The Pecan Park Eagle

Had it not been for former owner John McMullen’s miserly 1988 mind freeze, Nolan Ryan was well on his way to going into the Hall of Fame as a Houston Astro.

Every club loses a few players that come back to bite them later every once in a while. Those are not the guys we are looking at today. The guys on this table are the ones the Astros lost to poor trading, owner bungling, or agent tenacity and the availability of direct and indirect advertising endorsement money in the big market baseball pastures of New York and Los Angeles.

Those are the one that sting forever – or so it seem.

Granted, this is my list – and it is truly the first edition of any listings along these lines I’ve ever attempted. Other whole franchise history – or otherwise emotionally-connected ardent researchers – might surely do such a table a little differently by expansion or contraction – but I still think there are a handful of names that would appear on all really thoughtful lists – and maybe that’s the true list of “the guys that got away” – by hook or crook – to the vagaries of bum dealing, bruised ego, and the color of money.

First of all, let’s look at the full list.

The Pecan Park Eagle Original List of

Houston Astros That Got Away:

* “Carlos Beltran Got Back In Time In 2017 To Help The Houston Astros Win Their First World Series Championship.”

Now let’s take a closer look, top to bottom, and narrow it down where plausible. Players making our final cut will have a list number preceding their names. The number simply means they are on our final cut list. It carries no weight as to their importance in the comparative scheme of things. We’ll save that judgment for our rank order conclusion – again in the spirit that we may all disagree on this phase, even if 99% of us agree that these remaining few are our true “Astros That Saddened US all When They Got Away.”

1) Mike Cuellar. The Astros lost Mike Cuellar in a multiple player deal with the Orioles on December 4, 1968 that was mainly a “Pitcher Cuellar for first baseman Curt Blefary deal.” In short, Blrfary failed miserably while Cuellar went on to four 20+ win seasons for the O’s, two 18 win years, and one for 14 in the next seasons at Baltimore. – Ouch! Yes, Cuellar makes the final list. He was something at Houston prior to the deal. He was really something special for the O’s once he back east.

Curt Schilling. Schilling was a young nobody when Baltimore threw him into the pot of a big deal for Glenn Davis of the Astros on January 10, 1991. Reaching Houston with a 1-6 career record, the uncreative Astros used him as a reliever in 56 games in 1991 and he finished the year at 3-5 with an ERA of 3.81. The following year, on April 2, 1992, the Astros traded Schilling to the Phillies for Jason Grimsley. The Phillies used Schilling as a starter in 26 of his 42 games and Curt was to the races with a 14-11 mark and a 2.35 ERA. By career’s end, he would have 216 career wins and a few moments of blushing greatness –  a man whose talents could not be sniffed out by the talent appraisers and teachers in Houston during his brief stay. – Schilling didn’t really get away from the Astros. Those in charge never had him in a teachable situation.

2) Nolan Ryan. It still hurts bad. Following the 1988 season, then Astros owner John McMullen thought that Nolan Ryan should take a pay cut on his new contract. – WOW! – How unbrilliant could the man have been to the market value of Nolan Ryan to Houston fans and everything that one day would be leading up to his induction into the Hall of Fame? Ryan already had 273 wins and all of those appetizing gates ahead of him for the games he had left to get there. He was the all-time strikeout leader from Alvin, Texas – with five no-hitters on his record – and the last one coming as an Astro – plus, he was still a mighty big cog in the club’s drive for a championship – and the owner wants him to take a pay cut because he’s getting old? And how about the fan imagery of Nolan going into the HOF as the FIRST Houston Astro to be honored?

Forget about it.

You know the rest. Ryan signs with the Rangers. Picks up a grand total of 324 wins. Pads his career K stats # to 5,714. Adds to more no-hitters fora total of 7 no-no’s by his retirement – and then – THEN (Oh, Holy Mother of Al Mothers) – he goes into the Hall of Fame as a freakin’ Texas Ranger!

I hate stupidity. And this subject reeks of it.

Would you like hear my pick now for the biggest one that got away. – OK, I’ll hold back. Suspense is good.

Darryl Kile. Not sure what happened here. Sometimes it is simply time for a player to move on – and – even if the club could have used him during those years he was being productive elsewhere, Kile feels more like one of those “wasn’t meant to be” cases.

3) Billy Wagner. At the end of the 2003 season, Billy Wagner was publicly critical of owner Drayton McLane for not doing more to help the Astros’ drive for the playoffs. As a possible result, Wagner was traded away to Philadelphia with a lot of gas left in his closer tank, starting with the 2004 season.

Brad Lidge. Four years after Wagner, prior to the 2008 season, Brad Lidge became the second Astros closer traded to the Phillies in that short space in time. In Lidge’s case, he seemed to need the change of scenery from the place where he came down with a bad case of Pujolsitis in 2005. Some players find healing from a trade. Some teams find the start of healing in the departure of a traumatized player – even if he is a nice guy like Brad Lidge.

4) Rusty Staub. Lost to the Astros due to that stupidly initiated and politically amended for the sake of Montreal and Le Grand Orange, the Staub deal serves as one of the best examples of how unchecked power by the commissioner gets things done – and in ways that do not prevent the particular abuser from being inducted into the Hall of Fame later – and also by the same smiling idiots who stand by loyally in ready service to this kind of mindless numbskullery.

5) Joe Morgan. Along with the Staub deal, the other most famous Spec Richardson trade. In this case, another man who could have gone into the Hall of Fame as an Astro, Joe Morgan, gets to go into the Cooperstown shrine as a Cincinnati Red.

Jimmy Wynn. When Jimmy Wynn moved to the Dodgers in 1974, it was Jimmy’s big gain and the Astros big loss. Wynn got to play for a great manager, Walt Alston. He got to have a great season, batting .271 with 32 homers and 108 RBI for the NL pennant winning LA Dodgers and a chance to homer in the World Series. Jimmy was near the end of his career and the trade opened the door an opportunity that never would have come with the Astros of that period.

Carlos Beltran. Carlos Beltran played like a grounded baseball god during the short-time he played for the Astros during the 2004 NL Playoffs. Then, he and his agent, Scott Boras, took the crazy big money and moved to New York and the Mets in 2005 before going through several other clubs over the years before returning to the Astros to become a big part of our first World Series Championship in Houston in 2017.

We never lost Carlos Beltran in 2005 because we never had him. But we found him – because he came back to us in 2017.

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Here’s my final version of the list, in order of their importance to me:

The Pecan Park Eagle Rank Order List of

Houston Astros That Got Away:

1) Nolan Ryan

2) Joe Morgan

3) Mike Cuellar

4) Rusty Staub

5) Billy Wagner

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My thanks to Fred Soland for suggesting this topic. I had fun with it.

– Bill McCurdy

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Tags: Astros That Got Away

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