I think I'd rather have 1 world series and 9 bad seasons than have 10 "competitive seasons" where we don't win anything that matters the rockets won their last title in 94-95 and haven't done anything of note in the last 9 years, but looking back I would definitely consider the last 10 years more successful than the astros because they at least accomplished the goal once.. 1 world series.. and 9 last places.. at least you accomplished the goal once... 10 division titles and no champs.. as far as I'm concerned you didn't accomplish the one thing that matters
i disagree...teams with great offenses and limited starting pitching don't keep up with teams with rotations like the astros and the cubs. ask the rangers...they've been trying it for years now.
wow..i disagree entirely...i would LOVE LOVE LOVE for the Astros to win a World Series. i think that would be a pinnacle sports moment for me. but i hated 2000, when the astros were never in the race...makes for a very long summer. i'd much rather have a good race down the stretch and come up short than i would win one title and not have a competitve season for another decade.
man, this is the wrong offseason to be whining about drayton...knowing your audience and the context is a good thing.
I guess last place is a stong statement... it's just frustarting to look at houston sports and basically the only thing we've accomplished was the rockets two champs... i was talking to a guy on the plane last night from another city and the first thing he mentioned was houston having bad luck with sports.. but looking at the marlins right now for instance.. they may have had to suffer a few years after that first champ.. but they now have two champs while we have none... and even though the rockets haven't done anything recently.. i dont know.. I just have a more positive feeling watching them because I've at least seen them win before in the last ten years.. I guess we will see if I really feel this way if the astros win this year because looking at the way they have these contracts structured.. I have no idea what they are going to do when they all come due..
madmax.. I'm not meaning to whine about drayton at all with that post if it seems that way.. I was just responding to mrpaiges mention of the diamondbacks because i look at them and I think.. at least they won a ring..
baseball is the hardest sport to win a championship in. The playoffs are reserved for 8 elite teams out of 29. The astros have certainly had the roster to get it done in 98,99 but just couldn't do it. That's on the players, not the owner.
D-Backs have been a pretty solid franchise. i truly don't think i would trade the Astros last 10 years for the Marlins last 10 years. even after 2 championships, they can't sell tickets and there's all sorts of rumblings that "baseball can't work" in Miami. Their season ticket base, at last count is around 9,000...know why??? because no one trusts this franchise to put even a moderately competitve franchise on the field from year to year. not even their own fan base after winning a super exciting world championship. when a team starts in last place and stays in last place all season long, they might as well not even field a team that year...it's miserable through the summer. i like to be entertained...i like to at least have something to root for come august. the astros have done that quite well, with the exception of 2000.
I have no problem with drayton.. I hope to run a company myself one day... the way he does things is how they have to be done.. my problem is with major league baseball the union etc.. But for me at this point I could handle a few losing seasons to at least win the title once... with the rockets I at least have that memory and it gives me hope it will happen again.. it's hard to think of the astros as anything but an unsuccessful franchise when they have never won a playoff series of any type EVER
memories are great...but they're just memories...ask the folks in Boston. ask the folks in Philly. and again...you're comparing NBA success to MLB success. a sport where more teams make the playoffs than don't to a sport where about 1/4 of the teams in the league make the playoffs...and that's just been in the past 10 years...before that you had 2 divisions in each league and only those division winners were in the playoffs. it's incomparable. if the astros had the kind of regular season relative to the rest of their league that the rockets did in 1995, they wouldn't even have been in the playoffs...the rockets went on to win a title that year. completely incomparable.
madmax.. true.. I know they aren't very comparable because of the logistics, but they still won the title and that's the point im trying to make... I tend to think.. they've done it before they can do it again... but come down the stretch in August with the Astros I can't help but have in the back of my mind "they make make the playoffs, but they will be out in the first round as always"... I love the astros organization it's the whole money thing that bothers me and that's major league baseballs fault and the unions.. I think we have one of the best organizations in baseball and there is no doubt in my mind that if Hunsicker had even 2/3's the money the top teams have we would win the title going away.. I know money doesn't gurantee championships, but as good as Hunsicker is I think he'd win them easily.. heck I think he could put together a lot better team than the yanks have with their payroll... I'm just frustrated.. honestly I probably wouldn't rather have the losing seasons and one title but I was talking about how many good seasons we've had the other day and a yankee fan asked me.. but how many titles do you have? that is what got me on this all
getting back on the wagner topic.. he does need to just be quiet... one of his complaints also was that he thought they were getting rid of him to cut salary but obviously now they weren't since they got andy and roger.. andy and roger are making less than wagner this year I believe plus we added a huge amount of revenue do to extra ticket sales... it still is cheaper for us to have andy and roger this year than it would have been for us to have wagner this year.. so I'm not sure how his point is valid at all
Whatever!!! The two hometown boys landed in the scrooges lap. Wagner was right! Drayton acquired both at a discount. If it wasn't for the backlash from the fans and writers, he wouldn't of done anything but brought in an injury prone veteran to fill the fifth starter spot.!
Billy Wagner has all this feelings towards the Astros owner because he actually cares, he wanted to be and Astro and when he got traded it got to him, I was mad as hell when they traded Billy, because he was too one of my favorite astros players, now that he is gone he is lashing out at him and i don't blame him.
Billy was making 9 million bucks a year to get 3 outs 40 some odd times over the course of the year. Had he wanted to really remain an astro he would have taken a paycut that would have deferred his money as Kent and many other astros have done.
bigboy.. maybe you misunderstood what I was saying.. I was saying wagner now thinks that they added payroll etc and doesn't know why they got rid of him... what I was saying is it actually cost them less to have roger and andy this season.. so I don't see why wagner is changing his view on why they got rid of him now... you are right about them landing in his lap.. only in texas could that happen. i had someone telilng me you cant consider yourself a smaller market now that you are able to get kent, roger, and andy.. to which I have to think.. we only got them because they all wanted to be in texas.. this isn't something we can expect to happen.. the fact that we are a smaller market will always be a problem.. and changes still have to be made in regards to a cap.. I do think that they got rid of wagner for the reason of getting andy though.. but they did offer him less so we got VERY lucky that we ended up with roger and andy.. in normal circumstances we would have ended up with no wagner... no roger, or no andy.
Of course, it wasn't guaranteed that they'd win the ring, and now they've hamstrung themselves for more than the next decade. The Marlin were able to get rid of their albatross contracts and take less than a decade to rebuild relatively quickly (and even then, they've relied on some lucky circumstances and didn't have a very high payroll when they won last year, i.e. they didn't blow it out and be reckless financially). The D'Backs are looking at several years of still paying off those contracts to guys who are gone. And then they get to rebuild. It could be fifteen years. Could be longer. The thing is that you don't get to know ahead of time whether the shot of extreme financing will pay off in a World Series ring. It's actually more likely that you could spend, spend, spend and still come up short. I mean, the Yankees are the highest payroll team in baseball, and while they're still making it to the World Series pretty consistently, they aren't winning every one of them. So, the question is, would you live with last place finishes for the next ten years for a $185 million payroll this year (just as an example)? No guarantees of any better of a showing in the standings, just increased payroll this season, and you can assume that Hunsicker spends it as well as he normally spends. I'm sure some people will say yes to that, but I think we'd all be surprised how quickly MMP would empty once those last place finishes started even if the theoretical $185 million in payroll resulted in a World Series this year (and especially if it didn't). People aren't exactly lining up to go to Arlington this summer even though it hasn't been ten years since the Rangers were a competitive team. I don't think a World Series victory in 2000 would get people any more excited to go out there for this season, and with each successive year, the desire would be less and less. In the end, there's no loyalty to Tom Hicks for taking the losses on the Rangers and putting a more expensive team out on the field than the revenues dictated. People aren't sitting here in Dallas and saying "Well, Tom overspent for years, so now that he's cutting back, I understand, and I'm buying season tickets to support him." A World Series victory does nothing but make the fans want another World Series victory. If the Astros went from $185 million payroll and WS victory to $40 million payroll going in to the next season, would Astros fans really be happy with that? (Marlin fans sure weren't when a similar thing happened. Why didn't they sit back and say "At least we got a World Series victory" and let that carry them the next several years?)
I agree that he should have taken a pay cut, but if you look at it from billys point of view, why should it be him who takes a pay cut, maybe because he had the best season he has ever had in career? or maybe because he was the most consistent astros pitcher? see if anyone should have taken a paycut so that billy could stay, it would have been Bagwell or Biggio, I wish biggio was gone so we could make room for Jason Lane.
mrpagie.. I agree 100% with you and I'm not condoning spending a lot and then dumping payroll.. I was looking at it from a standpoint of already knowing you won the world series.. which you really can never know... looking back at the last 10 years.. hindsight I think I'd trade a few division titles to have a ring. And I'd absolutely have dreaded each of those 10 years that we lost but when it was all over I'd look more fondly on the team than I do now because they won something... I'm only 20 so I don't have the memories of some of the great series we had in the 80s.. so the only playoffs I've seen were our non competitive showings.. sports is about memories for me and I haven't had any great memories in the playoffs and thats what's frustrating... I think my best astros memory by far is being at the last game in the dome the day we clinched the divison... do you think we've put ourselves in the diamondbacks situation though? I have no idea how on earth we are going to handle all these delayed salaries..
