The Pecan Park Eagle

Houston Baseball Dinner Picks Michael Bourn as 2009 Astros MVP!

The 2010 Houston Baseball Dinner at the downtown Hilton near Discovery Green came off as scheduled last night, Thursday, Jannuary 21st. The winter banquet that normally lights the hot stove fire on Houston’s hope for the coming baseball season worked its usual magic before a crowd of over 1,000, picking several Astros and a few others for post and pre season honors.

Michael Bourn was chosen by the Houston Chapter of the Baseball Writers of America as the 2009 Most Valuable Astro Player. Bourn had a breakout season in 2009, hitting .285 with a .354 one-base percentage and a National League leading total of 61 stolen bases, a figure that fell only four shy of the club record. Michael hit .353 with runners in scoring position and he led the National League in in both infield hits and bunt hits. He also ranked second in the league with 12 triples. Defensively, Bourn also became  the first Astro outfielder in 33 years to win a Gold Glove for fielding excellence.

Wandy Rodriguez Was the Astro Ace in 2009.

Wandy Rodriguez was named ast the 2009 Astro Pitcher of the Year. Wandy’s 14-12 record came with a 3.09 ERA, 9th best in the National League. His 193 strikeouts and 205 innings pitched placed him 8th in the NL, and he was 7th i the league with 33 starts. His 2009 home ERA was a remarkable 2.05. Wandy’s 4-0 record and 0.75 ERA last July also earned him Pitcher of te Month honors for that time frame.

Minute Maid Park View from Banquet Site: January 21, 2010.

Jeff Fulcino won the Astro Roookie of the Year award for 2009. Fulcino posted an all relief record of 6-4 with a 3.40 ERA. He recorded 71 strikeouts in his 82 innings and 61 game appearances, holding right-handed batters to a .209 batting average.

Pitcher Brian Moehler was the recipient of the Darryl Kile Award as the player who best exemplified victory over hard times and commitment to the team above personal gain.

Outfielder Adam Dunn of the Washington Nationals won the 2009 Houston Area Major League Player of the Year Award. Dunn cranked out 38 home runs and posted 105 RBI in 2009, while also becoming only the 123rd player in big league history to hit 300 homers over his career. Dunn now ranks 106th on the all-time home run total list.

First baseman Lance Berkman took the 2009 Allen Russell Award for Distinguished Achievement, Lance is a five-time All Star who ranks 12th among active players for highest career batting average (.303), 5th among active players in on-base percentage, 12th among players in slugging percentage (.561) and 7th among active players in on-base plus slugging percentage (.983).

Former sports writer and Houston Baseball Dinner Co-Founder Ivy McLemore took the Fred Hartman Award for Long and Meritorious Service to the community.

Anthony Rendon of Rice was named as the Pre-Season 2010 College Player of the Year; Coach Jim Long of the Brenham Cubs was tabbed as the 2009 Houston Area High School Coach of the Year; and sixteen high school players were chosen as members of the 2010 Houston Area Pre-Season High School All Star Team. These high school baseball stars of the present and future included: Nick Bergmann, Memorial; Krey Bratsen, Bryan; John Cialone, St. John’s; Stefan Crichton, Cinco Ranch; Dave DeKerlegand, Pearland; Jordan Jolly, Fort Bend Elskins; Jared Lakind, Cypress Woods; Cody Perkins, Kingwood; Kendrick Perkins, LaPorte; Kevin Semien, Atascosita; Alex Silver, Bellaire; John Simms, College Park; Jameson Taillon; Trevor Teykl, Fort Bend Kempner; Erich Weiss, Brenham; and Jake Wise, Cypress Falls.

Astros General Manager Ed Wade and Field Manager Brad Mills capped the evening with some “hope springs eternal” talk about the coming new season and their 2010 roster of upside-bearing younger players. MVP Michael Bourn serves well as the poster boy for more team speed and positive change on offense and defense. How many games the 2009 Astros can actually win with their reconstructed pitching staff and roster of new starters at catcher, short, and third remains to be seen. The outfield is 67% fast and furious and 33% slow and plodding for the second year in a row. We’ll see how that string plays again too.

You had to be a deep blue baseball fan to enjoy the Houston Baseball Dinner, but all of us were. And now we’re chomping at the bit for spring training to start over  in Florida.

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the annual dinners started by Allen and Jo Russell to honor local baseball accomplishments and other community achievements by baseball people. Former Houston Buffs President Allen Russell passed away in January 1996, but his widow, Jo Russell, has done a beautiful job of making sure this torch keeps passing forward to the younger generations that make up the grand community of loyal and knowledgeable baseball fans in Houston.

Thanks, Jo Russell, for another job well done!

Have a nice weekend, everybody!

BRAD MILLS, HOUSTON ASTROS MANAGER, 2010.

Brad Mills was born on January 19, 1957 in Exeter, California. He played college baseball as a 6’0″, 195 lb. BL/TR infielder for the University of Arizona, from where he was then selected by the Minnesota Twins in the 16th round of the 1977 draft. He didn’t sign with the Twins and was later taken again, this time  in the 17th round by the Montreal Expos, in the 1979 amateur player draft.

In a five-season minor league career as a third baseman (1979-86), Brad Mills hit  .287 with 37 home runs. He marked his best year with the AAA 1981 Denver Bears, where he batted .314 with 12 HR. It was the only time he ever posted a plus .300 average and double digit homer figures over the course of a full season.

In limited major league service with the Montreal Expose over four seasons (1980-83), Mills batted .256 career with only a single home run.

Brad Mills was traded by the Expos to the Astros on July 4, 1984 for outfielder Scott Loucks, but he never saw MLB service in Houston. Moving over from Indianapolis to Tucson, the Astros’ AAA farm team in 1984, Mills’ offensive production dropped remarkably. He played another unproductive year for Tucson in 1985 and then finished his active career playing with Iowa in the Cubs’ farm system in 1986.

Brad Mills began his five-season (1987-90, 2002) minor league managing career in the Cubs farm system the following season. He didn’t set the  woods on fire in those five years, but he did finish with a winning record of 334 wins, 296 losses, and a .530 plus side winning percentage.

From there, Brad Mills has built a quiet, but glowing reputation and record as the bench coach of Terry Francona, first at Philadelphia, and since 2004 through 2009 at Boston. He was the man who helped Terry Francona lead the Boston Red Sox through the end of the Curse of the Bambino with two World Series victories in 2004 and 2006. He now comes to Houston with highest praise from Francona as an organizer and communicator.

Let’s hope that Mssrs. McLane, Smith, and Wade have just captured lightning in a bottle through the hiring of Brad Mills as new manager of the Houston Astros.

While we’re hard at hoping, let’s also try to hold the reins on our expectations that Brad Mills, or any other manager, could or will be able to fast-track the Astros to a pennant next year in spite of the talent depletion reality that now exists. Mills will have his hands full building a relationship of trust that will empower him to lead. It will remain up to McLane & Company to resolve the other, far-reaching issues.

Drayton McLane was quoted in this morning’s Houston Chronicle as saying, “We need to be where the Phillies are.” Unless I miss my guess, I’m counting fourteen other National League clubs who would probably offer the same sentiment. The difference-maker between those who get there and those who don’t simply reduces to these steps:

1. Those who really want to be champions carefully study what champions do;
2. Then they have to do some serious gut-checking: Do we have the will, the financial resources, and the administrative people in place we shall need to get the job done with a plan for success that will work for us in our town?
3. Is a club willing  to commit to an overt plan for action without cutting corners on what is essential to long-term local success?
4. And finally, if all these steps can be answered affirmatively, is a club willing, right now, to step forward forthrightly and “just do it.”

We fans can be terribly patient when we believe that a plan is in place to really deliver us to a World Series victory. In my book, hiring Brad Mills is a step in the right direction. Now let’s take the Phillies and Cardinals championship books and run with them into a plan that fits Houston.

A plan for similar success in Houston couldn’t look that that different. Could it?

BRAD MILLS: FRESH EYE ON AGING TEAM CULTURE.

When the Houston Astros announced yesterday that Brad Mills would be the new field manager of the club in 2010, I was more than OK with it. I would have been all right with either Phil Garner or Dave Clark too, but both of those guys, especially Garner, were insiders to the organization and may have suffered already from one condition that the new manager is going to have to deal with next season, one way or another. It might have been a lot harder for Phil Garner, whom many of the current players already know well from his very recent tenure as the most vertically successful manager in Astros history. Dave Clark may have had a better shot at it, but even Dave has already suffered from being the interim manager for what, eighteen games at the tail end of this past awful 2008 season? It wasn’t the kind of formula for imbuing a man with much authority on the near future screen and scheme of things.

The “it” factor here is the influence of certain key veterans upon the rest of the team as producers and clubhouse politicians. I’m talking here about the impact of Lance Berkman, Carlos Lee, and Roy Oswalt. What each of these stars do, and fail to do, matters greatly. These guys can lead the younger players to get behind a manager from the start – or they can just as easily, no matter how subtly they do it, send out a message of disrespect for a manager that spreads like a virus. And why not? After all, this has been “their” club for years – and they’re the guys who get paid the big bucks to make Houston a champion. Brad Mills may have played some third base, but he was no Mike Schmidt. Who is he to tell anybody in this family what to do?

Our Houston stars didn’t invent that dynamic. The resistance of elitists to control by others viewed as less qualified by talent and tenure is as old as the proverbial hills. It goes way back and way beyond baseball as one of the great destroyers of aspiring kingdoms and expiring dynasties. We just seem to have it at play in Houston baseball today, even though we’ve never won anything but a single National League pennant.

Let’s face it. The Houston Astros cannot win without good production from Lance Berkman, Roy Oswalt, and Carlos Lee. They also cannot win if these key veterans fail to support Brad Mills as manager. Everybody, including us fans, loses if Brad Mills doesn’t have a clue as to how important these three guys are to both team production and morale. Just as importantly, Brad Mills needs to come in with an honest strategy for gaining their confidence and support as early as possible. All three of these players are also smart guys – and should quickly see how important resolving this issue is to each of them and the club, as well. Pretending it doesn’t exist is both foolish and potentially fatal to future success in the National League.

That issue, my friends, is the one that 90% of the 2010 season now turns upon, in my humble opinion. Let’s all get behind Brad Mills and wish him and our Houston Astros the best outcome possible.

Sometime early this morning, maybe even as I write, Interim Manager Dave Clark of the Houston Astros will take off for home from New York City by automobile. The ten-hour drive to Memphis, Tennessee should be a welcome breeze after all that Clark has been through over the course of 2009 and his brief thirteen-game career as the guy who was appointed to bring this train-wreck of a season into the station over the last few miles of its beleaguered journey.

There was nothing publicly remarkable or particularly great about the shut-em-down final ride of the 2009 Astros under Dave Clark. The Astros won 4 and lost 9 under his watch, finishing the season in New York with a mostly mailed-in, three-game series sweep-loss to the Mets that simply died with a thud on Sunday – with no Astros runs scored, and only four mild  Houston hits to show for the last on-field lost cause of a season that sltready brimmed with many lost causes, too many nagging injuries,  and too frustrating and far too many agonizing personal performances.

Does Dave Clark drive home today with much of a chance of coming back without the “interim” descriptor written in front of his managerial title? Who knows? Sometimes an interim manager is so associated with the train wreck of his predecessor’s record that he doesn’t really have much chance for a fair consideration against those candidates who will be much easier to sell as fresh answers to the same old problems. Like Clark himself, we’ll just have to wait on the Astros to answer that one.

All we can know, as fans, is that Dave Clark does seem to enjoy the trust and respect of his players. On surface, in fact, he seems to fit many of the favorable dispositional factors that I wrote about in my article on Bill Virdon a couple of days ago. He defiinitely seems to hold the respect of players like Hunter Pence, who played for Dave Clark at Corpus Christi. His strong reputation as a teacher/mentor to younger players seems to be one of his strong assets, but its hard to draw any realistic conclusions about his management of pitchers and other personnel over the final two weeks just concluded. It was a time, after all,  for experimentation and not for starting pitcher and regular lineup solidification.

Who is Dave Clark, anyway?

47-year old Dave Clark is a native of Elvis Presley’s hometown, Tupelo, Mississippi. He was the 11th round 1983 draft choice of the Cleveland Indians as a BL/TR outfielder and he would go on to a 13-season career with six clubs (1986-1998), including his final season as an Astros hitter off the bench, and batting .264 with 62 career homers over the long course.

After his playing days, Clark spent three years in the Pirates organization as a hitting ocach (2000-02) and two years as a minor league manager (2003-2004) in the Pirates’ lower minor league system. He then shifted over to the Astros, managing for three years at Class AA Corpus Christi (2005-07) and one year at AAA Round Rock (2008). In 2009, Clark joined the major league staff at Houston under Cecil Cooper, the man he succeeded a little over two weeks ago.

As Astros fans, let’s just hope that Dave Clark gets a fair shake – and, most importantly,  that we end up with the best man for the  job of leading the Astros out of the wilderness in 2010. It may say nothing about his long term ability to lead the Astros to that elusive World Series victory we’ve all been seeking forever, but I like the fact that Dave Clark started Aaron Boone at second base in that 4-0 finale loss to the Mets. Boone was making his bid to become the only man in big league history to go through heart surgery and then get a hit during the same season of his medical crisis.

Aaron Boone already had gone zero for ten trying to accomplish same and he really had nothing to prove to others. Boone  had already come back, but he still wanted that hit as a symbol of personal validation and Clark knew it –  so he put him in the game. Boone went oh for three, but that’s OK too. He gave it his best final shot, and thanks in larger part to interim manager Dave Clark, a guy who thinks with the heart of a player.

Drive safe on the way home today, Dave! OK? Regardless of what happens from here, you can drive away from 2009 with respect in your hip pocket.

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As all Astros fans await the decision on who will take over the reins as the new full-time field manager of the club in 2010, it’s fair game time to talk about the kind of man who might best fill the bill. I sure can’t talk about it as a baseball insider, but as a forever Houston major league team fan since that first season in 1962, I’m like the rest of my crowd in the sense that I have my own strong opinions – and the first is easiest to express:

(1) Put Bill Virdon in an Age Regression Machine. If 78 year old former Astros manager Bill Virdon were only thirty years younger, I’d say, “Hire Virdon. End of discussion.” With a club record number of managerial wins (544 wins, 522 losses, and a .510 winning percentage), Bill Virdon led the Astros to two playoff appearances in 1980 and 1981. During his nearly eight seasons at the Astros helm (1975-82), the club didn’t have the big breakthrough we all still hope for (a World Series win), but they learned how to coalesce into a winning team. They reached the playoffs for the first time of their history in 1980, falling one still very  disappointing loss short of reaching the World Series, through no bigger picture fault of Virdon. I’ll always believe that the late season loss of star pitcher J.R. Richard to a stroke was the real hammer on our 1980 pennant hopes. With Niekro, Richard, Ryan, Ruhle, and Forsch all healthy and available for starting duty in the 1980 NLCS, there would’ve been no Philadelphia Phillies first World Series victory that year.

(2) Use Bill Virdon as a Role Model or Prototype. Since Virdon’s off the table as a serious candidate, let’s hope the Astros find a manager whose most like him. The rest of my comments are about qualities that I think Bill Virdon brought to the club during his tenure with the Astros:

(3) Respect. Players need to see their manager as someone they respect for his knowledge of the game, for his integrity as a man, and for his trustworthiness as someone who has their backs when bad games and slumps leave them wide open to shark bites from the media.

(4) Ability to Handle Pitchers and Young Players. Knowing how to balance the work between starters and relievers, and handling the often fragile confidences in younger players as a protective, but results-expectant mentor are essential. The Astros don’t need a mule team whip guy, nor do they need a too sympathetic wet nurse. They need a man whose brain is attached to the three demands of the real world in his understanding of the great lessons about breaking in to any field: (a) young talent still needs room to learn from their mistakes on the job; (b) young talent needs management that is capable of teaching them what they didn’t learn in “school;” and (c) young talent needs to understand that production eventually is the only thing that will keep them in their jobs. – A good manager has to be able to handle all three areas – or else, be eaten alive in time by failure, low team morale, chaos, and rebellion.

(5) Communication with the Media and the Public. This may have been the one area where Virdon may have been a little weak. I don’t remember him being very verbal or extroverted in his relations with people outside the club. I also don’t recall him ever making a big gaffe with his words. A lesser communicator can survive to fulfill the important team missions, if (a) his skin is thick enough to take the flack he will catch from those glib writers who will always enjoy playing games with sports people who are dean-pan serious – or not too quick on their mental feet; (b) he doesn’t use the media conference as a place to criticize his own players in defense of protecting his own posterior; and/or (c) he doesn’t suffer from verbal diarhea and foot-in-mouth disease.

(6) Bottom Line: In this crazy world of baseball managers, nobody’s perfect, but a Bill Virdon with “HD 2010” communication skills comes close – at least, he does in the eyes of this longtime Astros fan observer.