Opening Day 2013: Line ’em up – whomever they may be.
Had we not had the club sale and all the trades that totally erased this possibility, here is the aging, but still MLB quality starting lineup the Houston Astros could have put on the field for Opening Day 2013. I’m not suggesting that it’s either better or superior to the long-range interests of the club at this time because, when you look at the players’ ages for the upcoming season, only three men here are still in their 20’s. Chris Johnson will be 28 and both Matt Downs and Jed Lowrie will be 29 this year.
At any rate, here’s my Houston Astros 2013 Opening Day Lineup That Might have Been (by batting order, 2013 age, position, 2012 batting average, and 2012 team):
1) Michael Bourn (30), CF, .274, Atlanta Braves
2) Jeff Keppinger (33), 2B, .325, Tampa Bay Rays
3) Lance Berkman (37), 1B, .259, St. Louis Cardinals
4) Carlos Lee (37), DH, .264, Houston Astros/Miami Marlins
5) Chris Johnson (28), 3B, .281, Houston Astros/Arizona Diamondbacks
6) Hunter Pence (30), RF, .253, Philadelphia Phillies/San Francisco Giants
7) Matt Downs (29), LF, .202, Houston Astros
8) Humberto Quintero (33), C, .232, Kansas City Royals
9) Jed Lowrie (29), SS .244, Houston Astros
Starting Pitcher: Wandy Rodriguez (34) 12W, 13L, 3.76 ERA, Houston Astros/Pittsburgh Pirates
Some Thoughts on What’s Missing from the New Astros Plans for a Winning Culture in Houston …
Draw your own conclusions, now or over time. Is the new Astros leadership taking the ball club on a true course of rebuilding that will also convert the culture to a new constant state of winning by both mindset and action? And who’s to say the club hasn’t been there in earlier times. The Bill Virdon-led Astros clubs of 1979-81 were all about winning, as were the great Astros teams of manager Larry Dierker from 1997-99 and 2001, and Phil Garner’s boys of summer in 2005 even made it all the way to the World Series. They were all spawning cultures of winning. They just never made it to the “last club standing” level that we equate with winning in professional sports today.
I’m just clear as to this much. The restless search will continue until the club finally seizes lightning in a bottle and takes it all the way to a World Series victory for Houston. Then we will be ready to examine whether or not we have the kind of culture that exists in St. Louis. As I know them, and I’ve got quite a few good friends among the hard-core fans in Cardinal Nation, Cardinal fans are never presumptuous or arrogant about winning. Arrogance is for the ignorant only and real St. Louis fans are far from dumb when it comes to understanding what it means to live in a baseball winning culture.
Here’s the closest summary I can write about the winning baseball culture in St. Louis. It’s like a triangular investment of trust and respect (1) from the wonderful DeWitt family ownership toward their fans; (2) from the fans toward the Cardinal players; and (3) and from the Cardinal players on the field toward both their owners who pay them and the fans whose support makes salary payments possible. Nobody takes winning for granted in St. Louis, but then, nobody is really surprised when it happens either.
We’ve got some ground to cover in establishing that kind of triangular trust in Houston and it won’t happen until we win the big one – and it won’t happen until the new Astros ownership proves what the St. Louis ownership already understands, that we common fans are part of the baseball community too – and not just the local ticket market.
Canceling the winter baseball banquet by simply treating it as a non-event; authorizing the uglification of our ballpark for the sake of honoring corporate sponsors; and then refusing to dialogue with us common fans who object to these kinds of insults isn’t exactly an attitude that will ever lead to the establishment of a true winning culture in Houston.
To me, what appears to be a building dismissive attitude in the new Astros ownership toward the idea of including the little guy in their decisions to kill traditions and mutilate the ballpark’s architectural lines are a major hole in the hull of any plans they may have for building a winning culture.
That’s just how it looks to me and the saddest part is – the new ownership and their administration just doesn’t seem to get it.
Tags: astros missing boat on winning culture ingredients, the 2013 lineup that might have been
The Pecan Park Eagle 
February 15, 2013 at 5:59 am |
Okay, so since you didn’t bring back Oswalt, and since Lee would have probably retired, let’s craft a different 2013 Astros probable lineup leaving nothing out that couldn’t plausibly happen:
CF Bourn, 2B Altuve, 1B Wallace, RF Pence, SS Lowrie, DH Luke Scott/Keppinger, LF J. Martinez, 3B Johnson/Dominguez, C Castro
SP Wandy, Norris, Myers, Harrell, Lyles
RP Lopez, Veras, Wright, Fields, Cedeno, Cruz
Cost: $65-70 million W-L maybe 74-88. At least they’d be fun to watch and easy to root for.
Guys who would not be in the organization if this lineup were around – Singleton, Cosart, Santana, Melancon, Lee, Carter, Peacock, Pena, White, Clemens, Oberholtzer. You could argue we would not have lost enough games to get Correa either.
If we had not gone the fire sale route, this could very well be what we’d be looking at today.
February 17, 2013 at 8:51 pm |
Good description of the way Cardinal fans see their team – we want to always win but understand it doesn’t happen every year. Beats the heck out of being an arrogant Cubs fan – wow is that a hard one to understand.