DownSwinging.com

Sorry for the long post, but this has been on my mind for a while:

Bobby Jenks throws a low fastball.  Orlando Palmeiro swings at the pitch and gets decent wood on it.  Juan Uribe moves to his left and corrals the ball that kicks up off of the mound.  He guns it to Paul Konerko at first base.  The throw just beats Palmeiro to the bag.  A World Series sweep is complete and the Chicago White Sox have followed up the Red Sox’ historical curse-breaking year, with one of their own.  While this sounds like the lead-in to a giddy, nostalgic tale, you couldn’t be more wrong.  That lonely October night concluded the Astros’ first ever World Series run, and should have been a sign of progress and legitimacy within the club; instead, to the avid Astros fan, it was the beginning of the end.

Everybody knows that in 2004 and 2005, the Astros were going for broke.  Roger Clemens was signing massive one-year deals while Andy Pettitte was in the midst of his 3-year homecoming.  Owner, Drayton McClane; General Manager, Gerry Hunsicker; and Manager, Jimy Williams started 2004 with the idea that the Astros had a three-year window to win a championship.  Future hall-of-famers, Jeff Bagwell and Craig Biggio were winding their careers down.  Everyone wanted to give these franchise players their moment.  The Astros dropped Williams after a slow first half, and Phil Garner, and a newly acquired Carlos Beltran, led the Astros to an improbable 36-10 finish in the last 46 games of the 2004 season.  The Astros had clinched the NL wildcard with a playoff ready pitching staff.  We all know what happened from there.  The Astros finally got past the Braves in the NLDS but neither the Astros nor the Cardinals could win on the road in the championship series; and with the Card’s being the NL’s best regular season team, they advanced to the World Series.

The winter of 2004 will go down as one of the most upsetting off-seasons that I have witnessed as an Astros fan.  We could not re-sign our playoff messiah, Carlos Beltran.  The Mets topped our offer with a mammoth deal of 7 years and upwards of  $113m.  This was the bad-luck story that got all the attention.  However it was a low-key news conference in early November that really hurt me.   The announcement that Gerry Hunsicker would not be continuing on as General Manager, had me thinking that McClane had finally lost it.  Tim Purpura, our farm director would be taking his place after Hunsicker’s 10-year reign as GM.  The only columnist who predicted this would eventually spell the Astros’ downfall was Houston Chronicle’s Richard Justice.  I read Justice’s articles everyday in that infamous two-year run, and while he was as excited as the next Astros fan, there was always an heir of apprehension.  He knew what was to come.

Fast-forward to the 2005 season.  After a 15-30 start, the Astros surged again and clinched the wildcard on the final day of the season.  This time they met the Braves again in the first round, and killed them off in 4 games.  (Insert memories of Chris Burke rounding the bases with his fist in the air.)    Then we stole a game from the Cardinals on the road and had a chance to win the NLCS in 5 games.  Until that Pujols Home Run (note: capitalization) pushed us to Game 6.  I still strongly feel that if Brad Lidge had closed out that game, we would have won the World Series.  We would have had too much momentum and our pitching staff would have been perfectly primed for the World Series.  Remember how we had to “waste” Roy O on Game 6?  Remember how deadly he was in that Game 6 in St. Louis?  That could have been Game 1 in Chicago.  Sigh.  Then we got swept and that brings up to date with the recent success of the Houston Astros.

In 2006, Astros signed players like Preston Wilson instead of giving younger players like Luke Scott (who is now hitting the cover off of the ball for the Orioles) a chance to grow.  Wilson was eventually released because he complained that Scott was playing too much, thus, providing us with a perfect example of why we did not need him in the first place.  We had another late run in 2006, the last year of the Clemens and Pettitte tenure, but we fell short by just 1 game. Clemens got old, Pettitte wanted too much money and Lidge was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder unlike any other case in sports.  This was the transition from dominant pitching to embarrassing pitching.  Once Pettitte and Clemens departed after the 2006 season, the Astros should have began a rebuilding process.  They should have made trades that strengthened their farm system and decreased the payroll.  Once draft picks accumulate, and a farm system stocks up, a team can be a successful winning machine for years.  Instead Drayton couldn’t let go and Tim Purpura, McClane’s liaison, was just there for the ride.

Just missing on the playoffs in 2006 was the worst thing that could have happened to the team.  McClane assumed this close-call meant the Astros were still on the right track…silly Drayton.  What does he do to strengthen the team?  He signs an aging, out-of-shape, DH-to-be, in the form of Carlos Lee, to a 6-year, $100m contract.  One could point out that Lee is still producing today, but that is not the point.  Nobody was questioning if Lee was a good signing because of his skill set, it just didn’t seem the right time to splash $100m on a hitter, when at the time, our pitching was so poor.  And just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse, it most certainly did.

Purpura traded our electrifying centerfielder, Willy Taveras; a shaky, but young, pitcher in Taylor Buchholz; and our top prospect, pitcher Jason Hirsh.  For whom you might ask?  Jason Jennings and Miguel Ascensio. While I do believe that the names speak for themselves, let me just point out that Jennings, supposedly the crown jewel of the trade, was on a contract year and Taveras, Buchholz and Hirsh had a combined 15 years left before free agency.  Just to nail it home here is Jennings’ 2007 line: 2-9 with a 6.45 ERA.  Jason Hirsh’s 2007 on the other hand led him to a 4.81 ERA with his opponent’s batting average at .203.  To maintain the fairness of the article I should point out that Hirsh has not pitched since April of 2008 due to rotator cuff problems.

Just a year after the Jennings trade, the Astros fired Purpura and signed Ed Wade.  Ed Wade, I thought would emphasize prospects and farm system growth.  Wrong again.  The Astros gave up Luke Scott; top-pitching prospect, Troy Patton; pitcher, Matt Albers; second-baseman, Chris Burke; pitcher, Juan Guttierez; and reliever, Chad Qualls in two trades that landed us Miguel Tejada and Jose Valverde.  That’s two straight off-seasons where the Astros traded their top pitching prospects, both of which were at the AAA/Major League level.  A team doesn’t win by trading five major league-ready starting pitcher prospects in 1 year, in return for a bad pitcher (ran out of synonyms), an aging shortstop and a sporadic closer.

It was then, in the winter of 2007, that I stopped reading articles, I stopped watching more than one or two games a week and I even stopped paying attention in the off season when we could have (but still didn’t) made wholesale changes.  I felt completely abandoned.  I graduated from High School in 2007, and it hurts when an 18 year old knows more about what should be going on than those running his team.  But there you have it.  My favorite time of year for the Astros is June; I love this time of year because of the draft.  Last year’s draft was the best one we’d had in 6 years and this one is promising, as well, as we’ll pick 4 times in the first 111 picks.

I now put it to Drayton McClane to acknowledge what we have.  The Houston Astros, the team that I love, has a team that will not challenge for any championships in the next several years.  He has two options: continuing to delude the fan-base by signing overpriced talent that will help the Astros very little in the short term, and hurt us in the long term by costing unnecessary money and draft picks.  Or he can decide to trade off our valuable, yet emotionally significant, parts in return for prospects and our dignity.  All teams have rebuilding years.  It’s not something that can be avoided unless the team has unlimited funds.  Stocking up the farm system is a great way to instill a sense of community within a ballclub.  When players come up together, a much stronger bond is formed.  It was just 10 years ago when the Astros had the highest-ranked farm system.  Now?  We’re in the bottom 25% and rightfully so.  Any talent we grow, we either sell off, or uproot too fast.  Drayton, it’s time for you to let the Houston Astros grow again, it’s time for the Astros to become one of the smartest teams in baseball again.  We’re better than just making panic signings for players who have hijacked the free agent market.  Time to be shrewd and conservative, the risks haven’t worked; just look at the standings.