current executive decision-makers. With us having been the revolutionaries . . . we should still be the torch-bearers. We should definitely not be lagging behind.
We arent the torch bearers because we cant go down there like the Yankees or mets and throw our checkbooks at these guys. In the past, it was enough for these guys to sign a humble, yet lucrative deal with a good organization (such as us) and get the opportunity to escape poverty and play in the bigs. Nowadays, you can compare those south american baseball academies to a college recruiting camp where the recruiters can pay them to attend their schools...the schools being the major market teams. Granted we DO spend money down there and have good scouting, but its a lot more competitive now than it was when we started getting guys like Abreu, Santana etc out of Ven.....that we dont acquire a lot of these guys has more to do w/ competition than it does with not wanting them on our roster
I was gonna say the exact same thing. On the 40 man roster the Astros currently have around 12 minority players...by comparison the World Champion WS have 14, just two more. If you want to claim there is a lack of minority players within the Astros organization fine, but don't act like its a problem just for this team.
