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2023 Official Astros World Champs Offseason Thread

tx 3 putt

By tx 3 putt
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tx 3 putt
tx 3 putt

You wanted us. You got us.  You got your asses beat !   Let's do it again in 2023     

henrygandorf
henrygandorf

love these articles and comments from the mlb media about marring a world series or how the baseball world will be critical of the astros for this move. get. the. fuck. out. with. that. nonsense.

MaybeACoordinator
MaybeACoordinator

Going through old pics because of the death of my grandmother / mom and came across this -- 1996, my son's first Astros game.

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9498

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4 hours ago, Scraps said:

Lol @ OD prices. Passed and bought friday/saturday. Will just wait and see how much I can grab a SRO ticket at 5:15 opening day

Got tickets for the Saturday afternoon game against the phillies

Passed on Father’s Day weekend tickets against the reds which were substantially higher than that Phillies series.

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billfromlaketravis

billfromlaketravis 11517

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Well John and Lance went full on clickity clackity this morning on 97.5 and hosted Drellich. Reasons why this shouldn't have happened : 

1) Drellich was trying to promote his bullshit book in Houston. 

2) John and Lance will never be confused for journalists, so of course they asked him a bunch of amateur hour questions without follow ups. Drellich worked them like Woodward and Bernstein on the third hour of GMA. 

3) Drellich is a professional troll much like Bohls, Golden, and Mike Finger. The cutesy, tongue in criticisms of the team got him run out of Houston and Boston. 

John's criticism after the interview was nothing Drellich wrote about was in Astroball. Thanks John. Don't quit your day job of golf and Coors Light. 

Drellich's point is that Luhnow/Crane created a toxic work culture that Crane has continued. And that this culture is so poor that it's not worth selling your soul to win the World Series Titles. 

Uh, WTF? Not a single person living in Houston believes that. 

 

I think what Drellich fails to recognize is that teams with toxic cultures don't win. The Astros win. 

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HtownHorn

HtownHorn 14724

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34 minutes ago, billfromlaketravis said:

Well John and Lance went full on clickity clackity this morning on 97.5 and hosted Drellich. Reasons why this shouldn't have happened : 

1) Drellich was trying to promote his bullshit book in Houston. 

2) John and Lance will never be confused for journalists, so of course they asked him a bunch of amateur hour questions without follow ups. Drellich worked them like Woodward and Bernstein on the third hour of GMA. 

3) Drellich is a professional troll much like Bohls, Golden, and Mike Finger. The cutesy, tongue in criticisms of the team got him run out of Houston and Boston. 

John's criticism after the interview was nothing Drellich wrote about was in Astroball. Thanks John. Don't quit your day job of golf and Coors Light. 

Drellich's point is that Luhnow/Crane created a toxic work culture that Crane has continued. And that this culture is so poor that it's not worth selling your soul to win the World Series Titles. 

Uh, WTF? Not a single person living in Houston believes that. 

 

I think what Drellich fails to recognize is that teams with toxic cultures don't win. The Astros win. 

So, toxic that the Astros have run off a streak of 6 straight ACLS's, 4 WSs and 2 titles. Not to mention, we have a HOF manager that loves it here, and Biggio's college teammate managing the front office.

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tx 3 putt

tx 3 putt 77063

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36 minutes ago, billfromlaketravis said:

 

Drellich's point is that Luhnow/Crane created a toxic work culture that Crane has continued. And that this culture is so poor that it's not worth selling your soul to win the World Series Titles. 

Uh, WTF? Not a single person living in Houston believes that. 

 

I think what Drellich fails to recognize is that teams with toxic cultures don't win. The Astros win. 


Angry Season 4 GIF by The Office
 

whatever helps him sleep at night 


another tittle would be nice, let the haters hate 

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rvm96

rvm96 1643

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4 hours ago, Dutchrudder said:

On the bench would be:
Yuli
Pena
Chas
Vasquez
Dubon
Marwin
 

Lots of good pitchers left out of that list too. They would have quite the Bullpen.  

 

Did you really just put Dubon on the best team of the past 5 years? No disrespect to the WS champion but come on

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Wulaw Horn

Wulaw Horn 19099

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8 minutes ago, rvm96 said:

Did you really just put Dubon on the best team of the past 5 years? No disrespect to the WS champion but come on

I don’t ever understand the point of these things. Are those the best years of those guys?  Are we forming a team of them right now?  What’s the point? 

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9498

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1 hour ago, Wulaw Horn said:

I don’t ever understand the point of these things. Are those the best years of those guys?  Are we forming a team of them right now?  What’s the point? 

This.

so dumb.

Half of the teams in the league would look unbearable  if you did this.

 

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mycox

mycox 582

Posted
Posted (edited)
4 hours ago, billfromlaketravis said:

Well John and Lance went full on clickity clackity this morning on 97.5 and hosted Drellich. Reasons why this shouldn't have happened : 

1) Drellich was trying to promote his bullshit book in Houston. 

2) John and Lance will never be confused for journalists, so of course they asked him a bunch of amateur hour questions without follow ups. Drellich worked them like Woodward and Bernstein on the third hour of GMA. 

3) Drellich is a professional troll much like Bohls, Golden, and Mike Finger. The cutesy, tongue in criticisms of the team got him run out of Houston and Boston. 

John's criticism after the interview was nothing Drellich wrote about was in Astroball. Thanks John. Don't quit your day job of golf and Coors Light. 

Drellich's point is that Luhnow/Crane created a toxic work culture that Crane has continued. And that this culture is so poor that it's not worth selling your soul to win the World Series Titles. 

Uh, WTF? Not a single person living in Houston believes that. 

 

I think what Drellich fails to recognize is that teams with toxic cultures don't win. The Astros win. 

Winning Fixes Everything is actually a pretty good book.  It's not just about the Astros cheating; he also gets into the Yankee, RedSox, and Dodgers cheating as well. It's been known around the league that the Astros had a toxic front office, screwed over players with bad contracts, and Luhnow being an unlikable guy.

I doubt Springer was very interested in resigning with the Astros after the way Luhnow treated him.

It's also a good book on how to not run a business if you want to keep people around and have a good reputation.

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YChang

YChang 3453

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47 minutes ago, mycox said:

Winning Fixes Everything is actually a pretty good book.  It's not just about the Astros cheating; he also gets into the Yankee, RedSox, and Dodgers cheating as well. It's been known around the league that the Astros had a toxic front office, screwed over players with bad contracts, and Luhnow being an unlikable guy.

I doubt Springer was very interested in resigning with the Astros after the way Luhnow treated him.

It's also a good book on how to not run a business if you want to keep people around and have a good reputation.

So was it a case of Crane trusting Luhnow blindly and now has course corrected? 

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mycox

mycox 582

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Crane just gave free rein to Luhnow and was clueless what was going on. Everything started to collapse during the 2018 season.

You can see Crane is more hands on now.

One of the final chapters is about changing the way, but Jim Crane is no saint either.

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rvm96

rvm96 1643

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4 hours ago, Wulaw Horn said:

I don’t ever understand the point of these things. Are those the best years of those guys?  Are we forming a team of them right now?  What’s the point? 

The way I would do it is pick the best out of their last 5 years.

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Wulaw Horn

Wulaw Horn 19099

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2 hours ago, rvm96 said:

I still can't believe he wanted to draft the child sex offender pitcher.

Oh I absolutely believed it. He was literally going to get a 1/1 talent for nothing. The guy did pitch for 3 years at Oregon state so there were 2 people in baseball ok with it. Luhnow and those guys. 

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rvm96

rvm96 1643

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2 hours ago, Wulaw Horn said:

Oh I absolutely believed it. He was literally going to get a 1/1 talent for nothing. The guy did pitch for 3 years at Oregon state so there were 2 people in baseball ok with it. Luhnow and those guys. 

Oregon St was okay with it when nobody publicly knew about it. Also still fuck that 

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mycox

mycox 582

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7 hours ago, rvm96 said:

I still can't believe he wanted to draft the child sex offender pitcher.

There was a half chapter dedicated to the Osuna fiasco as well. Luhnow was the only person int the organization that wanted the Osuna trade. He made that trade himself disregarding what others voted (again Crane had no clue). That was the moment Mike Fast decided to leave the Astros. He was planning on leaving anyway, but that was the last straw.

It was also an internal HR disaster.

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Seasick Sailor

Seasick Sailor 3747

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9 hours ago, rvm96 said:

I still can't believe he wanted to draft the child sex offender pitcher.

 

1 hour ago, mycox said:

There was a half chapter dedicated to the Osuna fiasco as well. Luhnow was the only person int the organization that wanted the Osuna trade. He made that trade himself disregarding what others voted (again Crane had no clue). That was the moment Mike Fast decided to leave the Astros. He was planning on leaving anyway, but that was the last straw.

It was also an internal HR disaster.

Is there any doubt that, if Luhnow were still the GM, Bauer would be on the roster?

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henrygandorf

henrygandorf 29192

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22 hours ago, billfromlaketravis said:

I think what Drellich fails to recognize is that teams with toxic cultures don't win. The Astros win. 

seems like a loss in the world series last year would've been better for his narrative.

flipped the other way, if we win g6 or g7 vs the nats, we're 3 rings in 6 years and staring down a legit dynasty.

nobody cares about the culture unless you're winning.  nobody gave a shit that the rockies cheated worse than pretty much any other team because they couldn't win shit.  fuck em all, let's go win again.

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henrygandorf

henrygandorf 29192

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abreu on the toxic culture in the astros clubhouse:

https://chicago.suntimes.com/sports-saturday/2023/3/3/23622977/jose-abreu-astros-white-sox-mlb-2023

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Jose Abreu on life with the Astros and leaving the White Sox, who ‘weren’t a family’ in 2022

“Sometimes,” Abreu said, “when you’re at a place where maybe you’re not being respected to the point where you think you should be, you just have to go somewhere else.”

By  Steve Greenberg

Mar 3, 2023, 6:00am PST

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — What will Jose Abreu miss about his life in Chicago?

The question appeared to knock the wind right out of him in a hallway outside the Astros’ spring-training clubhouse. He looked plaintively at both a reporter and the translator who assists him with interviews in English, shook his head from side to side and, for several seconds, said nothing. Emotion flooded across the 36-year-old slugger’s face.

“Remembering everything is hard,” the translator said, buying Abreu some time.

Finally, Abreu spoke in English.

“It hurts,” is all he said, and it showed.

Then he disappeared through the clubhouse door and back into his new, orange-and-blue reality.

Two days before hitting his first spring home run with baseball’s defending champions — a 437-foot bomb to left off the Cardinals’ Adam Wainwright — Abreu seemed happy enough in his new surroundings. He certainly has upgraded teams, leaving the White Sox behind after nine seasons and zero playoff series wins.

Or did the Sox leave him behind?

The Astros were thrilled to bring in Abreu — a former MVP admired throughout the sport for his diligent work ethic, his mentorship of younger players and, of course, his elite run production — on a three-year, $58.5 million free-agent deal. He will start at first base for baseball’s kingpins, who have taken part in seven of the last eight postseasons, advancing to four World Series and winning two of them.

But the Sox chose not to stay in the Abreu business, opting to clear a path at first base for 24-year-old Andrew Vaughn, a promising hitter. The Sox made Abreu an offer for 2023, he says, but the writing was on the wall.

He felt disrespected.

“Sometimes,” he said, “when you’re at a place where maybe you’re not being respected to the point where you think you should be, you just have to go somewhere else.”

It’s hard to imagine a better landing spot than the Astros, who are the betting favorites to be the last team standing in early November. Abreu arrived here several weeks before the opening of camp and quickly got his hooks into a few younger teammates, one of them shortstop Jeremy Pena, the reigning World Series MVP, with whom he worked out daily.

“Great dude, that’s all I can say,” Pena said. “He’s such a hard worker, the first one to come in and the last one to leave. You can just feel it from him, feel the way he’s leading by example. I think we’re clearly very lucky to have him on this team.”

As lineups and locker mates go, Abreu is part of a murderer’s row, with fellow former American League MVP Jose Altuve in the stall to the right of his, powerhouse Yordan Alvarez on the left and fellow stars Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker right in the vicinity. They’re all huge “Pito” fans already.

“This is an RBI machine we’re talking about,” Altuve said. “This is another great hitter in this lineup. He’s a leader, a great guy, a great hitter, a great player. I mean, come on, right?”

Abreu replaces longtime Astros first baseman Yuri Gurriel, who only once, in 2019, put up offensive numbers that approximated Abreu’s career season averages. There’s little question the champs got better.

It was initially reported that Abreu would bat sixth in the order, but manager Dusty Baker intends to move him around as needed to maximize the run-producing potential of a player whose 863 RBI since the start of the 2014 season are second-most in baseball. The only player ahead of him is the Cardinals’ Nolan Arenado, who had his biggest RBI seasons in hitter-friendly Colorado. And speaking of friendly, who wants to bet against Abreu topping the 100-RBI mark while aiming for the Crawford Boxes in left field at Minute Maid Park?

“What we need from him is just to be Abreu,” manager Dusty Baker said. “That’s why we got him. This guy is one of the premier run producers in baseball.

“I think driving in runs is part of the game that they don’t talk about much anymore. They talk about on-base percentage, talk about this, talk about that, but you’ve got to have somebody to drive them in.”

The Astros have communicated clearly with Abreu about specific areas in which they’d like to see improvement, one of them being avoiding hitting the ball on the ground in double-play situations. Abreu is pushing himself hard defensively on a team that’s famously good in the field — or, as Abreu put it, “exquisite.”

The communication thing is a live-wire subject because the 2022 Sox were deficient enough in that department — not just from the front office or manager Tony La Russa on down, but also between the players in the clubhouse — that more than one player has whispered about it since. Abreu, who had as much credibility as anyone on that team, now is one of them.

“I think sometimes talking about the past can bring a lot of animosity,” he said, “but I think the best way I can put it is just that we weren’t a real family. And I’m hoping maybe [the Sox] can get to a situation where a lot of the guys there that do deserve to be in a good situation, they can have it there and be able to win. But I don’t really have too much more to say about that.”

And how are things on the Astros’ side in this regard?

“These guys here, they’re a real family,” he said. “Obviously, I can see why the Astros organization has had as much success as they’ve had the last couple of years.”

Abreu has been communicating with certain ex-teammates on a regular basis, still feeling “part of them” and “trying to get them to be better every single day.”

Asked to forecast the biggest Sox breakout in 2023, he said, “I’ll always put my money on Luis Robert. But Eloy Jimenez is another guy who has a ton of talent, he just needs to stay healthy. [Yoan] Moncada, we all know his potential and the things he can do. Andrew Vaughn is another guy with a lot of potential.”

He wishes all of them well and says he isn’t bitter toward the Sox. But he is stung. He absolutely wanted to finish his career on the South Side. More than anything, he wanted to win a World Series there.

“It was my fervent hope that Jose would never wear another uniform, as I told him many times through the years,” Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf said in an official statement after Abreu and the team split apart. “Unfortunately, hope is not always translated into reality.”

Hope — instead of actions — didn’t get the job done.

“It’s definitely all a little strange,” Abreu said. “But I’m OK. I’m good. I’m working with the champs. It’s a great opportunity.”

And he earned it.

 

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