2023 Official Astros World Champs Offseason Thread

[runthebone 7929]

Good job by Berman trying to get some info out of him.

[Js1 85056]

[The Dog 43771]

[UTexasFight 9369]

20 minutes ago, The Dog said:

Try to do it in 173 or 174 games this time.

[tx 3 putt 76159]

 

[tx 3 putt 76159]

[runthebone 7929]

Did this long ass article on Dusty not get posted?

https://theathletic.com/4122795/2023/01/25/dusty-baker-mlb-astros-bill-walsh/

 

Spoiler

theathletic.com

Dusty Baker on lessons from Bill Walsh, Hank Aaron, Jack Ramsay and more

Daniel Brown
 

Dusty Baker guided the Houston Astros to a World Series title last November and, to hear him tell it, it’s in no small part because he once caught a wayward spiral from Joe Montana in 1981.

Baker was a visitor on the sidelines of 49ers training camp that year because of an MLB players’ strike that provided some unexpected free time from his day job as a Dodgers outfielder.

“I had a homeboy from Sacramento, (receivers coach) Milt Jackson, who asked me to come to practice,” Baker recalled during a phone interview last week. “So, I’m standing over there and Joe threw an errant pass. I caught it one-handed because I prided myself on that when I played football.”

The grab caught the attention of a white-haired and still obscure head coach who spent that ’81 camp stealthily constructing the framework of a team on its way to its first Super Bowl title.

“Milt says to Bill, ‘Hey, man, you know who this is?’” Baker recalled.

Bill Walsh didn’t recognize the ballplayer at the time. But Walsh would eventually become one of the most influential mentors in Baker’s life. They crossed paths again years later, in the early 1990s, when Walsh was at Stanford and Baker was up the road starting his managerial career with the Giants. Walsh remembered the catch — they joked about it to break the ice — and the two were soon off and running with a friendship that blossomed into a full-fledged teacher/student relationship.

“This is no lie — I have about 72 cards, handwritten cards (from Walsh) on just different things,” Baker said. “Coaches meetings, rookie orientation. How to treat people. How to treat the wives. How to treat the mothers. Being on time. When to bust your butt in practice, when to give players leeway and free time. Just, everything.

“So, I go back and glance at them when a problem comes up and I think about Bill, you know?”

Bill Walsh is among the many tutors Dusty Baker looks back on as he receives an award from the Positive Coaching Alliance. (Arthur Anderson / Associated Press)

Baker, 73, thinks about Walsh and his other mentors a lot. That’s generally true, anyway, but it was acutely so on the night of Nov. 5 when Kyle Tucker caught a pop fly off the bat of Nick Castellanos for the final out of Game 6 of the World Series against the Philadelphia Phillies.

With that, Baker had his first World Series title as a manager, an elusive triumph he owes to Walsh, yes, but also to elementary school teachers, ministers, youth league coaches, farm league directors, Hall of Fame players and anybody else who ever gave him sound advice.

“I thought about them the entire journey,” Baker told The Athletic. “They kept me motivated. A lot of them have passed on over the years, but that doesn’t delete the influence that they had in my life.”

Baker will get a chance to thank as many of them as he can when the Positive Coaching Alliance presents him with a lifetime achievement award on Thursday at Chase Center in San Francisco.

The Game Changer Awards offer Bay Area athletes an annual platform to salute “the profound influence of coaches on their lives and the community.” The ceremony will air Feb. 1 at 9 p.m. on NBC Sports Bay Area.

A’s manager Mark Kotsay will honor the late Augie Garrido, his coach at Cal State Fullerton.

Giants pitcher Logan Webb will thank Rocklin (Calif.) High School coach Jason Adams.

Warriors forward Kevon Looney will salute his AAU coach, Shelby Parrish.

Baker will honor … well, buckle up. During a 40-minute conversation with The Athletic in advance of the ceremony, the manager mentioned 23 people whose wisdom he absorbed along the way.

When he raised the Commissioner’s Trophy toward the sky on that November night, it was as if he was raising a toast to all of them.

“I really wasn’t overjoyed for me,” Baker said of that moment. “I was really happy for all the people who had shown faith in me. And also for people that I didn’t even know that were having struggles in life and persevered.”

Based on this conversation, here are just a handful of the names who could get a shoutout Thursday night.

Johnnie B. Baker Sr., father

The man poised to win a lifetime achievement from the Positive Coaching Alliance was repeatedly cut from his Little League team for being a negative presence.

Dusty got the boot at age 8 when he hurled his bat at the backstop after striking out.

At 9, it was because he threw down his glove and stomped on it after dropping a ball during tryouts.

At 10, it was because a friend on the opposing team beaned him in the head with a pitch, just as he said he would. Dusty decided this time he was done. He’d give up Little League and deliver newspapers instead.

But the coach who kept cutting him was also the man who refused to let him leave. Johnnie B. Baker Sr. sat his son down for a talking to and finally got through.

“My dad told me that if I could take that bad attitude and put it in a positive direction that I could be someone someday,” Baker said.

It’s a lesson that helped him manage his own hard cases over the years.

“It’s why I have a special spot in my heart for the underdog or for kids that have bad attitudes,” Baker said. “Most of those bad attitude kids don’t know how close they are to success. Because there’s a certain amount of strength in the kind of stubbornness it takes to have that bad attitude. … If you can channel it in the right direction, it can take you to heights that other people might not see.”
Eli McCullough, basketball coach

Baker spent his early years in Riverside, Calif., but when Dusty was 14, his dad, a defense industry worker, took a job at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento.

Baker wound up at Del Campo High, where upon arrival he looked around the peculiar student body and turned to his brother, Victor, with a question.

“Do you see any other Black kids here?”

The answer was no. But Baker’s personality helped him fit in just fine. It helped that an attentive basketball coach helped him feel welcome. To this day, he refers to him as Mr. McCullough.

“He gave me the key to the gym,” Baker said, “because he knew how badly I love to play.”

Mr. McCullough also helped him in unseen ways. He helped Baker navigate the pain of his parents’ divorce during his senior season. The thing is, Baker never mentioned it.

“He just recognized personality changes in my actions,” Baker said. “That’s something I use to this day. Like, if you talk a lot and all of a sudden you’re not talking. If you’re mad all of a sudden after usually being happy. I use that a lot in my coaching today.”

Hank Aaron, Braves teammate

Famously, Baker was on deck when Aaron surpassed Babe Ruth with record homer No. 715. Lesser known is that Aaron called his shot, if only to Baker just as he was stepping to the plate. “He wasn’t bragging,” Baker recalled. “He just said, ‘Hey, I’m going to get it over with right now.’”

The prediction was not unusual. Aaron used to tell Baker all the time how an at-bat would play out — what the pitcher was going to try to do and what Aaron was going to do to homer anyway.

It took a while for Dusty, who was in his early 20s while with Atlanta, to realize that Aaron wasn’t showing off. Hammerin’ Hank was trying to teach Baker and other young players the nuances of mental preparation.

Aaron would often end his lessons with “Do you understand?” Baker always said yes, even though he didn’t. Aaron wasn’t fooled by the blank stare but kept dispensing wisdom with the hope it would someday sink in.

“He would tell me, ‘Hey, look, retain what I’m telling you and then four or five years from now, you might see that same thing that I told you,’” Baker said. “And there were instances, three, four or five years later — in a game or in life — when I would say, ‘Hey, that’s what he was talking about.’”

Al Attles / Jack Ramsay, NBA coaches

As the Walsh advice demonstrated, the principles of Hall of Fame coaching apparently extend across sport lines. Baker was 16 when he was named the MVP at the Squaw Valley Basketball Camp, which is where he met Al Attles as well as All-Star forward Rick Barry. The coach and the player would later help lead the Golden State Warriors to their first NBA title in 1975.

Attles has remained with the Warriors in some capacity for more than 60 years, so Baker and Attles reconnected during their shared time in the Bay Area.

“Whenever I was having problems, I could call Al,” Baker said. “One time, I said, ‘Kevin Mitchell doesn’t want to listen to me.’

“And he says, ‘Dusty, not everybody wants to get an A in your course.’ That’s what he told me. He said, ‘Some guys are satisfied with a B.’”

Ramsay, commonly known as Dr. Jack, was ranked among the league’s top-10 coaches as part of the NBA’s 50th anniversary. Baker and Ramsay once met at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco to discuss the art of game flow.

Ramsay said he’d watched enough Giants games to recognize how Baker was bringing a basketball mentality to the diamond.

“And that’s exactly what I was doing,” Baker said. “I was like, ‘Man, you picked that up?’

“He goes, ‘Yeah, I can tell you’re calling 20-second timeout when you go out there.’ You know, you’re breaking the opponents’ momentum.”

To this day, Baker still taps into some hoops strategy from the dugout.

“When you feel the action going your way, you rush ’em like it’s like a feeding frenzy. You hit and run. You steal. Boom, boom, boom,” Baker said.

“And then when stuff ain’t going right, you back up. Most of the action in baseball happens in a few seconds, just like in basketball. How many times have you been watching a basketball game, and you’re like, ‘Call timeout! Call timeout!’ Because the opponent can run off, like, 10 points in about 32 seconds. That’s what I try to do.”

Al Rosen, Giants general manager

Sometimes, the most impactful thing a mentor can do is spot something in you that you don’t see in yourself.

Such was the case with Al Rosen, the former 1953 AL MVP who later became a front-office executive. Rosen was the general manager of the Giants from 1985-92, which overlapped with Baker’s time as a coach (1988-92) before he became the manager.

“I always had somebody that believed in me,” Baker said. “Like, Al Rosen believed that I was going to be a fine field manager one day. Oh, he knew it before I did.”

It means a lot to him now, but it barely registered then.

“I didn’t want to hear what he had to say, really, about managing or coaching because that’s not something I thought I wanted to do,” Baker said. “So, a lot of times what I wanted and what was destined for me are two different things. It took me a long time to accept what was chosen for me.

“Because we all want to be in charge of our own destiny. But your time frame and the Lord’s time frame are sometimes completely opposite. And that’s what I’ve learned in my life. We want to be in control of some things, but we’re not in control of most things.”

Leonard Koppett, sportswriter

The Ivy League-educated scribe wrote with an erudite touch and specialized in analyzing the game within the game. He was one of the first writers to use statistics not readily found in box scores, incorporating them with his own observations to reach surprising conclusions. His book “The Thinking Fan’s Guide to Baseball” is considered one of the definitive works on the game.

All of this is to say that Leonard Koppett “got” Baker even as others were scratching their heads.

“Leonard Koppett was the first guy that approved of my managing. You know that?” Baker said.

When the Giants hired Baker as the manager in 1993, he initially savored being underestimated as a strategist. Managing hires, especially then, tended to be former catchers and pitchers. Baker, in contrast, was “an outfielder and an African American,” which meant he was doubly doubted.

“I like was like, ‘OK, man, well, I won’t let you know what I know,’” Baker said. “But I couldn’t fool Leonard. I can fool most people. I’m serious. Some of the other writers were like, ‘Man, that wasn’t very smart’ or ‘Why did you do this and that?’

“Leonard would just look at me during interviews. And later he’d say ‘You know, that’s pretty ingenious. These people, they don’t know what they’re looking at.’ Here I was, I was trying to out-dumb people playing like I didn’t know what was going on. Leonard knew exactly what was going on.”
One more from dad

As Baker’s playing career reached the end of the road, he had no interest in coaching. That’s when Johnnie B. Baker gave his son an attitude adjustment again.

“I remember my dad telling me that the Lord wouldn’t have put me in a position to meet such great men if I was just going to disappear with it,” Baker said. “He told me that the knowledge wasn’t mine to possess. He said it was my responsibility to pass it on to others the same way that has been passed on to me.”

For that, baseball will be forever grateful.

 

 

[Guest]

6 hours ago, tx 3 putt said:

Bailey Sports RSN going bankrupt …..

https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn28x0bLDoD/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

 

Bally Sports RSN's are preparing for bankruptcy, including 12 NHL networks.

The company called Diamond Sports Group

LLC, which runs Sincalirs sports channels, is reportedly $8.6 billion in debt. Sinclair is hoping to strike a deal to help them keep the channels operating thanks to bankruptcy.

In total, Sinclair owes $55 billion in sports-media rights, according to Bloomberg. A bankruptcy could put payments to the NBA and NHL at risk. It is being reported that Sinclair will skip a $140 million interest payment due in mid-February, starting a 30-day grace period for the company.

Sinclair has launched a $20 a month subscription service to get Bally Sports networks without cable TV.

So far, though, fans seem not to be running to the service in the numbers expected.

Sinclair will likely seek to end some contracts with teams and cut back on payments to others.

If I got legit access to Astros broadcasts on BSN where I live, the $20 month would be a no-brainer spend for my entertainment dollar.

[Macklemore 2898]

CSN Houston was great with a lot of local content and shows. ATT SportsNet is a shell of what CSN Houston was and is run on a shoestring budgets. At least they’re solvent which is better than the teams on Bally Sports.

Edited January 26, 2023 by Macklemore

[runthebone 7929]

7 hours ago, runthebone said:

Did this long ass article on Dusty not get posted?

https://theathletic.com/4122795/2023/01/25/dusty-baker-mlb-astros-bill-walsh/

 

  Reveal hidden contents

theathletic.com

Dusty Baker on lessons from Bill Walsh, Hank Aaron, Jack Ramsay and more

Daniel Brown
 

Dusty Baker guided the Houston Astros to a World Series title last November and, to hear him tell it, it’s in no small part because he once caught a wayward spiral from Joe Montana in 1981.

Baker was a visitor on the sidelines of 49ers training camp that year because of an MLB players’ strike that provided some unexpected free time from his day job as a Dodgers outfielder.

“I had a homeboy from Sacramento, (receivers coach) Milt Jackson, who asked me to come to practice,” Baker recalled during a phone interview last week. “So, I’m standing over there and Joe threw an errant pass. I caught it one-handed because I prided myself on that when I played football.”

The grab caught the attention of a white-haired and still obscure head coach who spent that ’81 camp stealthily constructing the framework of a team on its way to its first Super Bowl title.

“Milt says to Bill, ‘Hey, man, you know who this is?’” Baker recalled.

Bill Walsh didn’t recognize the ballplayer at the time. But Walsh would eventually become one of the most influential mentors in Baker’s life. They crossed paths again years later, in the early 1990s, when Walsh was at Stanford and Baker was up the road starting his managerial career with the Giants. Walsh remembered the catch — they joked about it to break the ice — and the two were soon off and running with a friendship that blossomed into a full-fledged teacher/student relationship.

“This is no lie — I have about 72 cards, handwritten cards (from Walsh) on just different things,” Baker said. “Coaches meetings, rookie orientation. How to treat people. How to treat the wives. How to treat the mothers. Being on time. When to bust your butt in practice, when to give players leeway and free time. Just, everything.

“So, I go back and glance at them when a problem comes up and I think about Bill, you know?”

Bill Walsh is among the many tutors Dusty Baker looks back on as he receives an award from the Positive Coaching Alliance. (Arthur Anderson / Associated Press)

Baker, 73, thinks about Walsh and his other mentors a lot. That’s generally true, anyway, but it was acutely so on the night of Nov. 5 when Kyle Tucker caught a pop fly off the bat of Nick Castellanos for the final out of Game 6 of the World Series against the Philadelphia Phillies.

With that, Baker had his first World Series title as a manager, an elusive triumph he owes to Walsh, yes, but also to elementary school teachers, ministers, youth league coaches, farm league directors, Hall of Fame players and anybody else who ever gave him sound advice.

“I thought about them the entire journey,” Baker told The Athletic. “They kept me motivated. A lot of them have passed on over the years, but that doesn’t delete the influence that they had in my life.”

Baker will get a chance to thank as many of them as he can when the Positive Coaching Alliance presents him with a lifetime achievement award on Thursday at Chase Center in San Francisco.

The Game Changer Awards offer Bay Area athletes an annual platform to salute “the profound influence of coaches on their lives and the community.” The ceremony will air Feb. 1 at 9 p.m. on NBC Sports Bay Area.

A’s manager Mark Kotsay will honor the late Augie Garrido, his coach at Cal State Fullerton.

Giants pitcher Logan Webb will thank Rocklin (Calif.) High School coach Jason Adams.

Warriors forward Kevon Looney will salute his AAU coach, Shelby Parrish.

Baker will honor … well, buckle up. During a 40-minute conversation with The Athletic in advance of the ceremony, the manager mentioned 23 people whose wisdom he absorbed along the way.

When he raised the Commissioner’s Trophy toward the sky on that November night, it was as if he was raising a toast to all of them.

“I really wasn’t overjoyed for me,” Baker said of that moment. “I was really happy for all the people who had shown faith in me. And also for people that I didn’t even know that were having struggles in life and persevered.”

Based on this conversation, here are just a handful of the names who could get a shoutout Thursday night.

Johnnie B. Baker Sr., father

The man poised to win a lifetime achievement from the Positive Coaching Alliance was repeatedly cut from his Little League team for being a negative presence.

Dusty got the boot at age 8 when he hurled his bat at the backstop after striking out.

At 9, it was because he threw down his glove and stomped on it after dropping a ball during tryouts.

At 10, it was because a friend on the opposing team beaned him in the head with a pitch, just as he said he would. Dusty decided this time he was done. He’d give up Little League and deliver newspapers instead.

But the coach who kept cutting him was also the man who refused to let him leave. Johnnie B. Baker Sr. sat his son down for a talking to and finally got through.

“My dad told me that if I could take that bad attitude and put it in a positive direction that I could be someone someday,” Baker said.

It’s a lesson that helped him manage his own hard cases over the years.

“It’s why I have a special spot in my heart for the underdog or for kids that have bad attitudes,” Baker said. “Most of those bad attitude kids don’t know how close they are to success. Because there’s a certain amount of strength in the kind of stubbornness it takes to have that bad attitude. … If you can channel it in the right direction, it can take you to heights that other people might not see.”
Eli McCullough, basketball coach

Baker spent his early years in Riverside, Calif., but when Dusty was 14, his dad, a defense industry worker, took a job at McClellan Air Force Base in Sacramento.

Baker wound up at Del Campo High, where upon arrival he looked around the peculiar student body and turned to his brother, Victor, with a question.

“Do you see any other Black kids here?”

The answer was no. But Baker’s personality helped him fit in just fine. It helped that an attentive basketball coach helped him feel welcome. To this day, he refers to him as Mr. McCullough.

“He gave me the key to the gym,” Baker said, “because he knew how badly I love to play.”

Mr. McCullough also helped him in unseen ways. He helped Baker navigate the pain of his parents’ divorce during his senior season. The thing is, Baker never mentioned it.

“He just recognized personality changes in my actions,” Baker said. “That’s something I use to this day. Like, if you talk a lot and all of a sudden you’re not talking. If you’re mad all of a sudden after usually being happy. I use that a lot in my coaching today.”

Hank Aaron, Braves teammate

Famously, Baker was on deck when Aaron surpassed Babe Ruth with record homer No. 715. Lesser known is that Aaron called his shot, if only to Baker just as he was stepping to the plate. “He wasn’t bragging,” Baker recalled. “He just said, ‘Hey, I’m going to get it over with right now.’”

The prediction was not unusual. Aaron used to tell Baker all the time how an at-bat would play out — what the pitcher was going to try to do and what Aaron was going to do to homer anyway.

It took a while for Dusty, who was in his early 20s while with Atlanta, to realize that Aaron wasn’t showing off. Hammerin’ Hank was trying to teach Baker and other young players the nuances of mental preparation.

Aaron would often end his lessons with “Do you understand?” Baker always said yes, even though he didn’t. Aaron wasn’t fooled by the blank stare but kept dispensing wisdom with the hope it would someday sink in.

“He would tell me, ‘Hey, look, retain what I’m telling you and then four or five years from now, you might see that same thing that I told you,’” Baker said. “And there were instances, three, four or five years later — in a game or in life — when I would say, ‘Hey, that’s what he was talking about.’”

Al Attles / Jack Ramsay, NBA coaches

As the Walsh advice demonstrated, the principles of Hall of Fame coaching apparently extend across sport lines. Baker was 16 when he was named the MVP at the Squaw Valley Basketball Camp, which is where he met Al Attles as well as All-Star forward Rick Barry. The coach and the player would later help lead the Golden State Warriors to their first NBA title in 1975.

Attles has remained with the Warriors in some capacity for more than 60 years, so Baker and Attles reconnected during their shared time in the Bay Area.

“Whenever I was having problems, I could call Al,” Baker said. “One time, I said, ‘Kevin Mitchell doesn’t want to listen to me.’

“And he says, ‘Dusty, not everybody wants to get an A in your course.’ That’s what he told me. He said, ‘Some guys are satisfied with a B.’”

Ramsay, commonly known as Dr. Jack, was ranked among the league’s top-10 coaches as part of the NBA’s 50th anniversary. Baker and Ramsay once met at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco to discuss the art of game flow.

Ramsay said he’d watched enough Giants games to recognize how Baker was bringing a basketball mentality to the diamond.

“And that’s exactly what I was doing,” Baker said. “I was like, ‘Man, you picked that up?’

“He goes, ‘Yeah, I can tell you’re calling 20-second timeout when you go out there.’ You know, you’re breaking the opponents’ momentum.”

To this day, Baker still taps into some hoops strategy from the dugout.

“When you feel the action going your way, you rush ’em like it’s like a feeding frenzy. You hit and run. You steal. Boom, boom, boom,” Baker said.

“And then when stuff ain’t going right, you back up. Most of the action in baseball happens in a few seconds, just like in basketball. How many times have you been watching a basketball game, and you’re like, ‘Call timeout! Call timeout!’ Because the opponent can run off, like, 10 points in about 32 seconds. That’s what I try to do.”

Al Rosen, Giants general manager

Sometimes, the most impactful thing a mentor can do is spot something in you that you don’t see in yourself.

Such was the case with Al Rosen, the former 1953 AL MVP who later became a front-office executive. Rosen was the general manager of the Giants from 1985-92, which overlapped with Baker’s time as a coach (1988-92) before he became the manager.

“I always had somebody that believed in me,” Baker said. “Like, Al Rosen believed that I was going to be a fine field manager one day. Oh, he knew it before I did.”

It means a lot to him now, but it barely registered then.

“I didn’t want to hear what he had to say, really, about managing or coaching because that’s not something I thought I wanted to do,” Baker said. “So, a lot of times what I wanted and what was destined for me are two different things. It took me a long time to accept what was chosen for me.

“Because we all want to be in charge of our own destiny. But your time frame and the Lord’s time frame are sometimes completely opposite. And that’s what I’ve learned in my life. We want to be in control of some things, but we’re not in control of most things.”

Leonard Koppett, sportswriter

The Ivy League-educated scribe wrote with an erudite touch and specialized in analyzing the game within the game. He was one of the first writers to use statistics not readily found in box scores, incorporating them with his own observations to reach surprising conclusions. His book “The Thinking Fan’s Guide to Baseball” is considered one of the definitive works on the game.

All of this is to say that Leonard Koppett “got” Baker even as others were scratching their heads.

“Leonard Koppett was the first guy that approved of my managing. You know that?” Baker said.

When the Giants hired Baker as the manager in 1993, he initially savored being underestimated as a strategist. Managing hires, especially then, tended to be former catchers and pitchers. Baker, in contrast, was “an outfielder and an African American,” which meant he was doubly doubted.

“I like was like, ‘OK, man, well, I won’t let you know what I know,’” Baker said. “But I couldn’t fool Leonard. I can fool most people. I’m serious. Some of the other writers were like, ‘Man, that wasn’t very smart’ or ‘Why did you do this and that?’

“Leonard would just look at me during interviews. And later he’d say ‘You know, that’s pretty ingenious. These people, they don’t know what they’re looking at.’ Here I was, I was trying to out-dumb people playing like I didn’t know what was going on. Leonard knew exactly what was going on.”
One more from dad

As Baker’s playing career reached the end of the road, he had no interest in coaching. That’s when Johnnie B. Baker gave his son an attitude adjustment again.

“I remember my dad telling me that the Lord wouldn’t have put me in a position to meet such great men if I was just going to disappear with it,” Baker said. “He told me that the knowledge wasn’t mine to possess. He said it was my responsibility to pass it on to others the same way that has been passed on to me.”

For that, baseball will be forever grateful.

 

 

The fact that the Positive Coaching Alliance event will include Kotsay's tribute to Augie is amazing.

[henrygandorf 29174]

 

[runthebone 7929]

Hiring Ausmus over the much more qualified Brown would be...horrific.

[Scraps 13531]

17 minutes ago, henrygandorf said:

 

I was there and get a massive boner everytime I watch this. Love this shot.

Edited January 26, 2023 by Scraps

[Seasick Sailor 3747]

Relevant to the hat discussion. These are supposedly the gold edition hats:

 

[texashorne 1177]

1 hour ago, henrygandorf said:

 

With the new playoff format, this series is always going to be significantly dangerous.. Especially after the week off. I'm happy we survived, and hopefully learned, from that experience. 

[Scraps 13531]

Very curious where the mlb shredder ranks Pena in SS tonight. A lot of contenders.

[Gourmand 7774]

 

[Guadaloopy 10903]

12 minutes ago, Gourmand said:

 

Yanquiel ~ Yankee Killer

Perfect fit for this team.

 

[tx 3 putt 76159]

1 hour ago, Seasick Sailor said:

Relevant to the hat discussion. These are supposedly the gold edition hats:

 

Meh 

will not buy 

[Gourmand 7774]

Dana Brown!

 

[tx 3 putt 76159]

[Seasick Sailor 3747]

7 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

Meh 

will not buy 

I agree it's meh. But I'll still end up getting one. 

[tx 3 putt 76159]

3 minutes ago, Gourmand said:

Dana Brown!

 

first two moves, extend Maton and dubon !

 

 

 

Edited January 26, 2023 by tx 3 putt

[Js1 85056]

So it wasn’t Ausmus or Bagwell? Duh

[tx 3 putt 76159]

[Seasick Sailor 3747]

Great hire.

Can you still call it a championship window if it never closes?

[Wulaw Horn 18963]

I didn’t think crane was actually a brain dead moron but the Ausmus stuff scared me. Glad to see a pro in the job. 

[runthebone 7929]

Nice, let's load up the farm system and...trade most of them to win more titles.

[Scraps 13531]

Best guy they interviewed so lets fucking go

[Chuckie Finster 22583]

Exhibit #129453 in "let's freak out about Crane before he makes the correct, logical decision in the end"

[tx 3 putt 76159]

 

we won the off season. Maybe we fafo and get some extensions done, but damn crane worked this off season like a chess master 

[Js1 85056]

2 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

Exhibit #129453 in "let's freak out about Crane before he makes the correct, logical decision in the end"

Also people who tried to read into Bagwell as if he’s not a famous face of the past for the franchise that Crane was putting out there at events until the new guy was hired. It didn’t mean he was going to be the GM. 

[kevwun 15595]

Praise Altuve

[tx 3 putt 76159]

4 minutes ago, Chuckie Finster said:

Exhibit #129453 in "let's freak out about Crane before he makes the correct, logical decision in the end"

[Amos Moses 795]

[The Dog 43771]

[texasdago 7550]

5 hours ago, Macklemore said:

CSN Houston was great with a lot of local content and shows. ATT SportsNet is a shell of what CSN Houston was and is run on a shoestring budgets. At least they’re solvent which is better than the teams on Bally Sports.

[texasdago 7550]

19 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

I didn’t think crane was actually a brain dead moron but the Ausmus stuff scared me. Glad to see a pro in the job. 

Honestly, we're talking Crane, not McNair...

https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/nfl-head-coach-openings-rumors-former-nfl-qb-josh-mccown-is-a-top-candidate-for-texans-job-per-report/#:~:text=Watch Live-,NFL head-coach openings rumors%3A Former NFL QB Josh McCown,for Texans' job%2C per report 

[Guadaloopy 10903]

[Frank Drebin 5625]

Tell me about Brown?

Also, Bagwell being the face of the franchise and helping mentor players/player development is a good thing (now that he is sober).

Always weird to me the thought (and perhaps truth) that he did not like analytics.  Bagwell's game was loved by the stats guys and he was one of the smartest players I have ever seen.  For his average speed, he might be the best damn instinctual and technically sound base runner I have ever seen.

[Mez2 4020]

crane fucks.

 

great hire, maybe we run it back and give everyone else a nice shitburger in 2023

[Seasick Sailor 3747]

7 minutes ago, Frank Drebin said:

Tell me about Brown?

 

[Mez2 4020]

3 hours ago, henrygandorf said:

 

i was at this game and then Game 6 of the WS. Those were 2 absolute mammoth shots which I will never forget, which also happened to be 2 of the Top, what, 8, homerun in Astros franchise history? Maybe even that's too low - glad the big slugger is on our side, if I ever have a daugter, she will be called Yordonna Vincette.

 

Narrator: this fucker ain't having any more kids. 

[Frank Drebin 5625]

5 minutes ago, Seasick Sailor said:

 

[Dutchrudder 11103]

Wow, great hire for GM! This team needs a scout-minded GM to help build up the ranks in the farm system! Let's goooooo

[WBT 20397]

This Dana chick seems like she fucks

[WBT 20397]

Also glad that the Atlanta area talent wasn't the deciding factor after all

 

 

 

 

 

[Guadaloopy 10903]

4 minutes ago, WBT said:

This Dana chick seems like she fucks

[Wulaw Horn 18963]

25 minutes ago, Frank Drebin said:

Tell me about Brown?

Also, Bagwell being the face of the franchise and helping mentor players/player development is a good thing (now that he is sober).

Always weird to me the thought (and perhaps truth) that he did not like analytics.  Bagwell's game was loved by the stats guys and he was one of the smartest players I have ever seen.  For his average speed, he might be the best damn instinctual and technically sound base runner I have ever seen.

Joe Morgan- most anti-  stat guy out there and most beloved by the advanced stats compared to more contemporary rankings. 

[henrygandorf 29174]

12 minutes ago, WBT said:

This Dana chick seems like she fucks

i have a feeling she's about to fuck the entire american league into submission.