29 isn't that old in baseball. He's not someone you have to worry about breaking down at the end of the season. You can say that Lane has had one good year and one bad one. His BA in 05 was no where near what it was now. There are a lot of reasons a team would think that this guy can turn around and belt out another 25 or even 30 home runs. Baseball is odd. Good and even great players can have off years. Not just slumps, but whole years where they under preform. I think the Astros made the right move in demoting him but only because we are trying to win now
I don't think we need any more pitching. We need to focus on bats only. Fielding will work itself out.
Mo should have been traded in the offseason when his stock was still high. Most unclutch player ever.
The Astros would have to throw in their entire farm system to get Cabrera. Every team in the majors would like to get him and the bidding war would be fierce. We all know the Stros won't win a bidding war.
Write this one down--I agree with you. On this issue, however, you and are I together in a rather minute minority. Unless you were kidding--which leaves me alone in a rather minute minority.
of all people, ray knight once said, "the definition of clutch is doing what you've always done when the stakes are higher." i always thought that was a great point. so simple, yet so true. a good player, if given a large enough sample size, will, in theory, play at a level relatively expected based on past experiences regardless of the circumstances. look at biggio. in his first 14 playoff games, he hit .130. in his next 26, he's hit .283. did he suddenly get more clutch? or simple more ABs? btw, biggio's career BA? .285 thru last year.
You should tell that to Abreu, who's numbers consistently go up (substantially and every single year) with runners on base than without (0.50 pts in average and well over 0.100 pts on OPS for his career).
There are clutch *situations* within games & seasons. Over the course of a career, the vast majority of players' performance will even out to something approximating their career performance in those situations. There *are* a select few players who routinely perform above their norm in these situations, however. Key words being "routinely" and "select few".
He and Bagwell were the team leaders then, and were counted on for more, hence more pressure. Since then it's been Beltran/Berkman.
