HAD to link this goodie from TR Sullivan of mlb: AL West Teams must adjust as Astros Enter Fold. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Really? Adjust to what? Adding 12 – 15 more wins a year to their win total? Mariners selling tickets by telling fans – hey, no need to worry about us being in last place again? (Wonder how season ticket sales are going here – I would guess, not real too good, wouldn’t all yall?)

please

Half of that article is Mike Scoscia taling about how the DH is great for hitting strategy, how wonderful it is that he can play hitnrun with the crappy hitting #9 hitter instead of having the pitcher bunt.

The rest is explaining how the Astros now have a DH (isn’t that WONderful???) in Carlos Pena, 9whose death struggle with the Mendoza line the past few years is well documented) who gets to be a full time DH just like David Ortiz (yeah, both male, both Latin, both over 35, but I think comparisons end there.) And how the Astros get to do a lot more flying out west 2 time zones away. Tsk tsk.

As for Jose Lopez, in case you want to know anything about him, just type in “Matt Kata” and there you go. Fortunately, he’s gone to Japan or Korea to stink their league up.

Otherwise, no news. I keep hearing about Bud Norris getting traded for something cheaper/younger, but haven’t seen anything yet. Any bets on how many games Jose Veras (Stros new closer – no I am not kidding) blows before he gets replaced? Or how long he lasts?

Hope all yall had a great holiday and have a safe New Year’s Eve.

For all yall who are Christian: Merry Christmas and may God bless you and your loved ones and may you have a happy and healthy new year.

For all yall who are not Christian: Merry Day Off and may you and your loved ones have a happy and healthy new year.

For us few remaining baseball fans who keep track of the Astros: may a new owner who doesn’t just want a supercheap payroll, a bad team, and a 50 mill/year profit – just magically appear and lead us back to the Promised Real Baseball league.

When I first read that the Astros had claimed Josh Fields, I thought for an awful moment that they had claimed Josh Fields, the former first rounder (White Sox, 2004) who was supposed to be a Mike Schmidt/Scott Rolen Future Star!!! who got called up because he had been a first rounder and proceeded to not hit or hit for power for parts of 5 years before finally disappearing into the minors.

You see, being at the top of the prospect list does not necessarily mean that the aforementioned prospect is going to be a good major leaguer, although he will probably BE a major leaguer at some time, just because he was picked in the first round.

Our Josh Fields, who will be 28 in July (yes, he IS old beyond belief) was ALSO a first rounder – picked by the Mariners in the 08 draft after he refused to sign with the Braves after being picked the previous year in the second round. He started at AA, as a reliever – yes,a first rounder starting at reliever (see Chad Cordero, Huston Street) threw 33 innings in 09 – had a leeeeetle trouble with control, 6 walks/9 and also 9 K/9 with a low home run rate. ERA 6.38/1.65 WHIP.

Repeated AA in 2010, threw 28.1 innings, had essentially the same walks/K numbers, but had a low 6 H/9 and gave up no homers, so he lowered his ERA to 3.24 and WHIP to 1.29.

in 2011, he again started at AA, threw 26 innings, posting essentially the same numbers as the previous year only with a slightly lower ERA of 2.77 and was promoted to AAA where he threw 13 innings and gave up – are you ready for this – NINE walks/9 IP. For the first time in 2 years, he allowed homers, so both his ERA and WHIP skyrocketed.

Neveretheless, he was traded to Boston as part of the Erik Bedard trade (he hasn’t worked out real too good for anyone he’s been traded to, has he – yet ANOTHER guy who keeps getting work because, I guess, he used to be good…) He threw 17 innings for Boston’s AA club, 5.2 H/9, 1 HR/9, 5.5 BB/9 and 13 K/9.

So he split last year between AA and AAA: 44 innings at AA, in which he posted his same low hits, homers and high K numbers, but managed, for the FIRST time in his career, to lower his obscene walk rate to 3.2 K/9. At AAA, he threw 13 innings over 10 games, 8 H, no HR, TWO walks, 19 K.

Now, I DO know this is small sample size, but it looks as if he has managed to conquer his wildness without sacrificing his low hit, high K numbers. Actually, he looks better than Rhiner Cruz did last year. So we just might could, youneverknow, have found a good bullpen guy, not that we have many of them – or, I should say, ANY of them besides Wesley Wright and Mickey Storey, who is back after the Yankees decided they didn’t want him after all.

The good news/bad news, is that no team picked up Jason Stoffel, our AA closer (who we got for Jeff Keppinger, way back when) which means that either we got lucky or no other team thought he was worth picking up.

We also acquired a would-be DH, Nate Freiman, a huge righty (think Richie Sexson, not a fatso like Ken Harvey) picked in the 8th round of the 09 draft by the Padres. I know he played 1B, but you know and I know that with Jonathan Singleton and Brett Wallace, he’s not gonna be no first baseman unless Singleton can’t hit ML pitching even as well as Brett Wallace, youneverknow. He just finished AA San Antonio, which means our guiys have seen him a great deal. What is good is that he maintained his power numbers moving from the Cali league to the Texas League – he’s pretty much averaged approximately .847 OPS at each level, meaning 35 doubles/22 homers per 135 game seasons. It’s nice, but making the jump to ML pitchers from AA just ain’t easy, is it Julio Daniel Martinez?

About our 20 mill payroll team: I’ve been having these discussions with a few guys I’ve known for years, who just LUUUVVVVV prospects/young players and like rebuilding. They are always thinking about/dreaming about selling high on pretty much ANY player and getting more prospects. for a minor league that is just bursting with prospects. Well, I like the – minor league bursting with prospects – part. What I do NOT like is the other part in which your major league team has essentially only cheap players (AAAA guys, anyone decent in ears 1-3, sometimes 1-2 IF you had got him already signed to a longer term cheap contract) while you are waiting for that year when you have an el-cheapo team and somehow, everything magically Comes Together and you WIN and you have Your Core. You dream that anyone good signed an Evan Longoria contract (the one he signed right after he came up, not the last one in which they actually have to PAY him) without a no-trade, so you can play churn the players. Like Billy Beane.

Well, almost like Billy Beane who has liked to sign some known slugger, albeit for more than minimum wage, supposedly on his last legs. Sometimes it works – Frank Thomas. Other times, the slugger really IS finished – Mike Piazza. Billy didn’t start really churning his rosters until after the 4th straight time they lost the ALDS in 2003. But the Athletics haven’t really done the – everybody on minimum wage thingy, unlike Tampa and Miami and San Diego. Here are their (approximate) Opening Day payrolls in millions, as well as if they win a playoff spot: * indicates a winning record

………..Athletics …….. Marlins ……….. San Diego ……… Tampa
2012: 55 (win) ……… 118 ………………   55  ………………… 64*
2011: 66 ………………… 57 ……………….   45 …………………. 41 (win)
2010:  51 ……………….. 55 ………………..  38* ……………….. 71 (win)
2009:  62 ……………….. 36* ………………. 42 ………………… 63*
2008:  50 ……………….. 21* ………………. 73 ………………… 43 (win)
2007:  79  ……………….. 30 ……………….  58* ………………. 24
2006:  62 (win) ………. 14 ………………… 70 (win) ……….. 35
2005:  56* ………………. 60*………………. 62 (win) ……….. 30
2004:  59* ………………. 42 ……………….. 55* …………………30

Payroll doesn’t seem to be correllated with winning. Marlins haven’t reached higher than 3rd place no matter how much/little they spent – no wonder Loria doesn’t think they should spend anything.

Tampa started winning once Gerry Hunsicker came over and remade the team, partly with Astros’ castoffs, including pitching coach Jim Hickey. Yeah, I know – all those number 1 draft picks who were so great, like Tim Beckham and DeWon Brazelton. More like smart trades (especially with dumb Astros) and a few smart FA signings.

But basically, you don’t win consistently churning rosters or keeping payroll at rock bottom. Or, as Loria was finally forced to do in 2010 – sign ONE player to an expensive contract to up your payroll and look as if you are Serious About Winning.

Low payroll + tons of high draft picks does NOT = winning. Winning increases attendence (except in Florida). Churning the players decreases attendance (see Miami and Oakland). And people are simply not interested in going to games in which most of the players are AAAA/minor leaguers and the payroll is low, and the GM announces that FA will not be signed.

I have no reason to believe that the Astros are ever going to substantially increase the payroll for the simple reason that THEY DON’T HAVE TO. There aren’t fans who care and the owner knows that Loria has gotten away with it for over 10 years. They are now talking about a 3-4 year re-building project, meaning that all the future good players are at A ball, so I expect that Jonathan Singleton will be called up and turned into more prospects after a year or 2, if he succeeds, seeing as how he will get expensive and as how the rest of the players will be 3 years “from the next good team” or something like that. I know the system by now.

Brownie had already been fired and JD is now gone to the C*bs.

I don’t know whether or not JD left because he didn’t want anything to do with Crane/Luhnow/the DH league, or whether he was lowballed. I have no idea who is going to replace them, and I think, that like most Astros fans, I really don’t care. Husband is hoping it is Alyson Footer, but I told him that she’d cost too much.

All yall DO know that they are shopping Bud Norris, right? After all, he’s going to make more than 500K.

Luhnow has come out and said, very plainly, that the team will NOT be spending money on free agents (unless they are Phil Humber “quality.”) The team will take in an absolute minimum of 80 mill from TV money, more from MLBAM and they are going to have a 20 million dollar payroll. The excuse is that they are “rebuilding.” Which they will be doing for the next 3 years.

Where is the rest of the money going? They have an el-cheapo manager, el-cheapo coaches, el-cheapo broadcasters both radio and TV (you wait n see) and they can’t spend more than 10 mill on the draft. They certainly aren’t spending more than 10 million in the Dominican and they can’t sign expensive foreign youngster free agents any more.

So if the rest of that money is NOT going into Crane’s personal checking account, where IS it going? It sure as heck isn’t on the team. The Players’ Union will look into the refusal to spend revenue sharing money (which the Astros will now be receiving) on players. They forced Loria to spend on a couple of players, but then he went back to his old tricks and he’s doing business as usual. He won’t be forced out, he CERTAINLY isn’t gonna give the money back to the taxpayers and the local citizens are going to watch a bunch of AAAA guys plus Giancarlo Stanton. I mean, the few local citizens who, for some bizarre reason, still care.

Same thing here. Crane knows very well he can make zillions if the stadium is empty – see Loria. The other owners don’t care because Selig has long since convinced them that they ALL make more money this way. I suppose they think that if the team somehow manages to have a roster of players who are actual major leaguers (and cheap, naturally) in 4-5 years and they manage to get over .500, that the Astros fans will bandwagon on in.

shrug

It doesn’t matter whether or not they do. He’ll be plenty rich from losing.

And speaking of losing – too many BBWAA are losing it this year. We now have guys accusing Craig Biggio of doing drugs. I’m not real too clear if

1- he did them because he was friendly with Ken Caminiti in the early 90s – long BEFORE he was traded to San Diego and started shooting up (at which time, Biggio and Cammy weren’t real too particular close friends)
2 – he did them because he and Bagwell were giving each other butt injections in bathroom stalls ala Canseco and McGwire supposedly were
3 – when Roger Clemens came to the Astros in Jan 03, he called up Biggio and suggested that Biggio join him in shooting up and so that is why Biggio managed to hit 26 homers at age 38. Had nothing to do with pulling every single pitch into left.

So I guess the only player on that stacked ballot with 2 of the best players to ever play, who is going to be elected is Jack Morris and his 3.90 ERA/105 ERA+ who has been declared “clean” even though he sure as heck was pitching long after Canseco was shooting up (steroids were certainly around even in the late 80s) and had one famous WS game at age 37 in which he pitched 10 shutout innings.

Fred McGriff, declared CLEAN (don’t ask me why) isn’t gonna sniff the Hall because he doesn’t stand up to his contemporaries, all of whom are accused of shooting drugs.

And other guys who deserve to be in, like Trammell and Raines (how the HECK is he ignored? must be that performance enhancing cocaine he used, like Paul Molitor) , Edgar Martinez, Larry Walker (no it was NOT Coors Field), Palmeiro, Piazza, Sosa – let alone Bonds and Clemens – all no go. It’s really beyond stupid.

And there are a lot of guys for the Hall Of Very Good – Reggie Sanders, Steve Finley (both of whom have 300 homers/300 steals) Bernie Williams, Curt Schilling (you talk about failing the character clause – but the ONLY one the writers care about is steroids), David Wells, Shawn Green – even ex-Stro Woody Williams.

The last really excellent player who was elected was The Rickey and we’re touting Andre Dawson and Jim Ed Rice and Jack Morris as great.

I have ZERO sympathy for all those screeching – ohhhhhh steroids users were these terrible cheaters – ooooh the records!!! writers. If they thought steroids were soooooo terrible, were the heck were they back in the 80s – I didn’t see anyone writing any sort of exposes – and use was rampant. They can go stuff it up their sanctimonious butts.