And tomorrow, when we go to play our great interleague rivals the Toronto Grackles (or whatevs) we will be at that magical mark of 15-30. Unlike 2005, we hardly need a tombstone because this team was dead and buried before the year began. It’s not like we have Berkman coming back, 3 ace pitchers, an ace closer and GOOD bullpen.
Really, what can I say?
Happ was OK – 3 runs on a solo homer, 2 runs on a single, walk and a double. 4 total hits, 3 BB, 8 K, 3 ER/6 IP. The Cards scored an extra run on an unearned run because of a Bil Hall error, but really, they didn’t need it. The Stros got 2 runs on small ball: one run on a Quintero single, WP, groundout, another WP (those are kewl – rare, but kewl and hardly examples of hitting prowess); another on a double, single and sac-fly.
Bourn, Wallace and CJ all went ofer – all that benching Wallace isn’t smart – but of course, this team is not exactly run by smart people.
Speaking of which Maury Brown, who writes the well known bizofbaseball.com, had this to say about Crane and the debt load.
But even though the onerous debt load would severely drop payroll and the amount of money would could be spent on the Organization – it just might could be Crane’s bad history with the EEOC and his discrimination against those ICKY wimmen, darkies and sech, as well as his destroying countless files to prevent further investigation. The New York Times, in fact, is running with the story. Bud might could be more sensitive to that kind of bad PR than he is to having yet ANOTHER franchise with severe money problems. Of course, a team with minimal money can’t pay ballplayers real too much, can they – and THAT is what is important.
Am not sure why the fans are so eager to see this guy owning the Astros. Drayton isn’t exactly perfect, but at least he HAS money and he DID spend lots of it on the ML team, if not the farm.
Anyway, back to games: I hate interleague ball – an idea whose time has gone. And Bud Selig wonders why there is so much less interest in the ASG and the WS.
Tomorrow, Aneury Rodriguez (who is reminding me of Pete Munro, circa 2004 and his inability to make it more than twice through the order) faces ex-Braves pitcher Jo-Jo Reyes. How many homers will Jose Bautista hit? Wonder how long it’s gonna be before people start accusing him of using designer steroids – hope the guy is insisting on a LOT of testing if he is clean. Anyway, Reyes was drafted in the 2nd round of the 03 draft – had a career high 116 IP in 08 before needing the usual TJ surgery. Was traded last year as part of the Ynuel Escobar for Alex Gonzalez trade. This year, he’s thrown 8 games ove 41 IP: 55 H, 3 HR, 12 BB, 25 K: 4.85 ERA, 1.61 WHIP.
Sat, we face Brandon Morrow, ex-first round pick of the Mariners in 06; they wanted him to be a closer. He wasn’t real too good, got traded to Toronto 2 years ago for reliever Brandon League and some monir leaguer, and has done decently as a starter when not on the DL. This year, he’s started 5 games over 26 IP: 22 H, 12 BB, 37 K: 4.85 ERA, (81 ERA+) 1.31 WHIP.
Sunday, Wandy faces Houstonian Kyle Drabek, son of ex-Stro Doug Drabek – the first “STAH” Fa that Drayton signed after he bough the Astros back in 94, remember? Anyway, Kyle was the Phil’s 1st round pick in 06 and he was traded to Toronto for Roy Halliday. Came up last year for a cup of coffee and has made the rotation this year at age 23 – he’s started 9 games over 50 IP: 48H, 5 HR, 34 BB, 35 K: 4.36 ERA (90 ERA+) and 1.64 WHIP.
Tags: Houston Astros, MLB, St. Louis Cardinals
Lisa, I thought Happ looked better today, than he has since last year. BUT……….
when ya have Hall, Johnson, Bourn, and Happ ALL going 0 for 3, that ain’t gonna cut it. This team has NO ONE who is hitting for power, and THAT will bury them,
in the cellar for good. It makes me sick how bad these guys are playing. Keep
running Hall and Barmes out there, and see where this club ends up. Becky
Lisa — I figured I’d carry the dialogue over to the most recent post …
Lisa said: “well, looks like the EEOC story is gaining some national attention – which is good. people in houston seem resigned to our supposed fate. I’m not – and bud is very VERY sensitive to stuf like discrimination against Blacks and women – Crane makes marge schott look like pro-diversity.”
– Yes, exactly right. Marge Schott said a lot of nasty things, but I don’t recall anyone saying she wouldn’t hire minorities (and her Reds teams had plenty of them — Eric Davis, Jose Rijo, et al.).
Jim Crane’s people, meanwhile, are trying to spin the EEOC settlement as a positive for Crane. They’re saying, “We didn’t discriminate against 2,000 blacks, women and Hispanics; we only discriminated against 203 blacks, women and Hispanics.” (Crane’s company paid 203 discrimination claims.) That sort of nonsense doesn’t usually fly in the real world. Let’s hope MLB doesn’t buy it, either.
Anyway, I just saw a story on MyFoxHouston.com in which a couple of Crane’s minority colleagues came to his defense. One of them is Raul Pedraza, whose Miami company was purchased by Crane for $40 million. I don’t know about you, but I’d be very charitable toward anyone who put $40 mil in my pocket. (The story also didn’t mention that Crane gets tax breaks, etc., by buying and working with “minority-owned business enterprises” (MBE) such as Pedraza’s.)
This article from today’s (Friday’s) Houston Chronicle says Jim Crane’s group has a whopping **36** partners:
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/bb/7572913.html
36 partners and yet they need $300 million in debt? Talk about smoke and mirrors. (I believe the Rangers sale last year had 20 to 25 partners and not even half as much debt.)
David Barron has always seemed like a good reporter, but oddly, his article didn’t even mention Crane’s EEOC problems, which made national news yesterday. For some reason, it seems like the Chronicle is already in Crane’s pocket.
Did you see what Jim Leyland had to say about interleague play? Pretty much said that it was time to end it. I couldn’t agree more. When guys like Leyland start coming out against it, there just may be some hope.
I wouldn’t mind if the Astros were rebuilding–playing young players to see what they could do–and losing. My problem is that bringing in the likes of Barmes and Hall and playing them ain’t rebuilding. It’s playing guys who were never really all that good in front of guys who might turn out to be pretty good if they had a chance to play. The Astros were scoring more runs with Sanchez and Bourgeois in the lineup than with Barmes and Hall. I’d rather see the Astros lose with those guys playing their guts out than see what Ed Wade has assembled.
I hope Keppinger comes back and forces the Astros hand the way he did last year. If a guy hits close to .300, gets on base alot, and doesn’t strike out much, you’re pretty much forced to play him.
ann,
iam wondering if crane has some stake/buddy in the chron already. or at fox. the minute (if ) he gets the team and refuses to do anything to make the team better, THEN all the fur will fly – a LOT too late to fix anything. took them a LONG time to get hicks out. it’s GONNA take them a long time to get mccourt out…
mark,
wish you were right about the better playing/forcing hand, etc. but players will play according to salary and who fast eddie wants. see sanchez, angel. and yes they DO need to let young guys play and work things out. cah’t be much worse…
Mark…..Ed Wade *IS* going to play Barmes, and Hall. BOTH of these guys are owed several million dollars, so we are “stuck” watching these two guys strike out EVERY TIME they come to bat. That’s TWO automatic outs, in EVERY GAME. Sad ain’t it. Becky Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Lisa – The Chron’s coverage of Jim Crane has been a total joke. Either the Chron has the worst reporters and columnists in America or Crane has the higher-ups in his pocket. Otherwise, there’s no explanation for the weak coverage.
Speaking of the Chron, David Barron is having quite a day. First he ran the absurd article I linked above, which doesn’t even mention Crane’s EEOC problems. Then, in his notes column, he says the $680 million *includes* McLane’s share of the new RSN, when 20 other reporters have already confirmed that McLane is getting an additional $93 million for the RSN in a *separate* transaction. Horrible reporting.
Well, to tell the truth, the Chron did run a detailed article detailing the EEOC issues.
So it was eleven years ago. Doesn’t change the truth.
wags – I’m aware of the earlier coverage. My point is that if the national media is talking about something, it damn well better be in the *local* paper. But for reasons no one seems to know, the Chron has been treating Jim Crane with kid gloves for the past six months.
OK, I know that Hall loves to swing at 3rd strikes way outside the zone, but I’m betting that someone, somewhere can break him of this annoying habit. Electo-shock therapy?
The best part of being the worst team in the major leagues is there’s nowhere to go but up.
Step One: Have a better winning percentage after 45 games than the loaded, ‘roided, aged 2005 National League World Series representatives.
Step Two: J.R. Towles, Get a hit, man.
I think we can safely say that the “try JR in the 2 hole” experiment was a bust. He was hitting pretty well before that, but then totally fell apart. Kind of like when he went into the starting role the past two years. Must put too much pressure on himself. The boy can hit when he is “seeing the ball.”
PS. Paulino is about to be released by the Rockies after a bad 2011 performance. That guy has the tools, so either his shoulder is hurt worse than he is admitting, or it is another psyche thing. I’d definitely sign him to a minor league contract to find out.
Towles has proven over and over that he cannot hit Major League pitching, simple as that.
Becky, i agree with you on Hall, he is absolutely atrocious; but Barmes is not nearly as bad. He strikes out 20% of the time while Hall K’s almost 40 % of the times, also Barmes has walked a pretty good amount of the time and while not hitting very good yet he has a OBP of .320 which is almost as much as Bourn’s .340. Also Barmes is a very good glove man.
Towles started out going 13 for 36 with two doubles and homer, then suddenly stopped.
As long as we’re signing guys we’ve previously given up on, Troy Patton just got DFA’ed by the O’s.
Becky, Sorry i was wrong about Barmes, he just botched a tailored made DP. He like Hall suks.
Jim Crane met with the Houston NAACP yesterday. Unsurprisingly, Crane promised to throw some money at the NAACP if his sale is approved, and, unsurprisingly, the NAACP now says it’s “comfortable” with Crane buying the Astros. Meanwhile, in Atlanta, MLK is rolling in his grave.
I guess the Astros are just doomed to being third-class citizens in MLB. It’s absolutely unbelievable that MLB could approve of Jim Crane and his 36 (!!) partners using $300 million in debt to buy the Astros *at the same time* MLB is seizing the Dodgers because of debt. Where is Buster Olney on this? Jayson Stark? Ken Rosenthal? Jon Heyman? … Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?
Anon,
If you’re the “Astros Fan” in the comments at Maury’s story in bizofbaseball, thanks for the insightful commentary on baseball economics. Like most of you, I am dumbfounded that no major media in Houston seems to care about the economics of this deal. And adding insult to injury, the connotation of the discussion in pop. media seems to be that Crane will plow all sorts of money into the ‘Stros, whereas it seems he’s massively extended just to be able to buy them.
That MLB is itself providing much of the loans necessary to buy the team is just dumbfounding. How is that not going to be Exhibit A for McCourt in his suit with MLB? Further, how are small market teams O.K. with this, given that the major profit center of the deal seems to be the formation of the RSN, with the result that the Astro’s revenue payments from cable t.v.—that they currently add to MLB revenue sharing—will trickle to nothing? I guess they figure the high sale price will make things easier if/when small market owners try to sell their own teams in turn.
A lot of the financials of this deal are vague, but wouldn’t be if Houston or national media got off their duff and starting asking some piercing questions to Mr. Crane, Mr. McClane, and their advisors. At least get some “no comments” for the record…
Gray_Jay – Yes, it’s really unbelievable, especially when you consider the media scrutiny given to the Rangers sale last year, to the current debt-related situations in Los Angeles (Dodgers) and New York (Mets), and even to the financial practices of the owners in places like Miami, Pittsburgh, and Kansas City.
The way the media works these days, I wouldn’t be surprised if they want Crane to buy the Astros specifically because he’s liable to be a disaster. That would give them two or three years of stories rather than just two or three months during the approval process.
However, that might be giving the media too much credit. I tend to think it’s mostly a matter of the Houston media being very bad and/or in Jim Crane’s pocket. Last year, the DFW media did a tremendous job covering the Rangers sale, and writers from other markets picked up on the coverage to the point it became a national story for several months.
Meanwhile, the Houston Chronicle said nothing about Crane during the sale process, and it didn’t even mention Crane’s EEOC problems until today, five days after media outlets from the New York Times to the Biz of Baseball (Maury Brown) were talking about it. If that doesn’t stink of corruption or malfeasance, I don’t know what would. I don’t know Jim Crane and I have no idea if he’s a racist or a sexist, but something is very fishy when the local paper buries a story that’s being run in hundreds of other papers nationwide.
Even worse, the Chronicle’s David Barron seems totally clueless when he does bother to write anything. In the past 24 hours, he’s run two different articles that say the total transaction price is $680 million for the Astros *and* the RSN, when it’s been common knowledge since last Monday that the deal is $680 million for the Astros *plus* another $93 million for the RSN. How the hell can a *Houston* *business* writer not know such simple details when us shlubs have been talking about it for almost a week?
“How is that not going to be Exhibit A for McCourt in his suit with MLB?”
– I’ve been wondering the same thing since the moment the details of this odd deal went public. I’m no fan of the McCourts, but it would seem like the height of hubris for MLB to seize the higher-revenue Dodgers on account of debt while allowing Jim Crane plus 36 (!!) partners* to buy the Astros with $300 million in debt.
(*36 partners would be a very high number for an all-cash sale, so it blows my mind that MLB would allow 36 partners who are collectively bringing only about 60% cash to the deal. Admittedly, the Rangers deal last year had 32 partners, but the two main investors put in at least double what Crane is investing, and Rangers Baseball Express is carrying far less than $300 million in debt. A bunch of the Rangers partners were also mostly ceremonial — Nolan Ryan, Chuck Greenberg, and even some of the lawyers who worked the deal all got very small shares.)
For a while, I thought Lisa and I were the only two people who saw the pitfalls of this Crane deal. I’m glad we have some company.
Wags…..I’d try to get him every day and twice on Sunday! Troy Patton was “THE”
one when Purpura *GAVE* him to the O’s!! Yes indeed, I’d take that kid back in a New York minute!
Anonymous, who gives a crap about all this Crane poop anyway. The Astros arn’t going any where for at least the next couple of decades except into oblivion.
sceptor — With a decent owner, there’s no reason the Astros shouldn’t be a contender year in and year out. But with Drayton McLane selling to Jim Crane, I fear we’re going from bad to worse.
Becky,
Tim P. made a lot of less-than-stellar moves, but it was actually Ed Wade who included Troy Patton in the Miggy trade.
It would be nice to see if ol’ Troy is any better than what we’ve got now.
Thats exactly what i’m trying to tell you we are not going to get a decent owner, therefore this club is not going anywhere for a long time.
wags…………my bad, I forgot Ed Wade had made that trade. I’d still love to have him back, to see what Arnsberg could do with him!!
Becky, I also would like to have him back if he does’nt have on going arm problems and is completely healthy at the present.
Geez, no Lisa for about two days now. I hope all this losing and Jim Crane business hasn’t turned her into a Yankees fan.
troy patton – from what i understand, his shoulder is no good
felipe paulino just got DFAd – guess HIS shoulder is no good neither
Ann,
dick cheney would dance in a g-string in a gay bar before i would root for the yankees