Posts Tagged ‘2012 Houston Astros’

Astros’ Lucky # 5 Has Left the House

September 15, 2012

“What’s that? You say I can make the Astros’ starting rotation if I can last five innings and still post a 4.99 ERA? – Hey, bud, that sounds doable to me! Where do I sign?”

Following the Astros’ 6-4 rally from being down 0-4 to defeat the Phillies, 6-4, Thursday night at Minute Maid Park, SABR colleague Bill Gilbert wrote the following:

“The Astros reached the five run mark again last night and even tacked on an extra run in a comeback (from 0-4) win over the Phillies, 6-4.  It was the biggest offensive explosion since a 10-1 win over the Cubs on August 14.  A three-run home run by Matt Dominguez, his third this month, was again the big weapon.

“The game was played before an announced paid crowd of just over 13,000. which must be the season ticket base.  The crowd appeared to be much smaller.”

That win pulled the Astros back to .500 ball through 12 games n September – also sustaining the club’s September roll of never losing any game in which they scored a minimum of five runs. That skein also went through the window last night as the Phillies went out there and put a 12-6 bashing on the Astros that stopped the “lucky 5 runs” winning streak.

Any September 2012 finish near .500 for the month will be “Astros-Amazing” in its own right. The club is now at 6-7 for the month, but I’m looking for a fade from the even mark that happens fairly radically over the second half of September.

My greatest anticipation for this team? The 2012 Astros will finish the season before the season finishes them, but it’s going to be close. As Astros fans, our greatest hope for resurrection is down the road. Maybe a standing 3-5 years away until something happens to make us believe we are moving closer, not farther away from winning at all.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

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How Do the Astros Spend the Rest of 2012?

July 18, 2012

“You know what, Ernie? Let,s play two, just for fun!- It’s beginning to look like we don’t have to worry too much anymore about finishing dead last in 2012.”

As the Cubs and everybody else is noting, it appears that the worst teams on paper in the National League has now stepped forward (or stepped backward far enough to have been clearly identified in 2012 and it “ain’t” the boys from the north side of Chicago – even if those of us in Houston wouldn’t trade rosters or general managers with the Cubs for anything.

The question is not – how do the Astros keep from finishing last. but how do they make the best use of the 72 unplayed games they have left on their schedules for 2012? And maybe they are already doing it, but here’s what I see:

(1) Treat the rest of 2012 as the longest pre-spring training period for 2013 that they could give themselves. Short of auditioning players on an everyday basis for the new DH position we shall acquire with the Astros move to the American League next season, every other young player in the system should be auditioning for one of the 25 top roster spots.

(2) Move those veterans via trade, or “amnesty,” by the July 31 trading deadline. Get what they can for Wandy, Brett, and the other older guys and, by all means, bring up Wallace to see if he’s making the transition as a credible big league hitter he seems on the brink of becoming.

(3.) Give Maxwell the rest of the year to show the best side of his hitting. This guy is athletic with the kind of raw power that could turn him into a key offensive figure if can also cut down on his strikeouts. Maybe Mighty Max is our DH prospect?

(4) Find the “five guys, burgers and fries” who are young enough and effective enough to fly as the club’s starting 2013 rotation now. Even if the club changes some of the ingredients in the actual 2013 ST period, at least, go to camp with a list in mind that doesn’t include any of the guys who don’t figure in the team’s future.

(5) Work on why Altuve’s bat is slipping, After batting over .300 most of the year, he’s now fallen to .294 and looking like a guy who may even sink to .275-.280 by season’s end.

(6) Be on the lookout for a young arm with closer potential.

(7) Be patient with Brad Mills. Aside from some problems I have with his management of pitchers, he seems to handle the young guys really well and that’s going to be important. If the Astros need to evaluate Mills further, as I’m almost sure they will, let them evaluate the general opinion that he is a good manager of young players. That needs to be true – and not merely an out-of-earshot impression.

(8) That’s ti. The general question is: What are the best specific ways the Astros could use the rest of their 2012 schedule? – Pleas check in with a comment below.

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2012 Astros Are The New Houston Babies

April 9, 2012

2012 Astros Are The New Houston Babies

The 25 men on the roster for the Houston Astros on Opening Day 2012 are 27.3 years old in their average age. They aren’t exactly infants, but they are the closest thing we have in town in baseball garb that fits that description since our first professional club, the 1888 Houston Babies.

Subtract Gonzalez & Lee. Add Harrell & Downs. Equals a starting lineup averaging age 25.1.

On Opening Day, had the Astros started 28-year-old Matt Downs at 1st base instead of 35-year-old Carlos Lee, and pitched 26-year-old Lucas Harrell instead of 33-year-old Wandy Rodriquez, the average age of the starting lineup for the Houston Astros would have been 25.1  years.

Youth is no guarantee of a successful future, but there is no future without a group of talented youngsters on the roster and in the minor league pipeline to get a major league team headed back in the right direction. I think Ed Wade had started the ball rolling in 2010-11 with some of the moves he made, and I love what I’ve heard from new GM Jeff Luhnow, so far,, about his plans to combine traditional scouting with situational statistical evaluations for choosing those prospects for the club’s future. Statistics aren’t everything, but neither are they an abdication of critical decision-making away from baseball people into the hands of eggheaded math geeks who know nothing about the game. Sophisticated statistical analyses of how players perform, and how they are projected to perform in critical game situations, are nothing less than a potentially powerful enhancement to the job of  picking the best hands to build a franchise future around.

Knowledge of the game. Wisdom with people. Sensitivity to the intangibles of talent assessment. Better measurement of those items that determine future success. Bless the franchise that can handle them all under one united roof – for they shall someday be called champions of the baseball world.

While we’re waiting, I like what I’ve seen so far in the new Houston Babies, the 2012 Houston Astros. I ‘m expecting them to finish about 72-90 this year, but I like their chances of getting better, if the things we are hearing in the early stages of the new Crane Era continue to grow and get results on the young player development.

It also won’t break any hearts in Houston this year either if veterans Wandy Rodriguez, Brett Myers, and Carlos Lee play well enough to give some wings to their contract floatations elsewhere to 2012 playoff competitors before the summer trading deadline.

Youth is the thing in Houston. For now. And, in a way, forever. Carlos Lee. has convinced a lot of people, I hope. Older guys sitting on fat multi-year contracts is no way to build or sustain the successful future of an MLB franchise.

Go. Astros. Go Babies.

 

 

 

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