Trying to come up with them, that is.
I see that most Astros fans really think that Jason Castro, after 100+ bats at AA, is going to make the ML team and hit like Mike Piazza 1999. Not sure why. I just wonder how long he’s gonna get IF he makes the 25 man IF he hits lousy before Astros fans start throwing rotten fruit. Actually, I seriously doubt that he’d make the 25 man unless Quintero and Towles don’t hit at ALL and he does – mostly because the Astros would like to screw him out of a year of FA and get him for 7 years instead of 6.
Don’t know if he can hit ML breaking stuff, but he sure has mastered the art of the Bull Durham cliche lines – check out his interview with Baseball America:
- Mark (Chicago): What do you feel you need to do in spring training to win the starting catching job for Houston?
Jason Castro: Similarly to the previous question just continuing to get comfortable behind the plate this spring, working with the pitchers and getting to know each one of their games, and continuing to make adjustments at the plate to put myself in the best place to have success.
barrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrf
Meanwhile, we have the Astros Organization explaining that they expect Pedro Feliz to be this great bat – don’t ask me why, seeing as how he = Geoff Blum batting righty. And, of course, we have this lil nugget from Fast Eddie:
“If other players are paying attention, they can just see that this guy (Feliz) has been through the battles, he knows what it takes to get to the finish line,” Astros general manager Ed Wade said. “Having been there and having that understanding of what it takes to get there is a big plus, and other players can feed off that.”
Like they couldn’t do that with WS winner Geoff Blum and WS Winner Darin Erstad, who were playing with us the last 2 years to show them How To Do Things The Right Way and look where it got them.
I’m getting to where I hate all that stupid cliche crap more than Berkman does. (Especially after the Olympics. Every athlete says almost the same thing to any questions, almost verbatim. BLECCCCCH. Why on earth do the Olympics officials insist on promulgating this stereotype of the athletes as these pure, chaste people who devote themselves to the endless hard work of perfecting their craft, eschewing all else in the pursuit of Gold?)
Anyway, there are really not much of any questions as to who will make the 25 man this year. We ALL know that the position players will be:
2 of Quintero/Towles/Castro, Berkman, Matsui, Manzella, Keppinger, Blum, Feliz, Clank, Bourn, Pence, Michaels – leaving only 1 spot for either Maysonet or Bogusevic or Bourgeois or Sullivan.
The pitchers will be Oswalt, Wandy, Wifebeater, Norris, Paulino, Moehler, Arias, Byrdak, Fulchino, Lyons, Lindstrom, Sampson. Too bad for Gervacio – at least at this point. Wesley Wright will be in AAA, learning to be a starter, I guess, and Polin Trinidad will be repeating AAA, working on reducing homers.
Will be interesting to see how the guys who have no chance at all do, especially the NRIs.
Tags: Houston Astros, MLB
About the interview with Jason Castro…
It was an online chat, and not only did his answers sound canned, so did the questions. It was as if Ed Wade was sitting next to him, whispering the answers in his ear. (Better not try that with Chacon.)
My favorite:
Brent (Kansas): Playing with Brent Milleville at Stanford did you learn anything interesting that Johnny Bench did in his playing days? More importantly, do you do that now?
Jason Castro: I was able to learn a lot of interesting things and I do a modified personalized version of that now.
even the questions look phony
what really gets me is the amount of shtt that athletes get if they DON’T go by the script