TRADE NEWS SONG: “We’re off to play for Houston – for twenty-five dollars a week!”
According to one mid-January source, MLB salaries for 2013 are up over what they were in 2012, but no thanks to the incredible shrinking Astros. Taking into account the most recent Jed Lowrie salary dump, the Astros now are somewhere in the $20 mil territory at the #30 and bottom-feeder spot in MLB payrolls while the next lowest club, the Miami Marlins even looks whale-humping huge at $45 mil. Of course, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ $113 mil for the #1 spot even edges #2, the New York Yankees, at $110 mil.
Check out the information on payrolls that’s available in this column by a writer named Jeff Passan. He wrote this piece in mid-January, 2013, before the Lowrie trade reduced Houston down into the mid-$20 mil range.
Am I nuts? – Or are Astros fans being asked to buy into the idea that paying nobody now is the way to go in making the club a big winner tomorrow? – If that’s true, friends, please tell me how that works? If we happen to have some rookie prospects who show that they truly are the stars of tomorrow, aren’t they going to want to be paid the big money too, someday? Or we supposed to try to keep “big money” out of the picture by never discussing it in their presence? Or what?
If money is what i takes to field a winner, and some of the clubs seem to think it is, why didn’t we just pay more money for a few more players that are capable of winning now? Is it simply impossible to maintain a respectable MLB club and rebuild the farm system at the same time? Apparently not.
Anyway, without major league ready players on the roster now, the season shapes up as little more than a 162-game tryout camp for rookies we pay on the cheap.
That slow-for-me growing realization is starting to take the edge away that I was starting to feel about the coming of the new baseball season in the American League. The only edge left may be this one: What will be the over/under number for most Astros losses during the 2013 season? 110? Or 115?
Houston, Baseball, & Other Musings.
The Pecan Park Eagle 