The Pecan Park Eagle

Hope this isn’t the scene on Opening Day 2013.

Ready or not, here they come. The 2012 Houston Astros ae about to limp away with a second straight 100 game plus losing season on their way to the American League West in 2013 with even slimmer hope of near term success against even tougher in-house competition. Next year the “Stros will be the fifth club in a five team division that already contains three clubs with winning records and one that’s light years closer than our local heroes.

Assuming we stay on path with the generally agreed upon course of returning to contention in three to five seasons, 2013 represents Year II of that effort and one with little prospect of a surprise early return to the playoffs ahead of schedule.

Bill Gilbert’s August 2012 report noted yesterday that the Astros are last in team batting and pitching, a finding that should surprise no one since our roster most probably uses more AA and AAA level players than most at the major league level. Some of thee players may progress on their own sufficiently to improve on the team’s record next season, but I seriously doubt they will, given the fact the team is headed for a tougher division in a new league and one with slightly different lineup rules and requirements due to the DH condition.

So, what do the Astros do? (1) Find a DH and just grin and bear it until home-bred stars blossom in the ascribed 3-5 season timeline; or (2) try to acquire some low-middle level help that is affordable through minor trades or free agency to  help fill in the gaps while we wait for this big performance egg on the farm to properly hatch. – Since it’s kind of hard to ask people to come see another 81-game home stand in 2013 with little more hope than we saw at MMP in July or August of this year, I’m betting on the latter option as our best bet and short-term hope.

My shot in the dark guess is that we will fall short of getting anywhere close to significantly improving the club on the cheap, we might have to settle for this much: 3 starting pitchers with ERA’s around 4.00 for five innings of work; 3 relievers who are capable of holding a lead over two innings of wrk: and 1 closer who cn get the job done in the few opportunities he is presented.

Next I’d like to see a shortstop who can complement Altuve  as a fielder and hitter.  Is anyone in the farm pipeline even close to being ready? If not, leave Tyler Greene at SS and find a 3rd baseman who does a better job of filling the bill.

Of course, a DH – one who hits for power would be great.

And 2 more hitters who can hit for power and better averages.

Is this too much to ask for by 2013? – Probably.

By Bill Gilbert, Guest Columnist, Pecan Park Eagle, Labor Day, 2012.

Bill Gilbert, SABR
Roger Hornsby Chapter

I was in Houston to take in the Astros last two games in August against the division leading Giants and Reds.  The games were a good representation of the way things have gone this season and illustrated where the Astros stand in comparison with the league’s elite teams, losing the games 6-2 and 9-4 to finish the month with a 6 game losing streak.  The Giants game drew a crowd of 12,835 (paid), the lowest ever at Minute Maid Park which prompted a comment from a TV sportscaster that it was so quiet, you could hear babies cry.

The Astros completed the month of August with a record of 5-22, a modest but disappointing improvement over the July record of 3-24.  The two-month record of 8-46 has to be one of the worst in baseball’s long history.

Normally when a team struggles, the chief fault can usually be placed on either the pitching or hitting.  In the Astros case, it is both.  The Astros rank near the bottom of the major leagues in virtually every important pitching and hitting category.  Among National League teams, only the Rockies (5.22) have a higher ERA than the Astros (4.76).  On the offensive side, the Astros rank last in the National League in runs per game (3.49), batting average (.238) and on base percentage + slugging average (OPS) (.675).  August was even worse with 2.78 runs per game, a batting average of .224 and an OPS of .629.

When the rebuilding effort reached full steam in July with the trade of several veteran players, it was expected that the remaining team would have difficulty competing.  However, it was not expected to be this bad.  The highlight of the month was an improbable two game winning streak against the Brewers on August 10-11with two walk-off wins, their first of the season.  One of the wins was in extra innings, the first time that the team had scored a run in 12 extra-inning games.

The Astros were left with a team composed primarily of young players with limited experience.  The starting pitchers were very inconsistent, winning only 3 games in August (two by staff ace Lucas Harrell) and the team was left without a pitcher with closing experience after the trades of Brett Myers and Brandon Lyon.  The Astros converted only 2 of 5 save opportunities in August, both by Wilton Lopez.

On the offensive side, there were few bright spots in August.  Brett Wallace and Tyler Greene led the club with 4 home runs and Jason Castro batted .305.  Jose Altuve continues to lead the team in hitting (.294) and batted .285 in August.  Third baseman, Matt Dominguez, obtained in the Carlos Lee trade, came on strong after being promoted late in the month with a triple, double and single in his first game and a home run in his second game.

Manager Brad Mills was replaced in August by Tony DeFrancesco on an interim basis. The month of September should see the debut of some of the prospects obtained in trades and some serious playing time for players from the minor leagues as Astro management continues to assess the readiness of the younger players to compete in the major leagues in 2013.

Bill Gilbert

9/2/12

The “What If” standings of the 2012 American League West, of course, are really nothing more than the inclusion of the Houston Astros as though they were already there as members of their 2013 destination spot in big league baseball, but that small playfulness doesn’t make the picture any prettier.

On this morning of August 29th, the real plight of the 2012 Astros in the NL Central finds them in 6th, or last place, a full 38 games behind the first place Cincinnati Reds and 9.5 games behind the fifth place Chicago Cubs. In the fictional AL West, the fifth and last place Astros are “only” 37 games behind the first place Texas Rangers, but they are a gaping 22.5 games back of the fourth place Seattle Mariners, a full 14 deficit games worse than their real 20112 downside plight with the Cubs.

Worse view: Whereas, two of the clubs ahead of Houston in the 2012 NL Central are playing sub-.500 ball only Seattle is below the .500 ledger in the actual AL West. Texas, Oakland, and the LA Angels all are on the top side of .500 ball with clubs that should be strongly competitive for years if their core rosters hold.

So where does this broad ban look at the next few years in the AL West leave the Astros? Of course, it leaves them right where they are in reality – down in the valley of the performance curve on the long trek back to winning with a farm system that keeps new talent pumping into major league readiness as they go. And, as they improve, it doesn’t hurt to keep in mind that the Astros are moving into the company of some other clubs who shall also be doing their best to keep improving and stay competitive – and in a DH version of baseball that is a little more familiar territory to them than it will be to the new “American League Astros of 2013.”

Whatever. Whenever. However. And with whomever. It will be nice to see the Astros get back to a time in the future in which winning is again an expectation – and not an aberration.

That's Chris Snyder of the Astros taking a called strike against the Braves in the recent home stand. We can't really blame Snyder for the growing club tendency to fail in the clutch. It just happened to be the only recent photo I have of an Astro taking another pitch with his bat on his shoulder.

The astute Zachary Levine of the Houston Chronicle beat me to the punch this morning in his coverage of the rubber game loss the Houston Astros just absorbed in the final game of the all three “5-4” score games they played over the weekend in Little Havana against the Miami Marlins. I had just been offering to former Astros batting coach and new erstwhile Sugar Land Skeeters marketing magician Deacon Jones at lunch on Saturday that I felt the current young Astros showed two major problems coming out of the gate: (1) On offense, they lacked good clutch or situational hitting – and that includes everything from the pile of LOB totals they are building to the times in late innings in close games that they start things in an inning with a one pitch out. (2) On defense (Games One and Six of the first home stand confirm), the Astros suddenly turn from good play carriage to rookie pumpkin rot and start making dumb errors of execution all over the field. In a flash, they seem to have the ability to go from very competent to guys who look as though they had never seen a baseball until this latest one was hit to them.

Deacon Jones agreed with me to the point of jumping out of his chair and giving me a great big smile with his knuckle hand follow-up contact with my own receptive fist. (I gotta tell you – I didn’t mind getting the Deacon’s approval for a baseball comment. I didn’t mind it at all.)

Then came Sunday and two more exclamation points on the offensive failure side get posted in colors that would stand out, even  in the garish splash of tropical juice sights that are splashed all over the new Marlins Park in Miami. – Jordan Schafer fanned with the bases loaded in the 6th inning to kill the Astros’ chances of expanding a 3-2 lead. Then, in the 8th, with Houston now up by 4-2, shortstop Jed Lowrie also struck out to retire the side and kill the club’s last scoring “op” of the day. The Marlins then took over the game on a tying two-run shot to deepest center field by Hanley Ramirez in the bottom of the 8th – and then won it. 5-4, on a bases-loaded, extra-long single by Jose Reyes in the bottom of the 11th.

As Levine of the Chronicle so adroitly points out, this was the 11th time in the 9 games of the 2012 season now played that the Astros have loaded the bases and failed to get a single run across as the result of their work. As Deacon Jones points out, this sort of thing doesn’t often happen to clubs like the New York Yankees because those teams invariably have a guy like Derek Jeter in the house somewhere in their lineup. And guys like Jeter don’t leave all bases loaded situations fruitless on the run production slot in the scoreboard.

For now, at least, the young Astros have shown that they can hang around until the finish. They just can;t harvest what they plant. And they don’t have a harvesting crew chief named Derek Jeter.

For the heck of it, here are the up-to-date fact and fiction standings for 2012. The fact group is simply the Astros’ actual position in the current National League Central. The fiction batch is also the Astros’ current record, but placed where they would be in 2012 had they already moved to the American League West.

The FACT & FICTION HOUSTON ASTROS STANDINGS THROUGH ALL GAMES OF 04/15/12: