Truly if this was hakeem, it woulda been different, i mean the man had brought us 2 championships and earned his retirement fund towards the end. But Bagwell, come on now, losing to the cards in the playoffs is the best youve ever done...
Yeah, forget beating the Braves the series before. Forget 6 consecutive years of 100 RBI, 30 HR, etc. Forget, before the shoulder fell apart, the best--yes, the BEST--all-around 1B (defense, baserunning, hitting) in all of the major leagues. That's the thing with short-sighted comments--they're so short-sighted.
We could trade him to an American team in need of a good DH. Like the Angels, they could use a power DH. And it would give Bagwell a better chance to win a world series than the Astros have. Win/Win!
thats the thing about sports, people forget not so great moments, and cherish the great ones. I love bagwell, hes been my favourtie player for quite the while, but he hasnt gotten us anything. And you seem to be all for stuff that aint short, how much does bagwell help us out in the LONG run?
If he could still do any of that, this would not be a topic, he got paid handsomely for all of that production, and is being paid WAY to much because of it. He should be put out to pasture or sent to the glue factory. DD
Man, I don't buy that at all. Didn't Jeff and Craig chase off Terry Collins and Larry Dierker? They supposedly don't tolerate knuckleheads, but they played with Carl Everet, Jeff Kent, Jose Lima, Derek Bell, Chuckie Carr, etc. I think they're definitely top dogs in that clubhouse and you're in trouble if you pi$$ them off, but I don't think they're leaders per se. To me, they're like Patrick Ewing - you know they're working hard, but you never see any fire.
Now that's funny... But is there a ring of truth to it? Jeff is a product of that era and did have ridiculous arms. I don't want to start a whole new topic in this thread, but I think it's curious that no one has ever raised the possibility. Though I know our local sports writers would never dare mention it without some kind of evidence in front of them.
That's more a life thing than a sports thing. Some people all you know is what they're against, and some people all you know is what they're for. I choose to celebrate the good times rather than b**** and moan about the bad times--especially when the good *far* outweights the bad, but that's just me.
That's fair. Whoever loses has to start a thread that will (A) explain that he was wrong and (B) announce that he's putting money in the tipjar in the other's name. The amount of money isn't important.
There is a lot of circumstantial evidence pointing against him - the skinny kid who got huge and was lifting huge amounts of weights at or around the era of the steroid boom in baseball, then the weight loss, decline & chronic injuries right at or around the time they began to scrutinize juicers, the confirmed steroid using teammate in Camniti, who echoed Canseco's shocking 'revelation" five years before he did it, and said that everybody else and their brother was doing it but didn't name names, etc. Obviously not enough to put him in jail - but you'd have to be blind to ignore it. As an astros fan you can give him the benefit of the doubt, but looking at it objectively - I harbored the same suspicions about McGwire, Bonds, Giambi, etc based on similar evidence, and those are all confirmed at this point.
Mailbag: Is Bagwell worth the money? 04/28/2005 1:33 PM ET By Alyson Footer / MLB.com http://houston.astros.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/content/printer_friendly/hou/y2005/m04/d28/c1031680.jsp Don't get me wrong, Jeff Bagwell is a great player, but I don't think he's worth 18 million dollars. I don't think anyone is, not a Beltran, not a Johnson, no one. Heck, Craig Biggio only makes a sixth of what Bagwell makes. Now I know why the Astros couldn't re-sign Kent and Beltran. All they offered Kent was one million. I think Kent has more left in him than Bagwell too. Why didn't Bagwell ask for a slightly lower salary so that maybe they could have gotten those guys back. I mean Bags is important, but he has health issues and he gets paid 36 more times the amount of Lidge. There's something wrong here. -- Mike J. First things first: Biggio has made plenty of money over his Astros career. He's playing for a lot less now than he used to, but he had a seven-year stretch where he didn't make less than $6 million. And the day will come where Lidge will be making 36 times what some of his younger teammates are making. Lidge is not yet arbitration eligible, which means in his first three years in the big leagues, he'll make a little more than the league minimum. That's the way the system works. Bagwell signed a contract following the 2000 season, and he is honoring that contract. There is no provision in big league contracts where a player can be docked pay if he doesn't put up certain numbers. If Bagwell hits .200 in April, he's not going to call up Drayton McLane and offer a refund. That would be ridiculous. When the Astros have had chances to obtain big free agents in the past, Jeff has been willing to restructure his contract so the team would have room for that added salary. The Astros offered $105 million for Beltran, and I didn't hear one word about not being able to offer him more because of Bagwell's contract. The club didn't seem to have a problem giving $18 million to Roger Clemens and $85 million to Lance Berkman -- who, by the way, is one of the reasons the Astros have been shut out more times this month than they were all last year. Yes, Bagwell takes up a lot of that payroll, and his production so far this season is far below what's expected of him. But I get tired of hearing Bagwell get dumped on for all of the Astros problems. This team has more issues than one high salaried player. It takes an entire lineup to score runs, and for the most part, no one is doing his job.
My point was his condition is getting progressively worse each season and so are his numbers and he won't finish as strong as he historically does. And as someone else pointed out, he ain't volunteering so what does he have to complain about.
