Hank Chinaski

Hahahah people think this is a playoff team?!?!?

This. The shitshow started in November with the GM fiasco and hasn’t let up. The hope is that Crane realizes he fucked up and course-corrects after this shit-static season mercifully ends, by firing Dusty, turning operations over to Brown and staying the fuck out of the way when it comes to roster management. Trust the numbers, not your HOF buddies’ “expertise.” You know - do what you did before to build the best version of the Astros the franchise has ever known.

Hahahahahahahahaha Hope that he’s just regular shitty instead of super-duper-shitty? I mean, it’s something, I guess.

Yup, no idea why the concept of playing your best players is lost on Dusty (or, why he can’t figure out who his best players are, or why the front office can’t tell him). I can’t tell if he manages the team like they have a 12-game division lead or like they’re 10 year-olds in little league where everyone gets to play the same amount.

Was telling @Wulaw Horn yesterday…Dusty has managed to make watching the Astros akin to watching the Strong/Herman horns teams, right down to the asinine, irrational personnel decisions. Never thought a baseball manager could actually pull that off, but here we are. (The obvious difference is that Dusty isn’t responsible for the roster, beyond having some input.)

Not saying it’s flawless, but Fangraphs (for example) has the Astros odds of missing the playoffs at 22%; it has their odds of winning the WS at 9%. And that 9% seems high, but even that is way less likely than missing the playoffs entirely.

Lol no it isn’t.

They’ll make some quarter-measure, meaningless move(s) that will probably end up being a net-negative when they either miss the playoffs entirely or manage to lose a wild card series. Crane made this bed in the off-season.

Chas averages 3.5 fWAR per 600 PAs in his career, and has a career 112 wRC+ (117 in 2023). That is plenty good enough to be an everyday starter. Well, it should be, but the manager doesn’t see it somehow. For reference - there were 17 OFs in MLB last season who had 600 PAs, and only 9 of them had at least 3.5 fWAR. Guys who didn’t reach 3.5 fWAR includes Reynolds, Arozarena, Schwarber and Yelich.

I swear the man just throws darts at a wall when filling out a lineup…they just don’t seem to be based on anything…

And dude, “midget” is not the preferred nomenclature; “person of short stature,” please.

Ok my bad. I’m not denying that I thought letting Yuli walk was the right move; I definitely did. But by most accounts they outbid themselves in rushing to sign Abreu. In fairness nobody should have expected him to be this bad, but there is heightened risk with any 36 year old guy, and they gave him 3 goddamn years. And the Montero thing never made sense to anybody.

I’m not sure if you’re being sarcastic (I assume you are based on the “damn awesome”) but yeah, they should have had a front office plan in place before throwing money at old players that they’ll be on the hook for for multiple years. Montero was expendable if he wanted a lot of money. There should have been zero urgency to lock him up.

I agree with you; and what you’re describing - a disjointed org structure in which the GM/front office is neutered and the manager reports directly to the owner - is a clusterfuck situation unconducive to success. And nobody wants to hear it (again) but the org has been a clusterfuck since the WS. The result has been: signing a guy to a $60mm deal who has turned into the worst everyday player in baseball; signing a fine (not special) RP to a $40mm deal; singing a guy who was injured (with no timetable for returning to health) to be a starting OF; and allowing the manager to create seemingly random, incoherent lineups and regularly play inferior players with apparently no oversight. Why even have an analytics dept? And you nailed it - the club seems to operate like it has a 10-game division lead. It would not be that surprising at all if they don’t make the playoffs this year. They’ve been mediocre from start to finish so far (going 6-0 against a glorified AAA team doesn’t mean anything). This looks exactly like a 85-90 win team, meaning they may or may not get into the postseason, but almost certainly won’t skip the first round. There are all kinds of warning signs about the future of the franchise, and there have been since November. They’re not doomed to irrelevance or anything, but they’ve looked like a shitshow since the WS, and it is increasingly looking like it’s all pointing back to the owner.

This happens maybe once a week. Dusty actively reduces the probability of winning almost every day with his lineups. Apparently Brown thinks that’s fine. It was cool when the Astros were an analytically savvy franchise.

22 K/1 BB last 2 nights. Christ.

Surprising that Dusty’s lineup failed to produce. Maybe don’t start a rookie who can’t hit in the minors.

Not really. We’re talking about a guy who’s never been a good offensive player in the minors.

I think context matters on things like how funny we perceive a film to be - your age upon viewing, hell even your environment and mood. I thought Animal House was great, but I also first saw it when I was 11 or 12. I may not have thought so if I first saw it as an adult (I need to really be in the mood for sophomoric humor to even kinda enjoy it). Same with anything Monty Python. I also think Caddyshack is terribly overrated, though Rodney always made me laugh. In my older age, I have realized that the height of comedy necessarily combines deep irony, dark humor, desperation, human suffering, hyperbole, pathos, and yes, a splash of juvenile whimsy. Which is why - and I am 100% serious here, because this transcends age, mood, environment - I have come to realize that the zenith of all comedy is TexAgs screenshots.

Beyond that, the Rangers as a team are running a smooth .334 BABIP right now. That’s not necessarily 100% about luck, but it’s mostly an indicator of luck, and .300 tends to be right around the league average every year (including this year). They’re unlikely to sustain that over an entire season, but they’ve already banked 2 months of it. (Of course, a team’s BABIP is largely irrelevant when it posts a K/BB ratio of 16/1 in a given game. Good effort, fellas.)

Abreu shouldn’t be in the lineup at all.

Wasn’t the “beginning of the end” signaled a year ago when USC and UCLA announced they were leaving? Isn’t this more like the next phase of the conference’s deterioration process? I guess that’s not as interesting a tagline.