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2021 Houston Astros Thread

Planet Houston

By Planet Houston
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henrygandorf
henrygandorf

there's so much to unpack from today, so i'll just start listing them. tuesday was devastating for oakland, today was twice as devastating for the yankees.  they had just started to play better. 

Brisketexan
Brisketexan

The boy and I were at the last ALCS clincher - we were walking on air for days after Altuve’s walkoff. Today, the boy is 5,000 miles and 7 hours away, with no way to watch. So we did a video chat, w

Helobious
Helobious

Enjoy it. Old Altuve, no more Correa means this is the very end of the road for your tainted dynasty. 

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maninblack

maninblack 7974

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Mo Horn said:

Why did we sign Castro? He's hitting below the Mendoza line and he couldn't throw out someone using a walker on the bases. 

 

55 minutes ago, Mo Horn said:

 Garcia keeps playing with fire, but so far not getting burned.

 

44 minutes ago, Mo Horn said:

 Yordan leaving a lot of runners on base the last couple of nights. 

 

28 minutes ago, Mo Horn said:

 Ump is dizzy, let's go ahead and talk about whether he should come out of the game or not. 

 

13 minutes ago, Mo Horn said:

Correa with stupidity on the basepaths for the 2nd night in a row. 

Having a bad day?

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tx 3 putt

tx 3 putt 76371

Posted
Posted
Just now, Scraps said:
1 hour ago, tx 3 putt said:
bagwell talking about DK and Caminiti is just a gut punch, Damn i loved those players 

Ahhh the good old days when 3 putt actually watched the game instead of tiktok on his phone

 

im up to 110 followers, they demand new content !!!!

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HtownHorn

HtownHorn 14486

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

Was Garcia / Meyer / Chas / toro on any baseball america prospect lists ?

fangraphs does the most in depth job on prospects now that John Sickels is stuck behind the Athletic.

Their 2020 Astros Top 40 list was

1. Whiteley

2. Urquidy

3. Toro

4. Nova

5. Abreu

6. Javier

7. Bielak

8. Lee

9. Brown

10. Solis

11. Pena

Other notables.

13 Paredes

14 Ivey

19 Garica

31 Chas

32 Taylor

39 De La Cruz

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Wulaw Horn

Wulaw Horn 18980

Posted
Posted

So- our best lineup has Meyers in it or Chaz?

If I was in charge this would be what I'd do...

Altuve

Yordan

Correa

Tucker

Bregman

Uncle Mike

Yuli

Maldonado 

Chaz

 

I'd rather have Chaz re-set than Maldonado if you are going to hit Yordan 2nd- which is where people say you should hit your best hitter.  Our best hitter is Yordan. If you simply must hit Uncle Mike 2nd then you hit Maldonado 9th, Yordan 4th and Tucker 6th.  If you want to hit Yuli 5th I'm fine with that- but Correa hits 3rd and Bregman doesn't hit higher than 5th unless and until he becomes the 2019 version of himself.

 

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Scraps

Scraps 13542

Posted
Posted

I mean we all pretty much already assume this, but this was apparently in the Athletic (i no longer have a sub to it so if someone does they could produce more of it)

 

While Correa was looking for a large, long-term extension, the right-hander included that he wouldn’t be in talks during the regular season. It takes away from the game, and the Astros were never reported to spark another discussion in terms of money.

“My last year with the Astros, hopefully we can win another championship and I can leave this great organization with two of them.”

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kevwun

kevwun 15647

Posted
Posted
13 minutes ago, Scraps said:

I mean we all pretty much already assume this, but this was apparently in the Athletic (i no longer have a sub to it so if someone does they could produce more of it)

 

While Correa was looking for a large, long-term extension, the right-hander included that he wouldn’t be in talks during the regular season. It takes away from the game, and the Astros were never reported to spark another discussion in terms of money.

“My last year with the Astros, hopefully we can win another championship and I can leave this great organization with two of them.”

Can't wait to watch a center fielder playing shortstop next season.

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UTPhil2006

UTPhil2006 3791

Posted
Posted
37 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

So- our best lineup has Meyers in it or Chaz?

If I was in charge this would be what I'd do...

Altuve

Yordan

Correa

Tucker

Bregman

Uncle Mike

Yuli

Maldonado 

Chaz

 

I'd rather have Chaz re-set than Maldonado if you are going to hit Yordan 2nd- which is where people say you should hit your best hitter.  Our best hitter is Yordan. If you simply must hit Uncle Mike 2nd then you hit Maldonado 9th, Yordan 4th and Tucker 6th.  If you want to hit Yuli 5th I'm fine with that- but Correa hits 3rd and Bregman doesn't hit higher than 5th unless and until he becomes the 2019 version of himself.

 

MLB BA leader should be 2nd

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Wulaw Horn

Wulaw Horn 18980

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, UTPhil2006 said:

MLB BA leader should be 2nd

Yordan is a better hitter.  I don't hate Brantley hitting 2nd but I'd just like a little more power there... Best argument for Brantley is he can hit tough pitching maybe better than anyone- so playoff time he's going to give you a quality AB and not be overmatched...

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Texas St. Armadillos

Texas St. Armadillos 1381

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

Yordan is a better hitter.  I don't hate Brantley hitting 2nd but I'd just like a little more power there... Best argument for Brantley is he can hit tough pitching maybe better than anyone- so playoff time he's going to give you a quality AB and not be overmatched...

I think he meant Yuli

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IDIOTsavant

IDIOTsavant 8445

Posted
Posted
23 minutes ago, Scraps said:

I mean we all pretty much already assume this, but this was apparently in the Athletic (i no longer have a sub to it so if someone does they could produce more of it)

 

While Correa was looking for a large, long-term extension, the right-hander included that he wouldn’t be in talks during the regular season. It takes away from the game, and the Astros were never reported to spark another discussion in terms of money.

“My last year with the Astros, hopefully we can win another championship and I can leave this great organization with two of them.”

Very little of that article was directed at Correa's situation. It was mostly a vehicle to keep referring to the Astros as cheaters.

Spoiler

Carlos Correa keeps his 2017 World Series ring inside a safe at his home in Houston. He does not open it. If he did, dozens of diamonds would gleam in the light. One hundred and one for all of the games the Astros won during the regular season. Eleven more for the playoff victories required to capture the title. Correa, the 26-year-old shortstop, does not need to gaze at the jewelry to remember what it represents.

“It means a lot of hard work,” Correa says. “It means a dream come true.”

The ring meant something different to the nearly 53,000 fans teeming in the stands at Dodger Stadium earlier this month. To them, the ring was the bauble of a thief, whose team stole signs and then stole a championship. Correa understood what they thought. He wanted it to feel palpable. Which was why he stepped onto the field, alone, to stretch about 30 minutes before the first pitch. He ventured across the grass where he had celebrated a championship. He knew what was coming. The crowd lit him up. Correa says he basked in it.

“I was like, ‘This is awesome,’” Correa says. “I loved every bit of it.”

The ring means one thing in Houston and it means something else in all of the other cities the Astros visit this season. On a humid Kansas City evening last week, as Correa stood at the plate, a lone voice barked across the half-empty ballpark.

“Cheater!” the man said. “Cheater!”

The second epithet had just left the man’s lips when Correa swung. He clubbed a toothless slider over the left-field bullpen. As he rounded third base, he cupped his hand to his ear, a gesture that has become customary in the aftermath of the Astros sign-stealing scandal. Correa can hear you. He will not pretend otherwise.

Correa is one of only five members of the 2017 squad on the active roster as the franchise traverses its first season playing in front of fans thirsting to admonish them for their skullduggery. Only Jose Altuve, the American League MVP that year, receives more vitriol away from Minute Maid Park. If Altuve absorbs it, Correa says he feeds off it. “I want more,” he says. So he relishes the chance to hit the road this October.

“At the end of the day, it’s an entertainment business,” Correa says. “And we want to entertain people. When we go on the road, it’s entertaining to make the fans go quiet.”

Correa was standing inside the home dugout a couple of hours before Houston widened its lead in the American League West. He wore an orange tank top: “H-Town vs. Everyone.”

The playoffs are coming. The Astros will be there.

Are you not entertained?

Dusty Baker eased onto the bench at Minute Maid Park as his team prepared to host the Mariners last weekend. He had walked past a bottle of Syrah from the vineyard that bears his name. He wore a pair of wristbands that bore his visage. On his mind was the number that has occupied his mind each month in every season since he first became a manager, back in 1993, a year before Correa was born: 15. If you win 15 games a month, Baker calculates, you will probably make the postseason.

“Believe or not,” Baker said, “I’m a numbers guy.”

Baker, 72, knows the math cold. He has managed a playoff team in each of the past four decades. The Astros were on track: 14 victories in April and 15 in May, 19 in June and 19 more in July. Then came a cold snap, with series lost to the Twins and Royals. Before the series against Seattle, the Astros had lost more games than they had won in August. All teams enter these doldrums; it is the manager’s job to shoo them away.

“I don’t like that,” Baker said. “We’ve got to finish strong this month.”

This season is Baker’s 24th as a manager. It may be his last; he does not have a contract beyond this season. Then again, the 2017 season once looked like his last. After two first-round exits in a row, the Nationals fired Baker 12 days before Correa, Altuve and the rest of the Astros sprayed champagne at Dodger Stadium. Baker returned to the Bay Area to watch his son Darren play college ball and to pamper his first grandchild, trying to feel content about the conclusion of a admirable career as a player and manager.

The tumult after the 2019 season brought Baker back to a dugout. Former Astro Mike Fiers blew the whistle on the intricacies of Houston’s sign-stealing apparatus in the championship year. Subsequent reporting unearthed details about secret cameras, illegal monitors and bashed trash cans. Major League Baseball levied yearlong suspensions on Astros general manager Jeff Luhnow, manager A.J. Hinch, Red Sox manager Alex Cora and Mets manager Carlos Beltrán. All four were fired by their employers. The subsequent scramble by Houston owner Jim Crane led him to Baker.

Baker offered the acumen required to manage the game, the feel required to manage the clubhouse and the gravitas required to manage the outrage. After a 60-game season curtailed by the pandemic, the Astros limped into the expanded playoffs last year with a losing record but won two series and pushed Tampa Bay to Game 7 in the American League Championship Series. “It was a weird season,” Correa says. “Honestly, I didn’t even feel like playing at some points. I was like, ‘This is not baseball.’”

Even with the pandemic ongoing, the 2021 season feels like a return to normalcy. And so Houston has reclaimed its place atop the West, the division it ruled from 2017 to 2019. FanGraphs considers the Astros the American League team with the best chance to win it all. The offense led the sport in runs, OPS and weighted on-base average, heading into Tuesday’s games. The pitchers were second in the American League in ERA. At the deadline, general manager James Click executed a flurry of trades to upgrade the bullpen. Houston maintained control of first place in August despite injuries to Alex Bregman and Yuli Gurriel, two other 2017 veterans.

Bregman has nursed a quadriceps injury for two months. His rehabilitation has featured fits and starts. During a recent losing spell in Kansas City, he hounded Baker about getting activated. “He really feels guilty about not being here to support his team,” Baker said.

Baker told Bregman not to rush. The team would activate him when they believed he could last through October. Until then, the others would fixate on finding those 15 wins per month.

“Our guys come out to play,” Baker said. “They come out to fight. And you know something? It’s not always fun.”

Houston Astros
Alex Bregman, Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa with 2017 World Series rings. (Cooper Neill / MLB via Getty Images)

Lance McCullers Jr. keeps his ring inside a closet in Houston, dangling from a silver necklace. He doesn’t often wear it. “Even before everything, I didn’t wear it too much,” he says. To him, the jewelry represents the connection between a team and a city smashed by Hurricane Harvey two months before the playoffs began.

“The ring to me signifies more than just the title,” McCullers says. “I know people say, ‘Give the ring back,’ or whatever the case is. But I still have it. It may be weird or odd. But I’m still proud of the guys on the team.”

McCullers is the only pitcher left from 2017. Zack Greinke spent that season in Arizona. Jake Odorizzi played for Tampa Bay. Pedro Báez and Yimi García were Dodgers. Blake Taylor pitched for the Columbia Fireflies, a class-A affiliate of the Mets. On the road, it does not matter. The heaviest jeers land on holdovers like Altuve and Correa. But the others catch flak.

“People want their ounce of flesh, pound of flesh — whatever the right terminology is,” Odorizzi says. “Personally, I just think it’s passed. It’s almost four years ago now. That’s a long time — especially in the baseball world.”

The industry tends to agree with Odorizzi, even if plenty of baseball people outside Houston still harbor resentment. At times in 2019 and 2020, it felt like the scandal might capsize the sport. In the early days of spring training last year, rivals raged at the Astros for cheating and at commissioner Rob Manfred for not pursuing punishment toward the players. Houston trotted out Altuve and Bregman for canned apologies. Crane insisted the cheating did not taint the title. The comments were met with scorn in other clubhouses.

Manfred suggested the players would receive judgment before fans at ballparks. The pandemic delayed that by a year. It would be up to the public, because the official punishments have expired. Boston re-hired Cora this past winter. Hinch landed in Detroit. George Springer fetched $150 million in free agency from Toronto. The Astros could recruit new players with the same strategy that works everywhere else: Offer the most money. “When I signed here, it wasn’t in my thoughts,” Odorizzi says. “Like, ‘Oh, it’s going to be questionable to sign here because of what happened.’”

The reminders were swift. The Astros got booed in spring training. The reception for the season opener in Oakland was uncharitable. The atmosphere at Yankee Stadium in May was raucous. The two days at Dodger Stadium were remarkable for their intensity. Even in places like Kansas City, which had no playoff history with Houston in 2017, the fans voice their displeasure.

The Astros have avoided a repeat of last year’s on-field skirmishes, when Dodgers reliever Joe Kelly emptied the benches by blowing a raspberry at Correa, and when hitting coach Álex Cintrón incited Oakland outfielder Ramón Laureano to charge the dugout. The venom has been limited to the stands. If anything, the scandal has acted as a stimulus for stores that sell inflatable trash cans and Oscar the Grouch costumes. Some Astros believe it has deepened their own bond.

“It takes something special to wear Astros across your chest,” Taylor said after the series in Los Angeles. That sentiment stuck with Odorizzi. “We’re all in this together, regardless of whether we were here for it,” he says. “We’re all going to get booed the same. We’re all going to get ridiculed the same. So the only group that matters is the group wearing this [jersey].”

The links to the past involve more than the uniform. Several newer Astros spoke about the depth of the group’s bond and the clarity of their collective vision. Those ties begin, of course, with the players who have already won — the players who were there for the trash cans and the cameras. In that sense, the connection between 2017 and 2021 is inextricable. And, when the players venture outside of Houston, it is impossible to ignore.

For the pitchers, the treatment resides somewhere between an annoyance and a source of amusement. Kendall Graveman faced the Astros three times with Oakland in 2017. He relieved for Seattle up until a trade on July 27. Soon after, Graveman joined his new teammates at Dodger Stadium. “I’d only been there for like a week, and people were yelling at me,” Graveman says.

Ryne Stanek, a Ray in 2017, chuckled about recent additions like Garcia and Graveman. “They’re like, ‘You guys are cheaters!’” Stanek says. “They just got traded here — this week!” The treatment of García at Chavez Ravine particularly tickled him. “It’s like, ‘How do you not realize that he was on your team?’” he says. Stanek, a jovial fellow with a blond mane and a wicked splitter, could go for a while on this topic.

“Nobody is creative, either,” he says. “It’s the same thing everywhere. It’d be one thing if somebody was funny or made something up that was different than everything that’s been said the whole year. Which was been like the same six things, over and over and over again.”

A different moment stuck with McCullers. In Cleveland, he heard fans harangue Michael Brantley, who made three All-Star teams with the Indians and didn’t sign with the Astros until 2019. “People were yelling that he’s an effing cheater,” McCullers says. “And we’re like, ‘He was playing for Cleveland during that time.’ But people, they just don’t care.”

The sports world needs villains, even if those wearing the black hat reject the label. McCullers was irritated last October by stories suggesting the Astros intended to win a title to spite all the teams who ripped them the previous spring. “We weren’t trying to spin it,” he says. “We were the bad guys of the story. We were just trying to go out there and play good baseball.”

McCullers suggested the Astros occupied a place similar to the New England Patriots. After Spygate and Deflategate, the Pats just kept winning. McCullers signed an $85 million extension with Houston through 2026 because he feels his organization can do the same.

“You can’t go back,” McCullers says. “You can’t change the past. I’m not asking anyone on the road, any player, any fan, to feel a certain way. You want to come out and boo us, if that’s what makes you feel good, then, by all means, come out and boo us.”

McCullers does not believe Houston requires another ring to validate the one in his closet. And he does not think a second ring would lessen the jeers spewed toward those who received the first.

“I don’t think people want to move past it, if that makes sense,” McCullers says. “There’s only a couple guys left on the team. And maybe, after this year, even less.”

GettyImages-1332360849-scaled-e162912347
Lance McCullers Jr. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea / Getty Images)

In the hours before he arrived at Dodger Stadium earlier this month, James Click made a cautious decision. He muted his wardrobe.

“I’ll be honest: In L.A., I wasn’t wearing team gear,” Click says. “I was wearing orange. But I wasn’t wearing, like, Astros gear.”

Click, 43, has been Houston’s general manager for 18 months. He had spent the entirety of his baseball career in Tampa Bay before Crane hired him to replace Luhnow. He believes he has learned more about the members of his organization in the past six months than the first 12. In some ways, he says, he can only speculate how the players process their reception. “I would be speaking out of turn if I said I had any inkling what they are going through,” Click says.

Little about Click’s first year was tidy. The Click family did not leave St. Petersburg for Houston until June, as the sport remained shut down. Click tried to learn names and faces across Zoom. When the games began, the Astros had a chance to prove they did not need to cheat to hit. It did not go well: Altuve batted .219 and Correa posted a .709 OPS, the worst of his career.

As the team stumbled through the 60-game season, the players insisted to Baker and Click they would revive themselves if they reached the playoffs. Click was skeptical. But the Astros made good on their promise. The performance in October only made the regular-season malaise more puzzling. “I think it is incredibly difficult to figure out how to handle what happened in 2020, both from a baseball perspective and just a humanity perspective,” Click says.

Click has fewer reservations about the readiness of this year’s club. “It is rare in this game to be on a team that has this kind of talent,” he says. He altered the edges of the roster while benefiting from the inherited core. Altuve and Correa have rebounded into All-Star form. Both are hitting, and Altuve has rectified the throwing issues that overwhelmed him last October. The duo, along with fellow All-Stars Brantley and reliever Ryan Pressley, skipped the festivities in Denver last month. Some wondered if the players wanted to avoid getting booed by the crowd or iced by their peers. Altuve suggested he needed to rest after an unspecified leg injury. He wanted to be as healthy as possible for what could be his final season sharing a clubhouse with Correa.

Alone among the active 2017 group, Correa is not under team control beyond 2021 (Justin Verlander, who is rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, will also be a free agent). In April, Correa told reporters he rejected an extension offer worth $120 million across six seasons and a second proposal worth $125 million across five. That proposal would soon be dwarfed by the deals struck by fellow shortstops Fernando Tatis Jr. ($340 million) and Francisco Lindor ($341 million). The Astros can afford to bring Correa back. But he speaks about this season with something approaching finality.

“My last year with the Astros, hopefully we can win another championship,” Correa says. “I can leave this great organization with two of them.”

Click harbors similar ambitions: “Our goal is to win as many World Series as possible over the foreseeable future,” he says. Whether those teams include Correa will depend on the volatility of the market and the willingness of Crane to win the bidding. In the interim, Correa remains a vital contributor to what Click describes as “the brotherhood that they have in the clubhouse.” The Astros, Click is quick to point out, have grown accustomed to hostilities on the road. The outpouring of disdain won’t derail them, he says. They aren’t built like us.

“Look, I’ve been at Fenway in the playoffs,” Click says. “And I can say that I’m glad that the athletes are the ones in the field in that situation, and not me, because it has an effect. At least, it has an effect on me. But there are innumerable things that separate those guys from me, and normal human beings, and maybe one of them is the ability to zone that out. Whatever it is, I’m beyond impressed by it.”

Carlos Correa and Jose Altuve
(Brian Rothmuller / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Where Jose Altuve keeps his ring, and what it means to him, is unclear. He presents himself as a closed book.

A few hours before a game in Kansas City last week, Altuve draped his arms over the dugout railing. He tucked his chin to the green padding. The Royals were taking batting practice. Reggie Jackson, an Astros advisor, was boogieing to “Caribbean Queen.” Altuve looked serene as he accepted a fist bump from a reporter asking if he had time to talk.

“Not right now,” Altuve said. He placed his fingertips on his temples and generated a smile. “I have to visualize before the game. It’s part of my routine.”

A team official described Altuve as “selective” in the interviews he grants. Those who know him say he has felt wounded by the criticism these past two years. His teammates have insisted Altuve disapproved of the cheating and asked that the trash can not be used during his at-bats. It did not matter. He did not stop the scheme. He benefited from its usage. As the face of his franchise, he became the face of its scandal. If that is unfair, well, so is using an unauthorized camera to intercept signs and transmit them in real time.

Correa calls Altuve “one of the greatest players to ever put on a Houston Astros uniform.” Fans call him something else. Altuve took the game’s opening at-bat that night. The response was immediate and typical. Howls. Expletives. Altuve made a first-pitch groundout. Head down, he jogged to his dugout.

“You’re a cheater!” a fan yelled. “You’re a cheater!”

A day later, Altuve emerged as the Royals warmed up. He was scooped off the ground by Kansas City catcher Salvador Perez, a childhood friend from Venezuela. From behind the plate, a Kansas City native named Brad Burger beckoned to Altuve. Burger asked for an autograph. Altuve scrawled his signature across Burger’s green notebook. As he made small talk with Burger, a few other Royals fans noticed. Soon Altuve was fielding a flurry of baseballs to ink.

One fan thumped his chest.

“You’re going above and beyond,” he said.

Altuve finished signing. The reporter caught his eye. Altuve shrugged and kept moving.

“Maybe next time, OK?” Altuve said.

“When might …”

He was gone before the question ended. Altuve bounded down the dugout steps and disappeared into the cocoon of his clubhouse. Burger and the Royals fans beamed at the autographs. Altuve knew that when he returned, 90 minutes later, no one would ask him to sign his name. They would only ask that he return his ring.

 

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Wulaw Horn

Wulaw Horn 18980

Posted
Posted (edited)
5 minutes ago, elguapo said:

Is there a reason we wouldn't just move Bregman to ss and have Diaz take over 3b?

Yeah- Diaz is made of glass and Bregman would go from a well above average 3b to a shitty shortstop, and there's a ton of talented SS available in free agency so it'd be pointless to do that.  You have to sign someone good to at least 4 years to keep this window open where we should be world series contenders for basically the entirety of LMJ's deal while the other starters are all under club control.


Also- Diaz deal is up after 2022, so I imagine that's his last year here.  

Edited by Wulaw Horn
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