[Official] Astros Offseason Thread

The Spiers 1997 season is incredible. According to Baseball Reference WAR, he was no better than a 1.2 win player in any other season with the Astros, but in '97, he was nearly four times better at 4.4 wins. Bagwell and Biggio were great in 1997, and it was a good season for Derek Bell as well, but that season was the first season as a kid where I followed the Astros closely game-by-game, and I vividly remember there not being a player I was more confident in than Bill Spiers.

One of the other things I remember vividly about the '97 Astros is the offensive blackhole that was the shortstop position manned by Tim Bogar and Ricky Gutierrez. Part of my frustration, of course, was borne out of the fact that defensive value, which Bogar in particular brought to the table, is largely lost on pre-teens who still view "good defense" as making diving plays left and right and not in making literally all of the routine ones, which is what Bogar did.

 

SS was terrible for so long (Lugo being the best bat until Tejada, Everett being the best defender and overall). Ricky suddenly learned to hit with the Cubs.

 

Dickie Thon.....what could have been

 

"suddenly learned to hit" right around '00-'01. Shocking.

Stros could have gone Thon to Jeter to Correa

 

Jeter said he would hold out (and did) to leverage a Yankees pick the following season (doubt this would have happened in today’s advanced scouting and metrics)

 

Don't sleep on Rafael Ramirez

 

I was more of an Eric Yelding guy.

I remember cracking up one year as a kid whenever they showed Rafi's headshot pic on the scoreboard at the Dome, dude had the goofiest derpy look on his face.

 

One season...probably 87 or 88...Raffy led the league in game winning RBI's. That may be the only thing of value I remember about him.

 

Tim Bogar is the worst hitter I have ever had to endure watching. I'm sure there has been some Astro that was statistically worse, but I dreaded Bogar AB's. I swear, if Hampton was on the mound and a guy was on first, I wanted Bogar to bunt him over so at least Hampton had an RBI opportunity.

 

That is the guy my dad curses about for making 2 errors in a game that cost Mike Scott a perfect game that he was at (The Braves would single with 2 outs in the 9th).

Of course he actually doesn't remember it right, because Craig Reynolds made one of the errors.

 

I didn't remember Bogar being that bad (and he wasn't in 97 or 99), but that 98 season he hit .154/.208/.212. A .420 OPS only Jon Singleton would want.

 

He was actually pretty decent by years end in 97. A quick check of the game log from 97 shows he was hitting .206 100 games into his first season, and that was one hell of a seed to plant in my 10 year old pre-metric mind. Then he had a season for the ages in 98 on a team that was otherwise armed to the teeth. Back in the day if you were hitting under .260 I thought you were a joke.

He ended up hitting .219 overall for us, and back before I was aware of metrics that was eye gougingly bad. Even with metrics he was pretty damn bad for us overall. He ended up with a negative WAR after that solid 97 season.

 

(Andujar) Cedeno was my guy, for some silly reason

 

Thon was on his way to greatness. Reynolds was solid. Ramirez was about as average as you will find. Cedeno was comical but did bat .283 that one year. Dude closed his eyes and swung. Bogar was good defensively but he was roger metzger at the plate (or belanger or biancalana).

 

Yelding and Young....Thing 1and Thing 2

 

Boy could they run. ^ Eric "cool breeze" Yelding was my favorite player for a few years there. If he got on base, he was attempting a steal. Vince Coleman lite.

 

My thoughts exactly and then I scroll down one post to read this. I remember thinking as a kid that he was going to be sooo good.

 

We were at the game when he got beaned.

 

Rafael Ramirez blames all his errors on the Atlanta infield even when they happened in Houston.

 

i'm ready for the season, my friendos