The rockets schedule is only going to get uglier down the stretch. During march and april, when we make the playoff push, the season will get extremely brutal. You cant count on the return of Yao to bring about a major turnaround. The team we have right now has to get us the wins and push us into the playoff race. If you see the games we have played so far, our schedule is very easy right now. Dont hope for a late playoff run like the nuggets. If you saw who they played, there was no real competition for them, it was just games against lottery teams. The astros got very lucky in that the other playof teams played pathetic too. The astros at one point were playing horrible and it looked like they had fallen out of the playoff race. Luckily the marlins, nationals, mets, and other wild card teams did dismal too. Right now, it doesnt seem like there is a clear cut 7-8th seed so we could sneak in with 42 or less wins.
One of the main reasons the Astros made the playoffs was that the Marlins, Nationals, Mets and Phillies did NOT play dismally. Each of them finished .500 or better and it is very rare when all the teams in one division finish that well. Had any of the Eastern teams played poorly another would have had enough victories to overtake Houston. Don't forget that the Astros were 1 win away from having the 2nd best record in the entire National league, regardless of how poorly they played to start the season.
Correct me if i'm wrong but wasn't the whole point of this thread to compare the formerly underachieving 2004 Astros team that turned it around then made a playoff run with Beltran playing out of his mind to the Rockets with their current situation? Sure, I was exaggerating a bit by saying the Astros had an All-Star calibur player at EVERY position but let's get serious here. A team with three 100+ RBI hitters (Beltran, Kent, Berkman), another one that was damn near close (Bagwell) with solid numbers from Biggio and Ensberg too makes one pretty solid lineup considering there's six solid hitters already in a nine man line-up. Clemens, Owalt and Pettitte had a combined 50-29 record with a collective ERA somewhere in the lower 2. area with a solid bullpen to back them up. It isn't like this team wasn't talented. Hell, you're talking to a Pirates fan here who gets to watch this Houston team with twice it's payroll every year have to go out and compete with them in the same division.
umm...i think you have the 04 and 05 team mixed up! 04 team didnt have pettitte (injured) 05 team didnt have beltran, kent, and bags i think everybody is comparing the 05 astros to the 05-06 rockets...
Well in that case, my bad. For whatever reason I assumed they were comparing them to the 04 Astros. Probably because the 05-06 Rockets are in need of a trade I suppose I made the comparison since the 04 Stros made a mid-season trade for Beltran that ultimately made a huge difference, for that season at least. But now looking back on it, I see the 05 Stros were 19-32 at one point so that is pretty bad. The worst the 04 Stros ever were was just a few games under .500.
Same thing. None of them were good enough to pull away from the other. You could say they were crappy, or you could say they were good. I say they were playing crappy.
Actually the Stro's was harder. The simple reason for this stance is the loss column. The Stros were farther down the loss column than these current Rox are from the 8th spot. Currently we are 3 games out of 8th place in the all important loss column. If we keep the loss column deficit within 5 going into February, we will even definitely finish either 6th or 7th. Our beloved Stros then were even more hopeless with injuries to Berkman and Bagwell. It looked like we will be in the selling mode by July. But this Rox team still a top 10 player in Mac with a relatively solid rotation that can give us a meager winning January at the very least record. Here comes a 7-game winning streak.
Maybe so, but there are almost twice as many games in baseball, so you get more chances to make up ground. At this point, if the Rox can come back then I'd say it's about even in terms of difficulty with the Astros comeback. If this team gets down 12-13 games under .500 then it would be a tougher comeback.
It is an odd choice of words to describe teams that all finished .500 or better as playing "pathetic", "dismal" and "crappy".
Based on the fact that the original post mentioned the Astros being 15 games under .500 (which the 2005 Astros team was at 15-30), it was generally assumed that this year's team was the one being compared.
