So, in 2007, who were The Most Hated Astros? Or perhaps I should say, who did the fans want off the team?
Brad Lidge, Chad Qualls (you can’t have a reliever who ever gives up homers), Chris Burke, Mo Ensberg, Jason Lane, Adam Everett, Jason Jennings and Woody Williams. The fans, unlike the management, for the most part, wanted Luke Scott to be the regular RF. The fans WANTED to keep Mike Lamb, but the Organization didn’t let the door hit his ass on his way out. And of course, Drayton was most certainly NOT willing to eat Woody’s 6 mill and no other team would even consider it.
We all know that Lidge hurt his knee, needed some surgery and hasn’t pitched, but let’s see how those guys are doing with their new teams – just curious, you know.
- Chad Qualls (D-bax) – 5 IP, no homers, 3 hits, no walks, 5 K in 5 games. Good thing we got rid of THAT good for nothing. Our NEW bullpen guys are SOOOOOOO much better.
- Chris Burke (D-bax) – 15/38 in 14 G – 11 RS, 15 H, 5 doubles, 3 HR, 9 RBI, 4 BB, 2 K, 2 SB, no CS: .395/.489/.763/1.252 – yeah, GOOD thing we got rid of that worthless good for nothing in favor of Kaz Matsui. Oh yeah, of COURSE these numbers are perfectly valid – didn’t we all decide by 20 ABs last year that Burkie-poo was washed up, useless, worthless? That he should be DFAd and Pence installed in center? Oh yes, you did.
- Luke Scott (Orioles) – 7/24 in 8 G – 4 RS, 3 doubles, 2 HR, 4 RBI, 2 BB, 9 K, no GIDP: .292/.346/.667/1.013 – yeah, the Organization was right, he can’t hit/is always hurt (he DID have the flu – what a bad person to catch the flu)/is
- Adam Everett (Twins) – 7/29 – 3 RS, 3 doubles, 1 RBI, 1 BB, 1 K, no GIDP, no SB/CS: .241/.267/.345/.612 – yep, he’s hitting like Adam Everett AND fielding like Adam Everett. (Tejada is hitting like Adam Everett and fielding like Mark Loretta. NOT much improvement, I’d say…)
- Mike Lamb (Twins) – 8/21 with 4 RS and 3 doubles – 2 BB, 2 K: .381/.435/.524/.959 – he always was a better hitter than Ty Wigginton and his glove isn’t THAT much worse…
- Morgan Ensberg (Yankees) – 10/30 in 14 G – 7 RS, 5 2B, 2 BB, 9 K, 6 RBI: .300/.394/.500/.894. Well, seems he sure has cut down on all those walks that Astros fans so hated.
- Jason Lane (Yankees) – 9/35 in 14 G – 7 RS, 9 H, 2 2B, 1 3B, 2 HR, 8 RBI, 2 BB, 7 K: .257/.297/.543/.840. Not bad, doesn’t hit for a high average, but he hits for power. How many Astros fans prefer a Mark Loretta hitter who hits for average but no power? Answer – most of em.
- Jason Jennings (Rangers) – 2 ER(3 R)/11.2 IP in 4 GS – 6 H, 1 HR, 4 BB, 7 K – 1.54 ERA, 0.86 WHIP, .239 OBA. Too bad he couldn’t have fixed his owie BEFORE the season last year. He won’t stay THIS good pitching at The Ballpark, but I bet he looks a LOT better than he did LAST year. And I bet he outpitches the carcass of Woody Williams, too.
- Juan Gutierrez (D-bax) – 4G/1GS – 6 ER/8 IP – 7 H, no HR, 3 BB, 4 K – that’s OK, he looks like the AAA pitcher he should be this year no matter whose club he was sith
- Dennis Sarfate (Orioles) – 3 ER/6.2 IP 0ver 7 games: 5 H, no HR, 7 BB, 8 K: 2.70 ERA, 1.80 WHIP, .353 OBA – doesn’t look NEAR as good as he did in Sept, hunh? He’s walkin guys like he was still in the Astros bullpen…
- Mike Costanzo (Orioles) 11/35 in 17 games: 3 doubles, 2 HR, 5 RBI, 1 BB, 10 K, 1 CS: .314/.333/.571/.904 – don’t know how he fields, but he sure looks better than Ty Wigginton
- Matt Albers (Orioles) – 5 ER/8.1 IP in 4 G/1 GS – 9 H, 1 HR, 3 BB, 9 K – 5.40 ERA, 1.44 WHIP, .333 OBA. Well, every now and then, he actually did pitch well for the Astros. Guy was good n lousy – usually more lousy than good. Some things never change.
- Troy Patton (Orioles) – shredded shoulder – out for the year.
OK
Conclusions?
So far, Burke and Qualls are paying off BIG time for the Dbax who didn’t need Valverde. I agree that Lidge NEEDED a change of scenery and I would still feel that way if he had pitched 10 innings with 30 K, no BB, no H and had 10 saves. I know we had to find a closer SOMEwhere, but a guy who has one year’s success as a closer is not exactly a guarantee to do it the next year – remember what happened with Danny Kolb when he went from Milwaukee to Atlanta.
Tejada is not hitting worth spit and his fielding (according to people I know who have been watching the games in Fla) is worse than Loretta’s. Luke Scott and Costanzo are hitting great, Albers is his usual meh self, Sarfate seems to have regressed to his Brewers days and Patton has a torn shoulder – something from which a lot of pitchers don’t recover (think Carlos Hernandez – sob sob…) Tejada ALSO costs 13 mill a year for 2 years.
Lane and Ensberg are hitting just fine (of course, they hit just fine last year in ST too, and even then, a WHOLE lot of Astros fans weren’t willing to give them the benefit of the doubt – remember?)
Lamb is tearing the cover off the ball, Wiggy is not.
Even Dan Wheeler (3.40 ERA) and Trever Miller (1.93 ERA) are pitching well for the Rays (and our old friend Gerry Hunsicker.)
Yes, yes, I know ALL about small sample size. Yes, yes, I know that ST stats are irrelevant starting March 31, but so far, the guys we threw away are in general looking a WHOLE lot better than the ones we got, with the exception of Michael Bourn.
I think I’ll do a check on these self same guys at the ASB and compare them to the guys who replaced them – see how things worked out…
Tags: Houston Astros, MLB
I don’t want to get into the astros mistreatment of the very good Ensberg and prety good scott and Burke, b/c we’ve (me and you, Lisa) a trillion times and completely agree. Wigginton, Bourn, and Matsui are clearly inferior, but noone listens.
As for Lamb and Everett, I can’t see why we didn’t keep them. Both are undervalued. I would use Everett w/ Oswalt or Sampson on the mound, moving Tejada over to third, which would give you great infield defense for pithcers who like to induce groundballs. On other days I would platoon Lamb and Wigginton, each have big platoon splits and hit opposite handed pitching extremely well. Especially Wiggy who is shut down by RHP’s. If Wiggy’s defense will be out there every day, it won’t be any worse if it’s split w/ Lamb. Of course, it should be Ensberg who still has a big year left, if he’s given a chance (he won’t be), but that’s old news.
Of course, I would undo ALL the moves Wade made (except Cruz as an NRI- done as a regular he’d make an excellent fourth or fifth OF); mainly b/c they failed to improve the team while taking on alot of payroll (compare the cost of Scott and Tejada, then compare their numbers last year, and you will not like it).
What the average fan fails to realize the more ownership wastes on the likes of Lee and Matsui, the less they will be willing to spend next year and following years. They will end up ruing the mismanagement they once supported. I mean, how funny is it that a fat, lazy, OF w/ an awful glove and a career OBP of .342 instanly have a fan club and universal suppoprt in the press? While an excellent third baseman w/ a career .366 OBP and team MVP the only time in team history that they capture the pennant is run out of town by fans and lynched by he local media; all the while an over the hill, bat less dead weight catcher and washed-up hall of famer dragging the team down to reach 3K are the subject of glowing, vomit inducing encomiums?
kevin,
i think that tal and drayton decided we should start with a pretty much new team and threw out the baby with the bathwater, as the saying goes. MOST fans are VERY happy right now – and you have the richard justices of the world raving about tejada’s WONderful personality (he only hates the roiders his pal bud thinks people should hate – like, say, that Black debbil Barry Lamar) and saying he’s gonna hit 50 homers (off roids) at the Box. uh hunh…
as for lee getting support, the fans want guys who hit for average and don’t walk or strike out much. who do you think they prefer – berkman or lee? who was a more valuable run producer last year (hint – not lee). and who cares about defense if the player hits at least .270 (disregarding GIDP, SLG)
as for mr “good guy” biggio hogging the leadoff spot and insisting on playing almost everry game after getting 3000 – why on earth that is so great and barry bonds going for the homer record (and being a MUCH better defender – yep – and run producer) is so terrible – oh yeah. barry is a BAD guy. i forgot. biggio – he was a team first guy.
right.
ensberg wouldn’t have been hated if he had stopped drawing all those walks and grounded out weakly to the SS instead. it is MUCH better to swing at unhittable pitches outside the strike zone and get out than it is to either walk or strikeout. see carlos lee. it is called being “aggressive.”
remember, it is MUCH better to make one or 2 outs by swinging at crap than it is to walk to first, thereby clogging a base up.
this is basic baseball strategy, understood quite well by baseball fans. so get with the program, there boy!!!!
it is going to be VERY interesting to see what all the astros fans say IF mo ensberg has recovered and hits like he did in 05. well, i would guess that if he walks 90 times again, they’ll say – see, i TOLD all yall he was a bum…
Saying that Wade and Smith threw the baby out with bathwater is pretty accurate. It was clear that the Astros needed to make some changes and fill some holes, but dumping Qualls and Burke and signing Matsui was just plain stupid. Equally stupid was the trading for Tejada, who is way past his prime.
The Lidge trade was good. He was never going to do well again in Houston, and it brought Bourne, which is a huge upgrade in the OF.
I would have liked to keep Soctt around, but Lee being signed and Bourne coming in made him expendable, and he never was very good off the bench.
Ensberg and Lane needed to go. Ensberg had one good year–that’s it. He was horrible in ’06 and horrible in ’07, and if I had been the GM, he wouldn’t even have been an Astro in ’07. Mike Lamb would have been playing 3B every day, and he’d be playing 3B for the Astros every day in ’08. People like to talk about Lamb’s defense. The truth is that he plays much better defense when he gets regular playing time. Those of us who go to alot of games have seen it.
Yes, the fans are happy, but the average fan is stupid. Most have never played any baseball don’t really know much about the game.
Tal Smith and Wade are pretty stupid, too. Smith is not a good baseball man–he got lucky in ’86 and has been able to make a career off one good year. Wade’s record speaks for itself.
I’m an optimist. This is mainly because it is more fun to be that way when all my power is buying tickets and merchandise. (Too bad baseball blogs aren’t read by pro-baseball people as often as liberal-leaning political blogs are read by Democratic politicians, eh?)
Anyways, looking at the batting stats TODAY– I don’t see anything in those itself that is major cause for…concern. Tejada was concerning, but it looks like he is finally getting comfortable at the plate (and he better be all year.)
What worries me is pitching. I can see the pitching pulling it out and being ok, but I don’t see that as likely. Granted, that happens to be the position that we didn’t get rid of as significantly (except Patton, who is injured.)
PS If Woody Williams is on our roster opening day without pitching a game of shutout baseball in Spring Training between now and then, Imma gonna be pissed. A good guy, but it looks like he forgot how to play pro baseball.
I agree with your optimistic angle, Michael. Some of Wade’s moves I don’t like so much, especially getting rid of Qualls and Burke. But bullpens come and go and it’s rare to get consistency — it looks like our bullpen is worse but we’ll see. Lidge for Bourn looks like an excellent deal that may help both clubs, and Valverde is a wait and see.
As for Burke, the truth is that he just never seemed the same after hurting his shoulder crashing into the wall. I’m willing to give Matsui a chance — he’s a HUGE upgrade over Biggio defensively and may well have a better OPS as well.
If we get an entire year of the 2007 Pence and a full year of the Berkman who showed up starting June of last year, that’s a huge improvement to our start. Tejada will hit far better than Everett did in April-May, so we should have some pretty interesting run scoring capability that we didn’t have last year.
Starting pitching is thin, but Oswalt-Backe-Wandy-Sampson doesn’t sound so horrible. Let’s just see what the guys can do.
mark,
i think that sometimes a person NEEDS a change – gets stuck with bad vibes/habits he/she can’t get out of. i know i am supposed to think of ballplayers as stat cards, or a certain amount of “projection” or something, but ballplayers are just people too and some really DO benefit from a change – or even get hurt by a change.
i have NO idea how lidge will do in philly, but besides giving up moren a few homers, i would bet he’s fine.
poor burke – the fans last year were so freaking angry about willy t getting traded, they wouldn’t have accepted him if he had hit and fielded like he’s doing this year.
i still think that pretty much all the trades were done for the purpose of making fans happy and selling tickets, although i just do NOT get wiggy instead of lamb. lamb must have been in the same shtt pile with the Organization as scott for some reason, no idea WHAT reason. it sure wasn’t problems with their teammates, so i hear.
ah well
they are STILL my stros, i’m still rooting for em. it’s not i don’t WANT em to win, it is that i don’t THINK they will be a very good team – i think of myself as realistic, not pessimistic.
now if we had an owner like nutting/glass/loria, i most likely would have said eff this. i gotta respect all the royals/pirates fans who haven’t said exactly that in spite of the fact that their teams are destined to suck until either the owners or the rules change.
and if i was nutting/glass/loria and i was pulling in 30+ mill a year by throwing a lousy team for the yankees/redsox to beat up on each year, i wouldn’t sell and i wouldn’t change.
what on earth for? the marlins can’t draw flies unless the mets are in town and loria still rakes in the $$$
and the owners have managed to convince the public with the full support of their dick young-ish MSM buds, that the players are just a bunch of greedy *(^R! while their own profit margins increase every year and the players compensation % of the total pie goes down.
the owners union has finally outwitted the MLBPA and it’s gonna be interesting to see what happens to the $$$ in this recession…
but i digress
michael,
best i can tell, the teams/owners have the same contempt for us bloggers as bob costas.
smile
i figure that MLB is learning from the other manufacturers – outsource everything IF possible. us bloggers/american fans have nothing to say about all the income they are gonna pull in from china, korea and all the other countries, so even if the stadiums are mostly empty, they’ll still rake in the dough from the internet and mlb.com.
once they stopped with the dingdong measuring contests and remembered that they are robber barons and got people like richard justice to write how WONderful bud selig is and isn’t it great that he makes more a year than all but 10 ML ballplayers – well, i’m seeing the writing on the wall…
steve,
agree with you about burke not looking the same after re-injuring his shoulder in 06. but i’ve seena few clips of him this year and he sure looks like he got his old swing back – not sure what exactly was wrong with him last year – he seemed to early and too low???? but it wasn’t his old self.
and as for the lidge/bourn trade – well, i’ll add it up at the end of the year. same with the others.
if there’s one thing i’ve learned about baseball it’s youneverknow…
First, what a glorious month March is and how wonderful is it that there are only five more days until “Play Ball” is uttered in Japanese somewhere!!!
I’m going to play the sample size card with all the players mentioned **except** Burke, because of the weird slugging .200 above career in the spring protends to an improvement at the plate “rule”. I’m also going to go ahead and say that my AL team of the year will be the Rays, because I fully support the work that all the former Astros’ will do there (front office and players alike). Other wise all the numbers mean exactly SQUAT, especially the pitchers (10-12 innings??)
I wish all the former ‘Stros the best, but I’m also going to be optimistic about our chances this year. I think Kaz will flame out quickly enough that he’s dropped like it’s hot. Then we can bring up Manzella and move Tejada to 3rd, while playing musical chairs at second with Wiggy, Blum, Loretta. I think that in the long run, the player that we will regret throwing away the most is Burke, but I feel that Valverde will provide some needed value for our team. I am positive that Brad Lidge needed a change of scenery and if he’s effective (and that’s an IF, but I took him way late in my fantasy draft so I’m hoping he is) it’s the result of changing uniforms. I still think Bourn will be a great addition to our club and I’m really excited to see a line up of Bourn, Pence, Berkman, Lee, Miggy, Wiggy, Towles, Mediocre 2B, Pitcher.
As far as our pitching/defense goes, we have weak left side, but I think that Roy O will ratchet the K’s back up, and that Backe, being a FBer is not so affected by that. Wandy might take some hits mentally from some errors, but I think he’ll grow this year, and I am really excited for what he has to offer IF his oblique clams down. Chacon/Sampson/Cassel(??) worry me, but Chacon might find himself a decent year. For myself, I’m going to believe in the changes we’ve made, because I think we needed desperately to shake things up (by why, oh why did we sign Kaz for sooooooooo much??). I’m pretty happy at this vantage point, but I guess I also am setting myself up for some disappointment. Either way, I think enough has been said about all the things that can go wrong, so maybe, just maybe, give it a rest.
Finally, I think its funny that you give Constanzo the nod, but were so down on him at trade time.
–Stephen
stephen -
here is what i actually SAID about costanzo when we got him
http://mvn.com/mlb-astros/2007/11/08/ed-wade-on-the-lidge-of-reason/
“Mike Costanzo, the minor league 3B. Completed his year at AA Reading (a hitters
Lisa
I totally agree with you on the Biggio assessment of last season. I thought that after he reached his 3000 hits that most of of the starts were too go to Burke the remainder of the season so he could be evaluated and given the chance to be our future second basemen; but no Drayton and management decided to cater to Biggio!s further wish to keep playing so that he could pass as many of players on the all hits list. I loved Biggio but this was a classic example of putting an individual player before the good of the team; and to me that was wrong and shameful.
An actully if the truth be know this all really started at the end of the 2005 season when we decided not to keep Jeff Kent and bring Biggio back to second even tho his skills and performance were in deep decline , so he could reach his 3000 hits which he would need two years to get there.
I am sorry if I upset too many Biggio fans, which i have always been one myself, but I have always believed that the team comes first, regardless.
charles,
biggio/drayton’s performance last year was, to be nice about it, disappointing.
biggio, in my opinion, came off very badly. too bad the press didn’t see it that way.
biggio is as big a prima donna as barry bonds. fact is, that real stars just ARE. it’s just that they usually deal with media a lot better…
Lisa
i just can!t stop thinking sometimes what might have been if the stros would have made the effort and had kept jeff kent in 2006. we only lost the division by 1 1/2 games and still had pretty decent pitching but no offense. kent was much better of hitter and a defender than biggio was. biggio only hit i believe about .150 the second half of the season. i do believe jeff would have easily made a difference of 6 or 7 more wins.
oh well, its history now and i just need to get over it .
but regarding this season i do not believe that ST stats mean all that much and st win-loss record even less. but thats just one mans opinion.
i agree that we should probably like you said wait til the asb then evaluate.
Have a good day everyone!
charles
charles,
we all KNOW the decision was made in 04
what i think is that drayton fancied himself a better GM than hunsicker, having talked roger into signing. drayton wanted an astro to go into the hall and he obviously thought biggio wouldn’t make it in without 3000 hits. he ALSO thought he could persuade beltran to stay and so they let kent go BEFORE they had beltran signed
kent really wasn’t better with the glove at second than biggio in 04 – yeh, i KNOW biggio was, to be nice about it, a freaking disaster in left. but biggio was at least league average with the glove at second until last year. he SHOULD have been platooned for away games.
but it’s the prima donna thing goin on…
- and honestly, the only things i really evaluate in ST for pitchers is – can they get the ball over the plate? do them seem sharper as the weeks go on? are the hitters making solid contact after the first few weeks? are the hits given up because the infielders are simply terrible and can’t get to the ball?
- for hitters, are they making solid contact?
but there is a 6 month season for a good reason…