Astros winning, bunch of other crap I'm thinking about

It's now the middle of the 6th inning, and the Astros are up by 5. Good jobs, dudes.

The biggest single "play" so far was a blown call by 1b ump Winters. Shumaker came in to field a short Q fly ball, dove, and couldn't make it. The call wasn't even close. The ball bounced up into Schumaker's glove. However, Mike Winters is a little bitch, and he wouldn't even get the other umps together to check the call, and then he throws Coop out. Winters has a rep as a dick, too. At least Coop was following one of Earl Weaver's rules of management.

One of the highlights was Schumaker going up onto Tal's Hill to field a Puma FB, tripping, and Berkman getting a triple. I was reading one of the Cardinals blogs/forums to see reactions to the bullshit call (at least they knew it was crap), and saw this posted in response:

I've seen it before, and I still think it's fuckin hilarious.

I love Tal's hill. I love the Crawford boxes. I hope they dig a fucking trench between the infield and the outfield, so that infielders can't field popups. That'd be fucking great. It's great hearing opposing fans bitch about the hill and the boxes and the flagpole.

I don't like a lot of things about MMPUS, but I'm rather fond of the stupid quirks. Boston and Chicago have theirs, why can't we have some? We spent thirty-five years in a giant concrete bubble. This is another extreme.

Let's see...

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I saw the ECU-Virginia Tech game this afternoon. That was pretty epic, with a returned blocked PAT by VT, and a final blocked punt by ECU returned for a TD. ECU won, and that was pretty cool. Their probably going to win C-USA this year. It's always cool to see a smaller conference win against a larger one, even if it is the ACC.

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Q is so awesome as a defensive catcher. If the guy could hit a lick, we'd be in business. He doesn't even have to get up to throw out most base-runners. Cool. Very powerful throw. Wish I had his arm.

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I hate Houston fans' obsession with the wave. Goddamn it's stupid.

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That blown Winters call really underscores the instant-replay thing. What would be so wrong with replaying calls like that? The heart of the "games take too long" problem is the offensive explosion. Games didn't take as long in the 70s and 80s because hitters weren't as good. Fewer hits meant fewer pitches, which meant less time. An extra two minutes a game (maybe), wouldn't mean too much.

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I see our bench coach subscribes to Coop and Garner's philosophy of trigger-happy bullpen management. No reason to pull Byrdak out of the 8th inning.

And of course, Pujols hits a FP homer. Fuck. Now it's 8-5 Astros. Looks like Papa Grande is coming in, after all.

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I like our choice of Deep in the Heart of Texas as a stretch song better than that "God Bless America" crap. I hate that fucking song.

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Hey! Miggy hit into a DP! According to JD, Ausmus holds the NL season record for GIDP (30 in 2002). God, I love this shitty team.

Typical

Astros won, but I didn't see it because of the fucking evacuation and a delayed flight. Lame.

And, of course, Berkman won with a walk-off homer. Against the fucking Cardinals, too. Goddamn.

Schmaltzy Stuff

Stories like this one always choke me up. I especially like parts like this:

Edwards got autographs from many of the players, including Ty Wigginton and Reggie Abercrombie, and threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the game. Berkman was behind the plate to receive.

You know, if you're twelve, meeting any major-league player is cool. But for everyone else, it should go something like this: Meeting Berkman - awesome! Meeting Wiggy - neat! Meeting Reggie Abercrombie - you're still on the roster? I mean, I would always treasure a Jose Lima autograph, but only because he was so epically bad. If Reggie were to have one magical, lucky season that kept him in the league for years after he returned to previous suck levels, then maybe a Reggie autograph would be cool. But Reggie is no Lima.

I mean, that's worse than getting the backup catcher's autograph. Of course, Q's our starter now, and he might be starting in 2009, so a Q autograph might be kinda cool.

Seriously?

Yeah, so we're evacuating. Total bullshit, since the thing won't fucking hit us, but I guess better safe than dead.

So I get to hang out in Houston for another week. Yeehaw.

Astros Win, Coop's an Idiot

The Wizard improved to 22-1 against the Reds tonight. Pretty cool. It's probably a lot easier now that Griffey and Dunn are gone, though.

In the bottom of the 4th, Tejada and Berkman got on base to start the home inning. Blum comes up. Blum had earlier grounded out in a similar situation, and he was swinging away on this one.

Now, at the 3-2 count, Berkman and Tejada are moving on the pitch. I have never believed in the hit-and-run play, even when I was a kid and thought that small-ball worked. It's honestly one of the worst decisions a manager can make. It forces the hitter to swing away, and it leaves runners open to being thrown out on a strike out or a caught liner. Simply put, it commits the cardinal sin of sports: Trying To Do Too Much With It.

Now, to some degree, I can understand the reasoning here. The fear is that Blum will ground out and allow the double play. You really don't want that to happen.

But the alternative to the H&R would be to allow Blum to just swing at what he's comfortable with. If he strikes out, it's better than the ground out. If he sends one over the second baseman, we might score anyways. If he hits a homer, problem solved.

Instead, Blum was forced to swing. More importantly, Tejada was ordered to run. So Tejada was thrown out at third fairly easily. It wasn't done by a mile, but it was pretty obvious that he wouldn't make it.

So instead of having one out with runners at 1st and 2nd, we have two outs with a runner on 2nd. Now, the double play Coop was avoiding would have resulted in two outs with a runner on 3rd. So Coop's plan actually resulted in a worse scenario than the one he feared. Talk about irony.

So Hunter comes to the plate with two outs, so he can't possibly ground into a double play. Not even if he tried. And he promptly blasts a two-run homer to give the Astros the lead. Of course, that should have been a three-run homer, but nobody ever fucking paid attention to Earl Weaver. Not fucking ever. Unless their name was Billy Beane, in which case they continued the Earl's tradition of kicking ass.

So Coop got the victory, as did Roy. And Wiggy extended the lead to three with a two-run shot in the seventh. Overall, a good night for the Stros, but one that should have been 5-1 instead of 4-1.

Coop's actually not an idiot. This was just a stupid play.

A Helluva Hullabaloo

Former Tulane star Bogusevic made Baseball Prospectus' weekly list of top prospects:

Brian Bogusevic, OF, Double-A Corpus Christi (Astros)
In the spring of 2005, Bogusevic was one of the top two-way players in the country, serving not only as Tulane's ace, but also as a tools-laden center fielder with above-average speed and power potential. A hamstring injury limited him primarily to mound duties, and the Astros took him in the first round as a power left-hander. While that didn't work out, his converting back to the outfield was something some scouts had been hoping for, as his batting practices were among the most impressive to be seen in a weak Astros chain. That conversion began in July after another brutal campaign on the mound, and it's been a smashing success. Over the weekend, Bogusevic went 7-for-11 to raise his averages to .359/.445/.553 in the Texas League, and while he had dropped well off of most Astros prospect rankings as a lefty, he's back on them—and very highly ranked—as an outfielder.

Sweet. God, I hope they call him up next week. We need hitting (and pitching) so bad. If we can just get a decent fucking hitter out of the farm system, I'll be placated until December. Please, God, let him be good. I don't know if I can take another JR Towles, not with so little hope elsewhere in the farm system. Just stop jerking us around, God. If he's bad, just make him go 0 for the rest of the season. We'll get the message. If he's good, make him blast a couple homers and get on base - that's all we ask.

Edit:

Footer over at Astros.com has said they don't plan on calling him up. That's cool, given that he only started hitting two months ago. Just one of those unrealistic fan dreams. We'll see what he's doing next year. I imagine he'll be playing fall and winter league stuff.

That's it, I'm Voting for Barry

What with the situation in Iraq largely being determined (very quietly, I might add) by negotiations between the Iraqi government and the United States, I doubt that Obama is going to pull any of his "Fuck the Iraqis, let's leave now" crap if he's elected.

So I'm left to the myriad other issues that determine whom I'll support. Economically, it's largely a wash - Obama will be pro-labor, McCain will be pro-NAFTA. So what should I vote on? Answer: sports, of course.

I imagine McCain is a D-Backs/Cardinals/Suns fan, though he grew up in Northern Virginia, so he could just as easily be a Skins/Orioles/Nats/Generals fan.

Obama is from Chicago. He's a Bears/Bulls fan. He's shown up at ChiSox games in the past, and in this interview, he's clearly a fan of the White Sox.

Now, if what he's saying is sincere, it is a plus. His candidacy is a big part of the hipster douche crowd, so I've always docked him points for that. But Cubs fandom is also a hallmark of hipsterism. So I'm leaning towards hating him for that.

But I've always preferred the White Sox. Sure, their fans were dicks during the 2005 World Series, and AJ Pierzinsahfuckit is an absolute asshole, but the Sox are working class. They play in a modern ballpark (and one that's not filled with the bullshit that MMPUS is), they charge reasonable prices, there are actual non-token minorities in the stands. Plus, they never blamed their lack of postseason success on a fucking curse, even though they had ample reason to do so.

Good job, Barry. You've won over the crucial "Fuck I hate Fucking Cubs Fans" demographic!

Greatest Songs of All Time!

Every few years, Rolling Stone puts out one of those "Greatest _______ of all time" lists. It's usually selected based upon whichever particular era the current writers are nostalgic about. In a few years, it's going to be all Nirvana crap.

So, in the finest tradition of the worst music magazine around (not true, actually. Blender is much, much worse), I'll pick the best five songs I can think of off the top of my head. This will, of course, be immensely biased towards what I've been listening to over the past few days, so it's really just a list of songs I like. The first four are in no particular order.

5) Texas Flood

There's nothing quite like this song playing on the radio when it's the middle of July, 11:30 PM, 95% humidity, 87 degrees out, and you're driving around H-Town. One of the greatest Texas blues songs by one of the best bluesmen to ever live. I have a friend who thinks SRV was the best guitarist ever. He's probably wrong, but he's not far off.

4) YYZ

Rush is one of those bands that the music media never really got. That's a product of Geddy's voice, Neil Peart's general stand-off-ish nature, and their inability to be seen as anything other than another nerdy progressive rock band. In truth, Peart was sometimes able to actually examine interesting topics with his lyrics, and he and Geddy Lee are among the three best drummers and bassists to ever play. Lifeson is a critically underrated guitarist, as well.

Rush's best strength has always been their artistic prowess with their instruments, and while I love virtually all of Rush's efforts (not the first album, nor Caress of Steel), their instrumentals have always stood out. YYZ is probably the best of the Rush instrumentals. I love everything about this song, most of all the plywood part. And as an aspiring bassist (read: terrible bassist), Geddy's lyrical bassline is what all bassists aspire to produce.

3) Message in a Bottle

The Police were remarkably similar to Rush in a lot of ways. First, they had a singing bassist. Second, their lyrics were often pretentious explorations of non-rock-song material. Third, they were loved by science fiction nerds (Rush for 2112, the Police for Sting's appearance in Dune).

For their second album, the Police put together a pretty good collection. But Message in a Bottle stands above everything else. And it's a pretty evocative song.

2) Closer to the Heart

Probably Rush's finest song ever. Absolutely fantastic, and it's even better live. Anybody who says differently is either a fucking liar or is deaf. Oddly enough for a band that usually produced songs in the 5 to 6 minute range, their best was also one of their shortest.

1) Sultans of Swing

The best song ever written. I can't really describe it. Features one of the best guitar solos ever. Just such a smooth song.

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I watched (off and on) the shitty game the Astros put in today. I can't really blame them - nobody but Lance and Wiggy is any good.

Hunter answers the "What's you favorite song?" question, which I've seen about eight times now.

First of all, Hunter, the song was actually written by Afrika Bambaataa way back before either of our times. Second, your love for Rage makes my Junior-High self like you that much more. And even my friends who hate Rage Against the Machine (virtually all of them) agree that their cover of Renegades of Funk was their best song.

Fay is a bitch.

Pretty much trapped inside, thanks to this tropical storm. Rainin' like a mothafucka. Doesn't help that most of my friends won't be here 'till tonight or tomorrow.

And the worst part is that the Astros sell the rights to their Sunday games to My20 in Houston. So while we get FSN Houston in New Orleans, I can't see the game.

And Houston put together a win while fielding Reggie and Castillo. And Reggie was leading off, too! Great idea, Coop! Let's put the guy with a sub .300 OBP in the spot where he'll get the most PAs! But he looks like a leadoff guy (runs fast, is black), so he's got it in him, right? Yeah, he went 0-4. Apparently, he was switched out for Bourn by the end of the game, who went 0-1, but drew a walk. Good job, Michael.

Anyways, Pence smacked a homer to tie the game in the fourth, and Erstad and Ausmus (!) hit solo shots in the 10th to get the win. Huzzah.

Astros Win; Back in NOLA

Yeah, so the Astros won. I only saw the highlights, though. I was busy driving. Berkman hit a three-run homer, and Backe put in a good game. Hooray for all of us.

I'm back in New Orleans. Most of my dorm's floor is made up of freshmen, so that's not really cool. It's not that I'm one of those dickbags who takes college life way too fucking seriously and thinks that seniority gives him something. It's that I know how first-year college kids act. Fortunately, the rooms are only accessible from the outside, so nobody can puke in a hallway. There are no hallways.

Gotta rent one of those combination microwave-refrigerators. After that, I plan on spacing out until classes start on Wednesday. Can't wait until Thanksgiving.

The Wizard Imitates the Rocket; Kubiak Gambles and Loses

Oswalt gave up three runs in the first two innings, and then proceded to pitch six perfect innings. Vintage Roy. The first inning, he mostly got unlucky, giving up a dinky single from Reyes, who moved over on a "wild pitch" (it was a curveball, which Roy wasn't really spotting well in the first few innings, that bounced in the dirt and was blocked by Brad. And Brad's arm isn't quite what it used to be; had Q been catching, Reyes would've been gunned down), and scored on a Wright bloop single that Spaz couldn't get to. Roy struck out the next two he faced.

In the second, Roy gave up a ground ball to Ryan Church. It was just barely fair, Blum fielded it but couldn't quite make the throw in time. The catcher, Schneider, swung at a first pitch fastball that was pretty fat, sending it over the CF fence. Truly a monstrous shot. After that, Roy decided to just pitch perfect ball. He retired the next twenty he faced.


The Astros were actually hitting very well against Santana. Loretta drew a walk, and the Astros got 8 hits on the guy. All would be left on base.

In the first inning, Lance put on one of the most epic pitcher-batter duels I've seen in a while. It went on for several minutes, with the Puma fouling off pitches and bringing the count to 3-2. Finally, he was k'd looking on an inside changeup - the Santana Special. It was pretty borderline, but it was a good glimpse at how great of a hitter Berkman is - he doesn't chase the bad pitch, but he'll be aggressive when he has to be.

Hunter put on a pretty good AB against Santana, as well. He laid off the down-and-away pitches, as well as the inside stuff. In other words, he was thinking at the plate. We'd groundout to Wright, but he still did a pretty good job.

The only problem Hunter had with Santana, I think, was a complete lack of agression. Guys like Berkman and Dunn succeed because they will swing on the first pitch if they think they can hit it well. You're not so much playing for the walk as you're playing for a pitch to hit. Statistically, Hunter's pitch to hit is a fastball up in the zone. At least once, Santana's first pitch was a fastball left up, and Hunter should have jumped on that. Hunter makes plenty of mistakes on the basepaths, in the outfield, and at the plate, but I think a lot will come with maturity.

Twice the Astros got men at 2nd and 3rd, but both times they were unable to score. That sucked, but it happens. So Oswalt, despite having pitched a fantastic game, gets the loss. And that's another spectacular example about why pitcher's wins and losses are meaningless.

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The defense was pretty fucking dreadful last night. They forced 3 turnovers, but just couldn't hold back the fucking Cowboys.

Schaub had a tough first quarter, but came back and did well. Sage came in and did his thing, leading some pretty good drives. The last Texans' drive featured several borderline incomplete pass calls, and the Texans were third-and-goal. In what will probably be the height of my armchair-playcalling career, I totally called the QB draw play. Sage faked the pass and dove into the end zone in a truly beautiful play.

So the Texans were 20-21 against Dallas. And Kubiak decided to go for the two point conversion. Jones dropped the pass, and the Cowboys proceeded to run out the clock. Whatever.

Personally (and I've said this for years), I think NFL coaches are way too fucking cautious. They'll punt when they should probably go for it; they'll go for the PAT instead of the conversion, even when the difference if you don't make it isn't that great but the payoff from making it is.

There was some economics papers I read, saying that expected payoff from fourth down meant that teams should go for the 4th down (provided it's not 4th-and-long) if they were anywhere past they're own 35 yd line. I'm inclined to agree. Trust your defense and go for it. No offense to Turk, but punting is for pussies.

Tough choice today; Deconstructing the Wizard

So I leave for Tulane tomorrow. Not all that keen on going back to school, but whatever. I've got to finish getting the debate society ready. I really need to just hand the tournament and campus debate stuff off to my officers. I can just be a figurehead.

My roommate's name is Zhong Jian Jiang. I think he might be Chinese. I had hoped for a single this year, but having to live in the same room with someone isn't too bad.

Roy gets a start against Santana today, in what will be the last series this season against the Mets. The Texans take on the Cowboys tonight, too. So I'm left with something of a dilemma. The Astros game starts at 6, and while Roy and Santana are quick workers, I doubt the game will be over in an hour. At the same time, the Texans game starts at 7. Preseason football is meaningless, but the prospect of seeing the Texans destroy the Cowboys is always tempting, especially since we don't play them in regular season this year. I'd rank beating the Cowboys to being only slightly less than beating the Titans on the "Cathartic Sports Experiences" list. Third is beating the Braves and Cardinals in the playoffs. Fourth is beating the motherfucking Jazz.

So, unless the Astros game is a blowout (in which case I'll probably still watch in hand-wringing anxiety over the state of our ace pitcher), I'll have to flip between channels. And the problem with that is that baseball is a game best watched over a long period - quick glimpses of it don't give the appropriate "feel" for the game. But football isn't something you can just ignore for a few minutes. The entire course of the game can change on one bad pass. It's a tough decision, hence the title for the post.

I also watched the Bears-49ers game last night. Tulane alum Matt Forte (really a surprise to everyone that he was taken in the 2nd round) started the night at RB for Chicago. He got 44 yards in 11 carries, better than Reggie Bush. And he caught one reception for seven yards. Pretty good for his second professional game. I only ever met the guy once, and he seemed like a pretty down-to-earth type. Pretty smart guy, too. So I (and the rest of Tulane, I'm sure) am glad that he's getting a chance at the professional level. Hopefully it works out for him.


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The Crawfish Boxes once again has a pretty good statistical article. This time, DyingQuail looks at the difference between Roy's DIPS and his ERA. He comes up with a fairly disturbing revelation: Roy is pitching even worse that his ERA would indicate.

As I point out in the comments section, I think that most of his problems can be attributed to his completely wacky HR/FB ratio. I also pointed out that much of the variation in his HR/9 stat could be normal noise. If you look at any pitcher's HR/9 rate, you'll find a great deal of deviation from year to year.

Roy has had an improvement this year: an increase in his K/BB ratio. DyingQuail attributes this to the absence of Adam Everett - Roy is no longer pitching to contact with Tejada behind him instead of Everett. This is certainly an interesting theory.

Roy has said, in recent interviews, that he finally feels healthy again. If that's the case, then everything should be fine next year. In the meantime, however, I'd say that it's best just to shut the Wizard down for the season and have him start whatever rehab he needs. If he needs surgery, the Roy should have it done immediately. If he just needs rest and time, then he can have an extra month to do so.

As the guys at Baseball Prospectus have pointed out time and again, Roy is a statistical outlier. That's why he's the Wizard - he's a small guy who throws hard with great finesse and can seemingly get himself out of the worst situations on a routine basis. He's also a lot like John Smoltz - he's cool with pushing himself well past where he should stop. That he told Coop that he needed to be taken out of that game in Dallas should have been an alarm bell for management and the trainers.

Roy will rebound. He's had an off season. But even the best pitchers have those. The key is just to pack it up for the season and try again next year.

Tim Kurkjian is a Dumbass; The Best Pitcher of All Time!

I'm watching ESPN (I guess because I'm a masochist; I have no clue why I continue to subject myself to it), and on comes Tim Kurkjian and whichever dipshit they've got anchoring SportsCenter. Normally, Kurkjian is one of the least idiotic of ESPN's "analysts," but this time he's talking about the AL Cy Young.

He's talking about Cliff Lee and commenting that only 6 times has the winner of the Cy Young Award come from a losing team. He acts all fucking surprised about this, because HE votes for whomever is the best pitcher, regardless of the team the pitch with. He says it just goes to show that maybe it's difficult to win games with a bad team. This surprised me, because I would expect him to follow up with "Well, it should be about whoever does the best job of keeping guys from scoring. Win-Loss is meaningless." But he didn't say that, and instead I'm left to believe that he still votes on Win-Loss.

So, essentially, he's saying he votes for whoever has the best win-loss record, but he doesn't care about which team the guy wins or loses on.

This is monumentally stupid. I mean, the problem with the way the CYA is voted on is clear, because you've got all these old-timers who see pitcher's W-L as somehow meaningful. And they're so caught up in that dumbass stat that they can't pick the best pitcher.

I'm not saying that the CYA should just go to whoever posts the lowest ERA. Considerations have to be made for things like IP and such. That leaves a great deal of a pitcher's "awardability" up to a manager, but it's better than fucking W-L.

What surprises me still is that anyone still believes in pitcher's wins. I mean, we've had all these cases where a spectacular pitcher can pitch 1 or 2 run ball, and then lose because his lineup is so shitty.

And there are at least two cases of that in Astros' history: 1987 and 2005.

1987 must have been a hell of a year for Nolan Ryan. He was still, at the age of 40, one of the best pitchers in the National League. He could still blow pitchers away with his fastball, and he could still strike out 270 hitters in a season. He was the best pitcher on that season's team (sorry, JD). He posted a spectacular 2.76 ERA. Of course, a 2.76 ERA meant a hell of a lot less in 1987 than it does now, but it was still pretty awesome.

But, somehow, he had the worst W-L record amongst the Astros' starters: 8-16. Bob Knepper, posting a 5.56 ERA, went 8-17. Doctor Death went 9-10 with a 3.59 ERA.

On the flip side of this, Jim Deshaies went 11-6 with a 4.62 ERA (75 ERA+). Mike Scott was the only one whose Win-Loss record squares with his ERA, 3.23 and 16-13.

Clearly, Ryan was just getting no run support. The Astros' lineup was mostly a bunch of above-average hitters. Only, sadly, Cheo Cruz and Craig Reynolds were posting OPS+ values below 100. But the overall team's OPS ranked 11th in the league.

There's a story (I think JD tells it during games) where Nolan Ryan is in the clubhouse, looking worriedly at the lineup card and wondering how he's going to win with that kind of support. And Mike Scott or someone comes up and says, "Looks like you've got a bunch of big-league hitters behind you." Which is true. But unfortunately this was not the offensive era of the Astros.

Ryan came in 5th in NL Cy Young Award voting. He lost to reliever Steve Bedrosian. Ryan had the lowest ERA amongst the starters in voting.

In 2005, Roger Clemens had a similar experience. It was nowhere near as bad as Ryan's '87 season, but it was still depressing. He had the best ERA of his career (1.87). He had a 1.008 WHIP. I mean, that's just fantastic. He was the best pitcher in the National League that year.

But he went "only" 13-8 that season. We all know how ridiculously bad that season's lineup was. Of the starters, only Berkman, Ensberg, Biggio, and Lane were above-average at the plate. Simply put, the team was just awful aside from the Pettitte-Oswalt-Clemens combo. Roy went 20-8 with a 2.94 ERA, and he was the weakest of our three ace pitchers.

Clemens came in 3rd in the NL CYA voting. He lost it out to fucking Chris Carpenter. Dontrelle Willis came in 2nd. He had a lower ERA and WHIP than either of the two ahead of him.

Of course,the CYA has no actual criteria. It's just who the BBWAA thinks is most awesome. Carpenter and the D-Train were both good choices that year, but it often appears that the BBWAA pays more attention to the W-L stat than anything else. They seem to understand that a guy with a good W-L record might not be that great of a pitcher, but they still look at it.

Still, Clemens probably deserved a few more Cy Youngs than he got.

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It's fashionable amongst stat guys to say that Nolan Ryan was overrated. I think that's probably true. People seem to think he was the best pitcher EVAR, which isn't true. He was one of the best pitchers EVAR, but not the best. He was a different type from the Greg Madduxes and Roy Oswalts of the world. You knew the fastball was coming when you faced Ryan, but you just couldn't hit it.

There was a time (roughly occupying the 2007 season) when I thought Clemens was overrated. The steroids thing and his inability to come through in the clutch for us in 2005 pissed me off. That was before I gained a more nuanced view of steroids and a more sensible attitude towards Clemens' injuries in the postseason.

Someone (probably Bill James) stated that only in baseball did we think that the best players lived a half century ago. No one would say that Jim Brown was a better running back than Earl Campbell (not seriously, anyways). In basketball and football, there's a realization that current players are probably many times better than those of yesteryear. In baseball, people will seriously say that Three Fingers Brown would have destroyed Barry Bonds. That's idiotic.

So I say in all seriousness that we live in an era when the two best pitchers of all time may have been playing: Roger Clemens and Greg Maddux. I think that no other pitchers have been as good as they have. They posted incredible numbers during the offensive explosion of the 1990s. They had incredibly long careers. They dominated the hitters of their era.

But I think there will be better pitchers. Training will get better, nutrition will improve, and recruitment will expand to a larger number of people. For all we know, the guy who would make the best pitcher of all time is sitting in a hut in Nigeria. Eventually, better pitchers than Mad Dog and the Rocket will be found. And that's pretty cool.

We're fucked. We're so fucking fucked it's unfuckingbelievable.

I've decided that the Astros aren't going to be doing anything interesting for at least a year. I think I might understand maybe what Ed Wade is thinking, and it might just work.

Ty Wigginton, Miguel Tejada, and Jose Valverde are all going to be in their contract years in 2009.

So, let's assume that Wiggy stays the same, Valverde stays healthy, and Tejada improves ever so slightly and keeps his "big name" status.

Then we will have 3 Class A free agents.

So, after the 2009 season, we offer all three arbitration. All three decline, rightly concluding that they can make more money elsewhere.

All go to nice, big, rich teams with winning records. We get a total of six extra 1st round picks: 3 from the other teams and 3 supplemental picks.

We will have (at least) 7 first round picks.

Drayton McLane then commits to spending $12 million in the draft, snapping up expensive talent left and right. He can do that because he's suddenly freed up about 20 million in payroll.

The problem, then, is 2010. Lance and Roy will both be in contract years. We have to decide then what to do with them. If we let them go (I know, it would hurt like hell), we get even more from other teams. We take the four draft picks and use them similarly. We invest the difference in Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. And Cuba, because that regime is going to be gone in a few years.

After all is said and done, the corps players who lead this team for a decade are gone, but the organization as a whole is healthy. We churn out talent. We become the powerhouse that Houston deserves. We go to Busch stadium and burn that bitch to the ground after Jacob Priday hits a homer that sends the blimp covering the 2013 NLCS crashing into the stands.

The 2013 World Series is finished in four games. Our opponents are the Yankees. Jeter, sitting in the stands during game 1, takes a line drive foul to the head, decapitating him. The last game is in MMPUS, because the entire All-Star lineup was made up of Astros starters and we kicked ass.

The sheer force of Astros awesomeness results in the Bud Adams imploding, the Texans suddenly becoming the Oilers (but this time they don't suck), the Rockets ten-peating, and the Dallas Cowboys folding from lack of interest. The Texas Rangers become the Dallas Rangers after everyone realizes how stupid it is to name a team with an in-state rival after said state. They promptly move to Mexico City after ownership realizes that those fucks in Dallas don't give a shit about baseball.

The Astros dominate the National League until an asteroid hits the Earth, destroying all life. But Craig Biggio stuffs his kid into a space capsule, sending him into space just before the Earth is destroyed. Conor becomes "The Last Son of Earth," transporting the game of baseball and the story of the Houston Astros to the alien world upon which he lands.

Or, you know, we'll go out this offseason and grab some more starting pitching. And we'll lose next season but have larger problems down the road. Either one.

Why do I say all this stupid shit? Because I just looked at the Lexington Legends' stats for the year. Do you know who lead the team in batting average and OBA? Matt Cusick. The guy we traded LaTroy Hawkins for.

It was then that I realized that Ed Wade was fucking lying when he said that Cusick was well worth the trade. The Yankees thought well enough of him to place him in high A as soon as they got him. He's on the DL right now, so we can't really evaluate his stats. But the fact is that Wade traded a guy that the fuckin Yankees thought should be promoted - a guy who led our shitty team in a number of important areas - for a fuckin middle reliever that they thought should be discarded. Hawkins is okay, but we can't afford to lose this kind of prospect. Not when we have so little. Fuck.

And Chad Reineke did well in his first start for the Padres.

GODDAMMIT! WE'RE FUCKED!

The Fall of Hunter Pence; Farwell to Brad Ausmus

Astros lost today. 5-2 Brewers. A fairly good showing from everyone but Wandy. I didn't see anything after the 6th inning, though. Reading a recap, I see that the Good Guys had something of a rally going in the eighth. Miggy got an infield single (pretty good for a 33 year old), Lance was hit by a Gagne pitch, and Blum reached on an error. So our man Spaz is up to bat. Twice before, he had either grounded into a double play or had enough speed to avoid it. This time, Hunter bounced into an easy 1-2-3 DP. Good job. Newhan grounded out to end the inning.

Yesterday, though, the Astros won against Ben Sheets. Bourn got a 2 RBI Triple, and he later reached base on a HBP and scored on a 3-run Blum homer. So Bourn either batted-in or scored 3/5 of the Astros' runs. Pretty cool.

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But I want to talk about Pence. Hunter came into the big leagues last year as the Astros' top prospect. This wasn't really saying much, though. But at the end of the year, Hunter Pence and Corey Hart were considered fairly similar hitters. In fact, many people thought that Pence was a safer bet to succeed that Hart.

What happened? Hart is on his way to a 20HR-20SB season, but Hunter is barely hitting .260. He might hit 20 homers by the end of the season (he has 17 right now). If he does that, he might top 100 on OPS+. I'd count that as a win for the season, but it's not looking like it will happen.

HighLeveragePerformer at the Crawfish Boxes has a pretty good exploration of Hunter's decline. I think Hunter has issues that partly explain his decline in BABIP.

BABIP values for hitters vary wildly from year to year. Here's Berkman's, here's Jeff Bagwell's, and here's Hunter's. In general, however, BABIP stays in a general range for hitters. Some of Hunter's decline might be attributed to normal variation. But his .378 value for last year was just too ridiculous to sustain.

Hunter's main problem in his first two seasons has been plate discipline. In his time in the majors, Hunter has posted a BB% of a little over 5%. That's not pretty.

What's odd about his MLB plate discipline is that he showed a good bit of it in the minors - he had a BB% north of 10%. As soon as he hit the majors, though, he practically stopped walking. Compare this to Lance (I know; it's not fair to compare Hunter with one of the finest hitters in the NL, but it serves our purposes), who walks in over 14% of his PAs.

Stats can tell you a great deal. But they can't really tell you why a player is having trouble. We can say that the reason Hunter is scuffling at the plate is probably because he doesn't have good pitch selection and thus doesn't hit as well, but we can't tell you why he swings at pitches out of the zone.

The good news is that Hunter is only 25. He can improve. But it requires a great deal of self-awareness on the part of Hunter and an understanding of his problems on the part of his hitting coach.

First, Hunter doesn't make great contact with pitches inside. That's his primary hole. Second (as we all know), Hunter has a MAJOR problem with laying off the low and outside slider. I've seen him swing at so many sliders in the dirt that I'm just happy when Spaz doesn't strike out swinging on one.

People have made a big deal about the fact that Hunter's seen the fewest fastballs of any hitter in the big leagues. That's because it is a big deal. The league figured out Hunter's weakness in the offseason and has adjusted appropriately. Lefty pitchers still have a problem with him, but they can throw a sinker or changeup inside and bet that Pence won't hit it.

The Crawfish Boxes post ends by suggesting that Pence will either take a page from Berkman's or Vlad Guerrero's notebook. I don't think he can do the whole Vlad thing. He can't make good contact with pitches that far off of the plate. If Hunter's going to succeed, he's got to improve his eye. He simply can't afford to give away strikes by fouling off an outside pitch. He's got to be able to force the pitcher into a hitter's count and wait on a fastball. He's so good at hitting those that, if he were able to do this, he'd be unstoppable. If he doesn't, he's just a below-average corner OF.

----------------------------------------

Brownie and JD said that Ausmus has officially said that this year will be his last with the Astros. He'll either get with a club in Southern California or retire next season. He's almost 40, which is an exceptionally long career, especially for a catcher. Especially one with such terrible offensive numbers.

Brad made a long career from being one of the best defensive catchers in baseball. I've long thought that the Astros made a mistake by trading for him all those years ago, and I don't renege on that opinion.

But by all indications, Brad's a great guy and the pitchers and other players love him. And we'll always remember that (somewhat controversial) home run. 2 outs, bottom of the 9th, game 4 of the NLDS. Facing the hated Braves and that dumbass Farnsworth, Ausmus slammed one just over the yellow line in deep left-center, sending the GREATEST GAME EVAR into extra innings. Despite his anemic offense, I'm going to miss the guy next year. It's a shame that the whole JR Towles thing didn't work out. Maybe Q learned something from Brad.

Here's something I didn't know about Brad: he is actually an iron man. He spent exactly 0 days on the DL in his sixteen years behind the plate. That's amazing, considering the abuse that every catcher takes every day, and seeing the sort of freak accidents that happened all the time to Q this year (getting hit in the balls, concusion, etc.).

I hope Brad can get a job with the Padres or Dodgers or Angels or whatever. And he seems like the kind of guy who would make a good manager. He understands pitchers and was a poor hitter. Knowing Drayton's love for the Good-Ol'-Boy system, it wouldn't surprise me to see Ausmus as a bench coach in a few years.

The Other Way of Winning

With everything I said yesterday, one could get the impression that it's impossible for the Astros to win without enduring several losing seasons. That's not necessarily true.

It is possible to win via free agency, but it gets expensive quick, particularly now that our best farm-grown talent (Lance and Roy) are free agents themselves. But both are locked into long-term contracts with no trade clauses - these are essentially sunk costs.

So we have the basis to form a good team: A hitter on a HOF career path, another that's in the top 20 hitters in the country, and one of the best pitchers of his generation. We've got something here to work with.

If we were to sign Wigginton to another contract (and this might be dangerous; he's had a few decent seasons and now one great season) and we solidify and fine-tune the bullpen, we have only a few problem areas:

1) The starting rotation.
2) Shortstop
3) Catcher

Pitchers

Let's start with the rotation.

I think it's fair to assume that Roy will return to form next year. I've been looking at his numbers, and what jumps out at me is that there's only been one category in his "controllable factors" that has gotten significantly worse: Homers/9IP. (For those not familiar with statistical evaluation of pitchers beyond ERA, a quick explanation is needed. A guy named Voros McCraken found out in the mid-90s that pitchers' ERAs, WHIP, etc are essentially not correlated with one another from year to year. In other words, pitchers really can't DIRECTLY control whether something is a hit or an easy fly out. Further research has shown that there are a few things that pitchers can control: Walks, K's, Ground Ball / Fly Ball ratio, and how many homers they allow. Roy, for instance, strikes out a ton of dudes, doesn't walk many at all, mostly gives up easy ground balls, and usually doesn't allow many homers. That last category has increased, but should go down.)

Okay, so we assume Roy is back to being the Wizard next year. We still need at least one other great starting pitcher for this to work. Who will be available? Quick answer: a ton.

Here are the ones that jump out at me.

AJ Burnett is the AL leader in K's, now that Sabatthia has left for Milwaukee. He's played in Toronto since 2006, and he's made it clear that he'll be opting out of his contract at the end of the season. He obviously strikes out a lot of hitters, walks more than his fair share, and mostly gives up ground balls. He's Roy without the control. Or Nolan Ryan with more control. His current contract pays him some $13.2 million. He's from Arkansas, so he's kind of a local guy. Sorta. Not really.

The issues with Burnett are 1) his desired contract. The guy's probably going to want something even bigger than he has now (unless he's leaving simply because he hates Toronto or the Blue Jays organization), maybe with even more years. 2) The guy spends too much time on the DL. He gets injured a lot. 2) Might reduce the significance of 1), but he's going to want to get paid. His asking price is probably going to be anywhere between $10 and $14 million. Going from PECOTA projections, we could probably get away with a 3 or 4 year deal. Anything more is asking for trouble. But it also gives us trade options down the road.

You might remember Jon Garland as the guy who gave Ozzie Guillen a big kiss after the 2005 World Series. He's more of a control guy - he doesn't walk many hitters at all, but he also doesn't strike out many people. Pretty average GB/FB ratio. He's Roy without the good fastball, sinker, power curve, or daring-do. Currently, he's employed with the Angels on a $12 million/year contract. That's probably too much money for the guy, but we'll see what he gets in free agency.

John Lackey is, like Garland, currently an Angel. He's got a $9 million option for next year with a 0.5 million buyout clause. If he feels that he can get more on the open market (he can), then he'll probably leave. Strikes out a lot, walks few, mostly GBs (though not as extreme as Roy or Burnett). Again, he'll want the cash.

Sabatthia will probably end up with a much wealthier club than the Astros. He's gonna want some serious cash. He's young, he's really good, and he's worth it to whoever gets him. While it would be a major coup if the Good Guys land him, I doubt they'll pull that one off. The good news is that the offers to Sabatthia might lessen the offers for other great pitchers. This wouldn't be true in real life, but the economics of baseball are all fucked up.

Sheets is one of those guys whom Drayton loves - he's local (Louisiana), the guys in the clubhouse love him (Burnett doesn't really seem like he'd get on well with the kinda conservative vibe of the Stros clubhouse), and he gets injured a ton. He's the second coming of Andy Pettitte.

Sheets was abused like Roy in his early career. Roy was able to take it, but Sheets really wasn't. They're remarkably similar pitchers, and they'll command remarkably similar asking prices. I'd shy away from the guy unless we get another good starter. Using the bullpen correctly with Sheets would be key - we can't overwork the guy. But Coop is anything if not eager to use his pen, so that wouldn't be an issue.

Those are the big names, anyways. My dream rotation would look something like: (1) Oswalt (2) Burnett (3) Lackey. That's unlikely, though.

We also need to look at fourth starters. We might re-sign Wolf to a short deal, which might be worth it if he's only there to eat space. But our in-house options are really limited to Backe and Wandy. Wandy is having a career year, but he's really not that good. Moehler is going to be 39 next year. He's a good fifth starter but little else. He's gotten lucky so far.

Shortstop

This is a result of Tejada continuing the suck. He's a likable guy and a clubhouse leader. Particularly for our Latin American contingent.

But the problem is that Tejada continues to not be worth his contract. While other players, at 33, start to improve their old-player skills (more walks, more power), Tejada is turning in even worse numbers there. He's walked even less than last year. He's hit fewer homers, fewer doubles, and more dinky singles than two years ago. This is problematic because we're giving him $15 million a year to be average. If we were paying him only 2 or 3 or even 5 million, this wouldn't be an issue. As I've said in the past, the first step towards improving this team is in trading Tejada. Even if we have to pick up part of the salary, it might be worth it.

The problem is that there really aren't any quality offensive shortstops in free agency. I've said previously that Everett might be worth it, simply because he'd free up payroll for other acquisitions. In the end, we might just have to hope Tejada learns to not fucking swing at pitches off of the plate. Or continue to bat him in front of Lance and Carlos.

Catcher

To me, at least, the catcher position has been the most depressing part of the Astros' lineup for the last 15 years. Mitch Meluskey, who in 2000 was posting an EQA of .289 and hit 14 homers, was traded for Ausmus after he punched a teammate during BP. After that, he apparently slid into family problems and left the game.

But Meluskey was the best offensive catcher the Astros have ever had. Unfortunately, he was a dick and had terrible defense. So Ausmus got the position. Brad's main advantages are that he's pretty and can call a great game. He's a defensive catcher, which has its good points.

It looks like Q is going to get the starting role for the rest of the year, at least. Brad still catches Roy, but otherwise Q is clearly the starting catcher. Q has his assets: he's got a hell of an arm, he can take a beating, and he is cheap. On some level, that's all that you really need in a catcher.

But we REALLY need every fucking hit, double, homer, etc. that we can get. Every shred of offense is worth a great deal to this club. Q has displayed, in recent games, some power and greater ability. But I'll be inclined to think that's a fluke until the end of the season.

The problem is that there really aren't any Mike Piazzas out there. There isn't even a Bengie Molina out there. I think we're going to have to trade to get anything worthwhile in free agency. Hopefully, in two years, Jason Castro will have proven himself in the minors. In the meantime, though, the backstop position is just a black hole for outs in the lineup.

The Draft

The problem that the Astros are going to have with grabbing as many FA's as possible is the draft. This isn't as big a deal for a club with a losing record (our first round pick, but not the second, will be protected).

It is possible to get first round talent in the later rounds. It takes cash and a willingness to give in to some 21 year-old manchild prima dona's demands. If we spend in the draft - I'm talking about going toe-to-toe with the Red Sox in this - then we can quickly improve the system without having fire sales. But that's going to take 10 million a year, every year, for a few seasons.
Drayton would really have to commit to getting the best talent at every draft pick we have.

The way I see it, it's possible to drastically improve the Astros' pitching situation in December. But position players are another matter. Maybe this is what Ed Wade foresaw last Winter.

I don't think, however, that this team can be easily retooled for next season. We're competing against 29 other teams for the services of these free agents. The Yankees will be making the market for pitching very difficult, as will many other deep-pocketed teams. In order for this to work, Drayton will have to invest in pitchers like he did with Pettitte and Clemens in 2004.

I don't know if he's willing or even able to do that, though. We'll see in a few months.

Some more examples.

To reiterate what I've said in previous posts, the Astros can significantly improve the team by cutting payroll and reinvesting the difference in the farm system. I argued for reacquiring Everett in free agency next year, but there are other examples.

Second Base:
Again, let's say we let Loretta walk. This isn't unreasonable for a variety of reasons, but mostly because we're paying him $2.5 million and that's maybe a million too much. And let's say the Astros don't have anyone to call up. Who's going to be available next year?

There are only really three candidates: current Twins infielder Nick Punto, Cardinal Aaron Miles, and Oakland A Mark Ellis.

Of the three, Mark Ellis (.233/.320/.375) is currently being paid the most: $5 million. That was probably reached in arbitration. I assume that he'll probably leave Oakland next season - he doesn't seem like the type Beane would be willing to pay $5 million. He probably won't get the same contract on the open market.

Aaron Miles (.311/.349/.387) is being paid $1.4 million, which is right around what we want to pay him. He'll be 33 next year, and won't be particularly sought after. Provided the Cards don't offer him arbitration or something, he'll probably be on the market.

Nick Punto (.271/.330/.394) gets $2.4 million. We'll see what he gets in free agency, but I wouldn't say he'll get anything higher. We might be able to pick him up for cheap.

So let's say we're able to get one of these guys for an upper-limit price of $2 million (and I think we can get one of these guys for cheaper). And let's say we're able to send Matsui to another team. If we do those two things, we save $3.5 million. And we'll get a prospect or two. Probably nothing special, but it's better than overpaying Matsui and having no prospects.

Obviously, it would be better if we could call up a minor leaguer to do the job for next to nothing. So who do have in Round Rock and Corpus?

In Round Rock, our options are fairly limited. The only guys batting well there are Mark Saccomanno, JR House, and Ray Sadler. They play 3B, 1B, and OF, respectively. (What's with Saccomanno? The Astros have been saying he's the third baseman of the future, but he's 28 and they go out and grab Ty Wigginton.)

At Corpus Christi, we have a guy named Drew Sutton. Sutton is batting .311/.401/.507 this season with 17 homers and 33 doubles. We drafted him in 2004 out of Baylor, and the first link Google gives you about him is titled "CHECK OUT WHAT GOD IS DOING IN THE LIFE OF THIS ATHLETE." Good. He'll get along with Lance.

Now, the jump from AA to the MLB is a dangerous one. There's no guarantee that Sutton will do well against MLB pitching. But hopefully the Astros will use him in September as a call-up and evaluate him at MMPUS.

In any case, we're not really looking for him to be the next Ray Durham. We just want him to be below average to average - that's all we need. His main asset is that we can pay him a league-minimum salary and get away with it.

3rd Base:

I like Wiggy. He's the third-best hitter on the team. That's why we've got to trade him, if possible. I believe that he's got one more year with the team. If not, then offer him arbitration and see what we can get. Hopefully he'll sign with a big, well-off club that will give us their first round pick for him. Sweet.

On the free agency list, only Dallas McPherson is what we're looking for: OPS+ value of 90-100 and probably willing to be underpaid. He's batting .279/.384/.629 in AAA Albuquerque. That's a Florida affiliate, and I don't think the Marlins plan on dumping Jorge Cantu any time soon. So, provided we can get him on a decent contract for a few seasons (where if he improves we can trade him), he might be a good investment.

If we can't get him, then just promote Saccomano or something. Again, the goal is not to win but to save money on payroll. That's the key.

So that's the basic idea. Other than second and third base, the Astros really don't have much room to be getting rid of players. The big hitting positions of LF and 1B are tied up. Ausmus will probably be retiring or leaving next year, and it seems like Q will get the starting catcher job (this should tell everyone how fucked up the catcher position is with the Astros). Someone else will get called up to play backup. Pitching is similar, but I don't really want to go through all our shitty pitching prospects. It's depressing. If Paulino finally gets off the DL, we might save some cash. If not, I imagine everyone but Wolf will return.

Lessons: Save cash, invest, and don't be afraid to lose.

How to Fix Things

The Astros have made many mistakes in the last fifteen years. Those mistakes can largely be confined to four areas:

1) Overusing Free Agency
2) Failing to invest in the farm system
3) Making shitty trades.
4) Failing to properly project prospects.

All go hand in hand. The Astros probably wouldn't have needed to overpay Carlos Lee if they had pulled the trigger on the Adam Dunn trade in 2005. They probably wouldn't have needed to trade for Tejada if the system had produced a major league shortstop with actual hitting power. Julio Lugo and Adam Everett were the only two produced in a long while. Neither were that great. Lugo was awful defensively and pretty bad offensively. Adam Everett may have been the greatest defensive shortstop since Honus Wagner, but he certainly didn't have the Flying Dutchman's hitting skills.

The last is a case for greater statistical analysis. Johann Santana, Bobby Abreu, and Mitch Meluskey were all players the Astros should have held on to. Instead, they were lost to other teams or were traded away. (Meluskey is a spectacular example of Hunsicker's problems. Meluskey was a great offensive catcher in his one season with the major league club - he was an awful defensive one, however - but he had attitude issues. Biggio and Berkman preferred Ausmus, so Ausmus was traded for. Meluskey spiraled into personal problems and was out of the majors in a few seasons. Hunsicker should have told the Killer B's to shove it on this one.)

So what can be done?

The first is to cut payroll. One of the most striking sentences in Moneyball comes from future Toronto GM and (oddly enough) Adam Dunn hater JP Ricciardi. He's talking to the new head of the Blue Jays and the CEO of the Rogers Corporation, Paul Godfrey.

"He had a reason for everything," said Godfrey. "Of all the people I talked to, JP was the only one with a business plan and the only one who told me, 'You are spending too much money ... These people [the lineup] are all replaceable by people you've never heard of.'"

"'Look ... I can make you cheaper and better. It'll take a couple of months to make you cheaper an a couple of years to make you better, but you'll be a lot better.'"

That's the thing: the Astros can be cheaper pretty quick, and the difference can be invested in player development. Instead of spending $15,000,000 on Tejada's annual salary, we can spend a fraction of that and spend $13+ million on coaches, trainers, the draft, and facilities. In a few years, the Astros will be exponentially better than Tejada would ever have made us.

Let's take a look at the Astros' payroll.

A brief list of the larger contracts (the ones not under club control):

Tejada: 14.8 million
Berkman: 14.5 million
Lee: 12.5 million
Oswalt: 13 million
Valverde: 4.7 million
Matsui: 5.5 million
Wigginton: 4.35 million

some of the smaller, but still kinda big:
Blum: 1.1 million
Erstad: 1.0 million
Loretta: 2.75 million
Geary: 1.25 million
Brocail: 2.5 million

Okay. The thing that immediately jumps out at me is how little we're paying Blum, Erstad, and Loretta. Combined, they still cost less than Matsui.

As for the big contract guys:

Valverde is being paid 3-4 times what we would have paid Chad Qualls.
Tejada is being paid more than Berkman.
Matsui is being paid more than Wiggy.

What we need to consider is what, exactly, we have gained by the marginally increased production from Loretta to Matsui at 2B.

The goal of the team is to make it to the playoffs. They can't do that (normally) without around 90 wins. Moving from Loretta's 90 OPS+ to Matsui's 102 OPS+ isn't worth the extra cash.

The same is true with Valverde. I've said before that his only value will be in turning him into prospects. We can only do that by trading him.

Ultimately, we have to live with the "big three" contracts: Oswalt, Lee, and Berkman. All have no-trade clauses. Only Oswalt could be talked out of it.

But everyone else is only contributing marginally to the club's expected wins. All could be replaced with either cheap minor leaguers or cheap veterans (like Erstad and Blum and Loretta) with little change in the quality of the club.

Let's look at the position of SS, as an example. Let's say, in this coming offseason, Wade trades Tejada to a rich, stupid team. We get a couple prospects in return, which we shovel into Corpus Christi or Salem and let set for a year or two. In the meantime, we need a new shortstop. Let's say we let Loretta go (not a bad idea. 2.5 million is probably too much for his services).

Chris Gomez (.294/.341/.340) went to the Pirates last year for $1 million. That's pretty reasonable. If we were to grab Chris Gomez next year at last year's rate and trade Tejada, we'd save $13 million and probably lose about the same number of games.

So who's going to be an FA next year at SS? From MLB Trade Rumors (my comments are in italics):

Orlando Cabrera (34) - too much money
David Eckstein (34) - not as much money, but still too much
Rafael Furcal (31) - same
Nomar Garciaparra (35) - overrated, and will want lots of cash
Cesar Izturis (29) - ditto
Felipe Lopez (29) - maybe, but unlikely to accept what we want to pay him
Edgar Renteria (33) - $12MM club option for '09 with a $3MM buyout - uh no
Juan Uribe (30) - how many shortstops do the White Sox have? Might be cheap enough, but probably not
Omar Vizquel (42) - will probably be retiring, won't take what we'll offer
Adam Everett (32) - AH HA! Now we're talking!

Everett is the perfect choice! His shitty batting skills mean he'll be offered next to nothing by virtually everyone. We can pick him up for cheap, sell Tejada for prospects, and reinvest the savings. zomgMatt, you're a freakin genius!

Plus, everyone in the clubhouse loves him and we can recycle his old bobbleheads. This general managing stuff is easy!

That's just one example. We can do it with pitchers, too. Particularly those of the closer type. Anyone who can be called up from the minors should be, and we'll just deal with their shitty skills for a season or two.

That's the cost. Two seasons of pain. At the end, though, we'll have a better farm system and lower expectations. It's a win-win.

I know what you're thinking. Toronto isn't exactly tearing up the AL East, why should we follow their lead?

Because we have an owner willing to commit $130 million in payroll a year. Imagine what we can do if we have that and some sensible fucking management.

Where the Astros Went Wrong

We're nearing the end of the 2008 baseball season. In a few days, the MLB clubs will be expanding rosters and getting ready for either player evaluation or the playoffs. The Astros will be doing the former.

It is no secret that the Astros have something of a dearth of good talent. I don't think the farm is as barren as people make it out to be, but it's pretty fucking close. A lot brought us to this point, and I think it's important as fans to know why our favorite team is FUBAR.

Let's start with how the Astros got to be where they were from 1996 to 2005:

1993 to 2004

In 1993, Drayton McLane Jr. bought the Houston Astros. At the time (and now) he was compared to George Steinbrenner - extraordinarily wealthy and strong willed, Drayton McLane has owned the Astros throughout the club's most successful years.

There are lots of reasons for this, but the biggest was an institutional understanding of the importance of the farm system. For the Astros, this hinged on two sources of talent: the draft and Latin America.

Let's first focus on the draft. Up until the 2000s, the Collective Bargaining Agreement included a rule called "Draft, Follow, and Evaluate." DFE (also known simply as Draft and Follow) allowed teams to take an unprecedented number of draft picks. As always, big name prospects were taken at the beginning of the draft, but ever larger numbers of high school and junior college players were taken at the bottom of the draft.

Most teams were unable to exploit this rule. But a few did. The Astros and Yankees both took huge numbers of players in the draft - the vast majority of which the parent club had no intention of signing. Unlike today's draft, where players must sign by mid-August, DFE allowed clubs to sign a draftee up to one week before the next year's draft.

What this allowed clubs to do was stockpile talent for a year. No other teams could talk to the prospect, but the club that drafted the prospect could follow that player's progress for almost a year. A high school pick who floundered when confronted by college-level pitching could be left unsigned with no loss. A JuCo prospect who gained several inches and pounds over a few months and significantly improved his skills (like, say, Roy Oswalt) could be signed without needing to be drafted again.

This favored teams with expansive scouting corps. And the Astros invested in this department, allowing them to take large numbers of under-scouted talent. In the days before the internet made scouting much easier through readily available statistical data, this rule was critical to the Astros' success.

The Astros also excelled in Latin America. The Astros' Venezuelan Academy would take such talent as Richard Hidalgo, Johan Santana, Bobby Abreu, and Freddy Garcia and mold them into professional players. Venezuelan talent was relatively cheap thanks to the oil crash of the 1980s (you may remember it as what took the boom out of boomtown), and investment in the market was virtually no-risk. For the ridiculously low initial investment of $60,000, the Astros and scout Andres Reiner founded the first MLB operation in Venezuela.

Over the decade, the Astros would dominate the NL Central and routinely contend with the Atlanta Braves for the National League crown. This was aided by:

1) The Bagwell trade - possibly the most ridiculously lopsided trade since the Sox sold Babe Ruth. (See, that was the real "Curse" - organizational incompetance)
2) The success of the domestic farm system. This system would produce Craig Biggio, Lance Berkman, Roy Oswalt, Billy Wagner, Brad Lidge, and numerous other supporting players for the Astros organization.
3) Latin American talent - though rarely as it should have.

It is this last point that must be explained. The Astros rarely had the foresight to keep the Venezuelan talent it had. Hidalgo was the rare exception, and he was undoubtedly the least talented of the stars that would come out of the system. Bobby Abreu would be lost to the Devil Rays in the expansion draft (he would be promptly traded to the Phillies). Johan Santana would be lost in the Rule 5 draft. Freddy Garcia was the only one who actually was a "productive" loss (kind of like a sac bunt); we traded him and two other players for two months of Randy Johnson.

It's here that we might see the beginnings of the Astros' problems. McLane and the front office rarely wanted to really fund Reiner's operation (he would eventually leave for the Devil Rays organization). They didn't even want to cover his costs to sign Johann Santana. That lack of foresight would come back to bite the Astros in the ass, time after time.

The last blow to the Astros' fortunes would come in two parts: the loss of the DFE rule and the 2004 season.

The DFE system had many critics, namely players and teams with smaller regional scouting departments. Teams hated it because it allowed wiser teams to grab up potential 1st round talent in the 20th to 50th rounds by drafting a bunch of regional talent and then signing those that were any good to large contracts. Players hated it because they were frequently left in the dark about their potential employers' interest in them. They couldn't talk to scouts from other organizations - that would be interference. So the DFE was axed in the next Collective Bargaining Agreement. The Astros had lost their primary advantage in the draft system.

The 2004 season ended in a loss. The Cardinals had defeated the Astros in the NLCS (though only to go on to lose the World Series to the Red Sox). The Astros were losing two of their best sluggers: Jeff Kent was leaving for the Dodgers and Carlos Beltran was playing the Astros and Mets off of one another. Beltran had little interest in signing with the Astros and was largely using them to drive up the Mets' offering.

2004 to Present

The Astros had come off of one of their most successful seasons, but were quickly looking at the possibility of failure in the next. The failure of GM Gerry Hunsicker to sign Beltran to a long-term deal led McLane to fire him.

Now, I'm not Dickie Justice, or even John Royal over at the Houston Press. I don't think Hunsicker was a genius of a GM. But what this really led to was the expansion of McLane's role in the franchise.

A year earlier, McLane had convinced Deer Park HS grad and Yankee pitcher Andy Pettitte to sign with his hometown team. More spectacularly, he coaxed certain hall-of-famer, Houston native and legendary pitcher Roger Clemens to play for the Astros.

Clemens, at the tender age of 41, would post an ERA of 2.98 for 2004 (somewhat unbelievably, this was his worst year in Houston). Pettitte would spend most of 2004 on the DL.

In 2005, however, the Astros had three of the best pitchers in the game playing for them. Pettitte stayed healthy, keeping an ERA of 2.38 and going 17-9 in 33 starts. Young ace Roy Oswalt would have an ERA of 2.94. Clemens would post the absolutely ridiculous ERA of 1.87 (though he would go 13-8 in 32 starts). On any other ballclub, Pettitte and Oswalt would be the staff ace. On the 2005 Astros, they were 2nd and 3rd starters. And the bullpen was remarkably good in 2005. The one-two-three punch of Chad Qualls, Dan Wheeler, and Brad Lidge was a formidible base for the relief corps.

The problem for the Astros in 2005 was twofold. First, with the loss of Kent and Beltran, the only proven sluggers on the team were Jeff Bagwell and Lance Berkman. Second, Jeff Bagwell was injured. By the middle of the season, he would be unable to play first base. After undergoing surgery, he was available for pinch-hitting duty only. 3B Morgan Ensberg would step up, however, and would end up with an OPS+ of 148.

In the space of a few years, the Astros had gone from one of the best offensive clubs to one of the worst in contention. Jeff Bagwell, one of the finest right handed hitters of all time, was 37 and crippled by arthritis. Craig Biggio was reduced to league-average hitting. The rest of the team - Chris Burke, Mike Lamb, Brad Ausmus, Adam Everett, Wily Taveras, etc. were all below average, offensively. Only Jason Lane and Orlando Palmeiro (considered one of the best pinch hitters in the game) would post above league-average numbers, otherwise.

So the 2005 Astros were carried to the World Series on the strength of Lance Berkman, Morgan Ensberg, and the outstanding pitching staff. The presence of Pettitte and Clemens masked the larger problems for the club: declining offensive production and age.

That the 2005 club was spent by the time it got to the World Series was obvious to anybody looking. Two images stick out in my mind when thinking about the 2005 World Series. The first is Roger Clemens coming out of Game 1. He was a 42 year-old man, injured from years of pitching (and a healthy dose of steroid abuse).

The second was Jeff Bagwell as DH. Squatting in his familiar stance, looking all too much like hell with his playoff beard. I was struck by the fact that I had never seen the Astros without Bags. And here he was, playing what was probably going to be his last series, trying desperately to make his arthritic shoulders drive the bat with the speed it once had. He only got one hit in those 4 games. He was HBP, appropriately enough for the guy who probably introduced the idea of not getting out of the way of inside pitches to Biggio.

Now, the Astros could have easily avoided fielding only two players with OPS+ values above 110. The Cincinatti Reds offered power slugging manchild Adam Dunn to the Astros that summer. He would have vastly improved the Stros' offense at a fraction of the cost that would one day be the price, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

In 2006, the Astros would again make a run at the Wild Card. This time, the Astros would end the season only one game behind St. Louis in the NL Central. The Cardinals would go on to win the World Series over the Tigers.

But at the end of 2006, the Astros would lose Andy Pettitte when they apparantly failed to come even anywhere close to the offer from the Yankees. Pettitte was willing to take a significant pay cut to play in Houston, but the Astros were unwilling to pay the price. Roger Clemens would leave for the Yankees in the middle of 2007, as well.

That left the Astros in a precarious position. Only Roy Oswalt, Brad Lidge, and Lance Berkman were left from the stars that delivered Houston a penant. The Astros could compensate for a shitty offense with spectacular pitching, but they couldn't have that kind of pitching with only Roy Oswalt taking the mound.

Unfortunately, the Astros main solution was no answer to Pettitte and Clemens. The front office would trade for Jason Jennings and would hire Woody Williams. Jennings was 1) no good and 2) perpetually injured. Woody Williams was a) old, b) washed up, and c) never really any good. The result was more money spent on free agency, little gained, and many draft picks lost in compensation.

It didn't help that the in-house pitching staff was either injured or bad. Brandon Backe, who had distinguished himself in the lost-cause Game 4 of the World Series was out with Tommy John surgery for almost all of the year. Wandy Rodriguez, who had come in for Clemens during Game 2, posted one of the most ridiculous home/away splits in baseball. Matt Albers was bad, Chris Sampson was okay, and Brad Lidge was having issues.

The Astros also made a big mistake in free agency before the 07 season. Correctly identifying the absolutely horrendous situation in the Astros' lineup, the front office went after fat slugger Carlos Lee.

I'm no Lee hater. I like the guy. He's a great player. But we paid WAY too much for the guy. For roughly a million billion dollars, the Astros received a good hitter for many years. For the first four, he has a no-trade clause, not that anyone would want to take his ridiculous contract off of our hands.

Again, the result was a loss in money and draft picks. Aubrey Huff, whom the Astros had traded for earlier, was not offered arbitration in the offseason. Potential draft picks were lost (granted, it would have been one 1st round supplemental pick and one 2nd round pick from the Orioles, but picks are picks).

Meanwhile, the Astros had seemingly become a vehicle for the marketing of Craig Biggio's quest for 3000 hits. Winning was clearly no longer the top priority. What's more, the Astros had failed to sign any of their top draft picks. The farm system, depleted from years of use for trades and call ups, was virtually destroyed.

The Venezuelan operation had gotten significantly more difficult with the resignation of Reiner and the expansion of other clubs in the country. Recruitment there ground to a halt.

The chips would finally fall at the Jeff Bagwell jersey retirement ceremony. Fans booed manager Phil Garner and GM Tim Purpura. Before the end of the season, both were fired. In their place, the Astros promoted bench coach Cecil Cooper and hired disgraced Phormer Phillies GM Ed Wade to run the baseball side of things.

The State of Things

Ed Wade distinguished himself with a series of trades. Brad Lidge, at least to legions of idiot fans and the front office, seemed like broken goods. People sincerely believed that Lidge had been destroyed by Pujols' blast off of him in Game 5 of the 2005 NLCS.

Lidge was dealt to the Phillies for a few young players in the offseason. But the club needed a new closer, so Ed Wade sent a few more players to Arizona for Jose Valverde. We've already been through what I think of that trade (quick refresher: Qualls could do Valverde's job cheaper and better).

The crown jewel of the 2007 offseason trades was for Miguel Tejada, 2002 AL MVP. Within days of the trade, Tejada was named in the Mitchell report. By March, ESPN had revealed that Tejada was actually 2 years older than he had claimed when signing with the Oakland A's as a young prospect. Tejada had faced much-declined production during his final season with the Orioles, but I'm sure that was seen as a temporary off-year.

So the Astros, in the span of a few weeks, had become much older and much more expensive. Woody Williams would be cut during Spring Training, though that did not cancel the money owed to him. Free agent pitcher Shawn Chacon would be hired to fill the gap. Backe would come back from TJ surgery. Brian Moehler would be brought into the rotation.

The end result of all of this: years of lost draft picks, a vastly bloated payroll, a depleted minor league system, and a fanbase increasingly disgruntled with the state of the team.

So that's where the Astros are. And that's how we got here.

Later (I need a fucking drink) we'll discuss how to improve the situation.

On Luck and the '98 Astros

In Moneyball, Billy Beane says to Michael Lewis something to the effect that he has no control over the playoffs. And he's right - the playoffs are so short, and the amount of luck involved in baseball so large, that even the 1998 Devil Rays could beat the 1998 Yankees in a five game series. It's not a very fun notion - we want to think that the team that reaches the World Series is the best of the best, but sometimes (cough2006Cardinalscough) even pretty poor teams make it. And they win the championship, too.

In the wake of Biggio's jersey retirement, and the resulting shitfest that was the "discussion" of his hall-of-fameness, I began to notice a running trend: people were counting Biggio's lack of a WS ring against him. So I'd like to write about the time the Astros really got fucked over by fate - the 1998 NLDS.

The 1998 season produced the 1998 Yankees - the "best Yankees evar" to paraphrase that dumbass Giuliani. Most people probably remember 1998 for the race between McGwire and Sosa. The 1998 season also produced three 100 win teams - the Yankees, the Braves, and the Astros. By that time, of course, the Yankees and Braves were perennial visitors to the playoffs. The Astros had, since 1994, established themselves as the powerhouse of the NL Central, along with St. Louis. 1997 was the Astros' first playoff visit since the epic 1986 season, but had resulted in a sweep in the NLDS, courtesy of the Braves.

The next season, the Astros had one of the most powerful lineups they ever fielded. At first and second were, of course, Bagwell and Biggio. Bagwell was having something of an off year, "only" posting an OPS+ of 158. Biggio was having a great one, posting an OPS+ of 139. Moises Alou would display his pure hitting prowress: OPS+ of 157. Bill Spiers was even league-average that year. Ausmus had his third best season: OPS+ of 91. Guys like Richard Hidalgo rounded out the bench and lineup. I'd say it was the best lineup of hitters the Astros would field until 2004.

Oddly enough, for a team that many associate with outstanding pitching talent, the late 90s Astros had little of it. But we did have solid starters. Jose Lima had the worst ERA of the starters at 5.28 - he would be a year away from "Lima Time." Mike Hampton and Shane Reynolds would have ERAs of 3.36 and 3.51, respectively - slightly under the league average. Sean Bergman posted one of 3.72; again, slightly better than league average. The Astros had one shitty pitcher and three semi-good ones.

Until Johnson was traded to the Astros. Johnson was in his contract year with the Mariners, and had apparently been in something of a malaise for most of the season. But the Astros dealt John Halama (a player to be named later, he was the Astros' other shitty fifth starter in 1998), Carlos Guillen (still in the MLB with the Tigers), and Freddy Garcia (just came out of rehab and signed a deal with the Tigers). This was back when the Astros could afford to do this sort of thing with the farm system - Draft and Follow had proven to be something that the Astros were awesome at, and all of Venezuela was essentially the Astros' territory. We could afford to lose a Major League pitcher and two top prospects for a guy who we knew would only be in Houston for a few months.

So Johnson came to Houston and promptly posted a 1.28 ERA in his 11 starts. Had he done this in Seattle for anything close to the whole season, he probably would have won his second Cy Young that year. In any case, he still came in 7th in NL Cy Young voting that year. Oh yeah, and we had some dude named Wagner as our closer. So with four average starters, one awesome starter, and one of the best bullpen aces of all time, the Astros would roll towards the playoffs with Bagwell, Biggio, and Johnson leading the way.

The NLDS pitted the Cubs (who won the wild card) against the Atlanta Braves and the Padres against the Astros. In stark contrast to what will happen this year, with three good teams making the playoffs and one bad team showing up from the NL West, the 1998 season saw remarkable parity amongst the divisons. San Diego had won 98 games, Atlanta 105, and Houston 102. Chicago, San Francisco, and New York were locked in a three-way fight for the wild card. The Giants and Cubs would play each other in a tiebreaker to determine the wild card.

A lot of people picked the 98 Astros as the NL Pennant favorite. And they were probably right. What nobody accounted for was the sudden failure of the Astros hitters.

The simple fact was that Bagwell, Biggio, Alou and the rest were atrocious in the postseason that year. It shouldn't have been even close. Other than our friend Caminiti (who had finally gotten the drugs and drinking under control and was displaying his hitting talent at full force), Tony Gwynn, and Greg Vaughn (who was having an absolutely ridiculous year, hitting 50 homers and OPS+ at 150. The guy never had anything even CLOSE to that before or after), the Padres didn't have the hitting skills of the Astros. And they certainly didn't have the raw slugging ability.

Pitching was similar, as well. The Padres had two starters with better-than-average ERAs: Ace Kevin Brown and less-than-ace Andy Ashby. They featured one of the premier closers of his time and all-time saves leader Trevor Hoffman. But again, they didn't have the talent that Houston had. Johnson was better than Brown. Hampton was better than Ashby. Wagner was better than Hoffman. Bagwell was better than Caminiti, Alou was better than Vaughn, and Biggio was better than Gwynn.

But the Astros would be defeated 3-1 in the series. What the fuck happened?

Luck happened. Brown was hot, as was Johnson. But the Padres' hitters were hot, too, while the Astros' hitters simply weren't. A lot of people like to believe that it was the Astros' lack of left-handed hitting. I don't think that's the case. Left-hand right-hand crap only matters in extreme cases.

Well, maybe it was just the pitching. Maybe Bagwell and Biggio just got blown away by Brown.

But the problem with that is our data for their career stats against Brown. Bagwell had an .870 OPS against Brown, lifetime. He could handle Brown in other circumstances (interestingly, to me anyways, is that Bagwell's #1 Pitcher Faced was Maddux. And he posted pretty good numbers against Maddux, too. Bags didn't have a problem with good pitchers).

Biggio has a less pretty career line against Brown: .188/.308/.313. But that's pretty typical for Bidge. As Bill James and others have noted, Biggio had a very extreme good pitcher/bad pitcher split. He could still hit a good pitcher (again, Mad Dog was his #1 pitcher faced. Career .723 OPS. He was plunked twice), but not like how he could hit a bad one. I don't really feel like looking up the career lines of Alou or Bell against Brown right now, but I'm sure they're fairly similar.

It was just luck of the draw. From 1997 on, the Astros faced spectacular pitchers in the postseason. They faced the ridiculously good Braves' pitching corps year after year - the one including future Hall of Famers Maddux, Smoltz, and Glavine. They just didn't have the success they found in the regular season. Balls didn't fall in the right spots, pitches once called strikes were now called balls, their bats were just off by a few sixteenths of an inch. They just got unlucky.

That still leaves the "choking" explanation. I've always loved Choke City as a nickname for Houston (it's why I named the blog that, along with the Chacon-Wade incident). Houston has a fine history of choking - the 1993 Oilers come to mind, as do the 1986 Rockets, the Rockets from 2003 on, and plenty of other cases.

But people don't become big league ballplayers if they can't handle pressure. Bagwell was dealing with pitches whizzing past his head at 90+ MPH almost every day for six months. He could handle pressure. The only explanation that makes any sense is luck. And that shouldn't be held against the Stros or any other franchise.

We can wonder about "what if." What if the Astros had swept the Fightin' Fathers? We would have met up with the Atlanta Braves once again. That would have been truly epic, as always. I think that would have cemented the Astros-Braves rivalry then and there. Had the Stros won the NLCS, they would have faced the Yankees. And I think the Astros would have faced much better chances against the '98 Yankees than the '98 Padres did. We might have seen the Astros' first World Series victory in 1998, "only" 36 years after enfranchisement. It would have been a thing to behold.

As it is, we had to wait for our first postseason victory against the Braves until 2004. And I think everyone would agree that the 2005 encounter between the two teams, with Roger Clemens emerging from the bullpen as the Astros' last chance to put the game away as the greatest postseason game ever played - even greater than the 1986 NLCS Game 6.

But luck played a major factor in everything. The postseason is not a good way to determine the best team, but it is a dramatic one. And that's alright. We don't watch baseball as a lesson on probability (well, I do), we watch it for the story and drama and battle.

But the Astros still got fucked.

OH GODDAMN IT!

So, yeah, I just posted, but what the hell? This really fucking pisses me off really fucking bad.

EARL CAMPBELL NEVER PLAYED IN FUCKING TENNESSEE YOU DUMBASS FUCKING HICKS AND YANKEES! HE WAS A FUCKING OILER, NOT A GODDAMN BABY-EATING-SISTER-FUCKER!

Fuck ESPN, Bud Adams, and the state of Tennessee. I can't believe that the otherwise awesome Sam Houston came from that fucking place.

Management; On the NL West and Dunn's future

I'm a Houston (actually Galveston) native, but the first ballgame I ever saw was at Camden Yards. We lived in Baltimore for a couple years, and I guess I must have been about four years old. I don't remember much, and we moved back to Houston by the time I was five.

The Orioles have, over the last two decades, endured a long slide into oblivion. Ownership has destroyed the farm system, occasionally bloating the payroll in a vain attempt to gain ground against the Yankees and Sox. So I don't remember a time when the Orioles were ever really good. But I do know about those days.

I firmly believe that the best manager of all time was Earl Weaver. I don't think there is a question about it - the guy understood baseball in a way that was decades ahead of his time. People like to think that Billy Beane pioneered using good sense in the game, but Weaver did it before him, just as Branch Rickey did before Earl.

So tonight, I watched as Coop decided to intentionally walk Jason Kendell to load the bases and pitch to Sabatthia. This is a classic case of overmanagement. Last night, Ranger Josh Hamilton was afforded the honor of being one of the few hitters to be intentionally walked when the bases were already loaded. That kind of made sense, given the situation, and Wheeler got the next guy out for the Rays.

But tonight, Wolf was facing Jason Kendell, not Bonds or Hamilton. He was ordered to intentionally walk a guy who is not a very good hitter, so that he could face a fairly good hitter of a pitcher. I'd say that Kendell and Sabatthia are roughly equal in terms of hitting ability.

So Coop increased the number of expected runs in a situation for roughly no net gain in the chances of an out. And the Astros promptly got burned when Sabatthia swung at the first pitch, throwing a ground ball down the right field line. Wolf got really unlucky there. Had Blum been playing closer to the line, that wouldn't have happened. But whatever

Coop has done this sort of thing time and again. He gave everyone the green light to steal early in the year. There are, statistically, only three guys on the team who should be stealing: Bourn, Matsui, and (oddly enough) Berkman. That's it. But the result was a hell of a lot of outs generated on the basepaths. He doesn't seem to understand the value of Wigginton, overvalues Tejada, and has apparantly decided to bench Bourn for the rest of the season. I never really complained about Garner, though he made some idiotic decisions, but Coop really fucks up time and again. I don't blame him for tonight, because they were going up against a Cy Young candidate and had little chance, anyways, but he does this kind of shit all the time.

But his worse sin is bullpen management. The reason Brocail is sitting most of the time after the All-Star break is that he's in his 40's and is overused. Brocail was assigned the "8th inning guy" role, which meant that he was brought out way too many times. By the break, Brocail's pitches had no movement or velocity, and he was giving up leads over and over again.

Earl Weaver had his rules, briefly summed up as "Pitching, Defense, and the Three Run Homer." He said the most important part of the game was pitching, and the most important part of management was the bullpen. And he was right. Most of the things a manager can do on the field - order a guy to steal a base, signal a hit-and-run play, etc - really only hurt your chances to win. The only things that can help are in filling out the lineup card correctly, using the bench well, and distributing work throughout the bullpen. He can make sure that his best hitters are up against the right pitchers, and he can make sure that his pitching staff isn't overworked. Everything else is either people-management or idiotic crap.

Coop seems to understand use of the bench - he doesn't do too much with it, but he'll use bench players against specific pitchers if there's a favorable matchup. But he doesn't seem to get the bullpen. He's not been aided by a starting pitching staff that has been injured, bad, or both throughout much of the season, but he seems too beholden to the idea of pitching "roles." We'll see what he does next year. If the starters are improved in the offseason then he might not need to go to the bullpen as often. He might learn from his mistakes. We'll find out later.

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It looks like Greg Maddux is going to the Dodgers in the arms race between the D-Backs and Dodgers for supremacy in the NL West. It's kind of infuriating that two teams with similar records to the Astros are still in contention when Houston's almost certainly not going to make the playoffs. The Dodgers are clearly adopting a "Win NOW, dammit!" approach, what with Kent, Manny, and now Maddux all probably leaving or retiring at the end of the season. I don't think it's really the best decision, long-term, but I can see wanting to do it. It will be interesting to see if the D-Backs try to pick up another pitcher in the next few days. I don't think they need to, given that they have one of the best pitching staffs in the NL, but front-office types are pretty jumpy when it comes to stuff like this (see the Texeira for Kotsay trade). I don't know who I'd rather see in the playoffs. The Dodgers are obviously the poorer-run club, but it would be cool seeing Manny play in the NL playoffs. The D-Backs have better pitching, which probably will get them farther (see the Astros in 2005), and I think Dunn deserves to get to the playoffs. But he'll probably be going to a real contender next year - he's just too good not to, even if dumbasses like the Astros' front office (again, see 2005) and Dusty Baker don't see his value.

The problem Dunn might have is where he might fit. He's said he'd most like to play for Houston, but we already have one terrible left-fielder employed on a long-term contract. And Pence has no business being in center.

For the NL, I think the main candidates are the Giants, Dodgers, and Mets. The Dodgers will be losing Manny to Free Agency (I'd say it's good money to bet he'll go to the Mets), the Giants need a slugger like no other club in the big leagues, and the Mets have probably lost Moises Alou. I wouldn't be surprised if Alou retires at the end of the season. All of the teams have the money to pay him. Colorado might be an option, depending on what Holiday does.

For the AL, I'd say his best bet is the Tigers. I'm less familiar with the American League, so it's more difficult to say, but the Tigers have the cash and a lack of a slugging LF. And after Sheffield leaves, he can play DH, where he belongs. Some people seem to think the Yankees would want Manny, but I don't think so. Manny is 36 and in the middle of the "declining production" phase. That would be a pre-1996 move by the Yankees, and Cashman seems to understand the value of young players.

Dunn would be a better option for the Yankees, but I doubt they'll go for him. They don't really need another LF. They've got a DH in Giambi. And the Yankee fans would kill a consistent .230-.260 hitter like Dunn. If they hate the way A-Rod isn't "clutch," they'd fucking loathe the Big Donkey drawing a walk in the bottom of the 9th with RISP. Smart people would say, "Good job, Dunn - you didn't make an out and have increased the expected runs for the inning. Now Giambi or whoever the fuck is behind you will attempt to do the same." But these are baseball fans we're talking about, and Yankees fans at that.

Other than that, I don't really see a place for Dunn. I guess the D-Backs might try to get him to sign, but I doubt it. It just seems that the market for his skills is surprisingly limited. Great hitters rarely have that happen, but Dunn's skills are fairly under-appreciated. It seems like most teams that would want him either already have LF/DH locked up or don't have the cash or draft picks to be spending on the guy.