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Astros 2024: The meaning of life

Front-end warning here: The definition of the meaning of life below should be taken with the same seriousness as that expounded in Monty Python’s Meaning of Life—maybe less.

Friends, Peers, Children of all ages. I’ve studied this question closely and as far as the meaning of life relative to sports goes – Money Rules All.

  • Who has the most control over our favorite team? The guy with the most money – Jim Crane. (Though someday some player may pass him….)
  • Of all the people invested in the Astros, who has the most control? Ditto Jim Crane
  • Why are guys with Hall of Fame credentials on the field but no credentials in the front office allowed to influence the machinations of the front office? The guy with the most money has said, “Make it so.”
  • Why was the GM (James Click), who oversaw the 2022 World Series championship, allowed to leave before the 2023 season began? JC (no not that JC) wanted it that way. And, of course, he has the most money.  
  • Why is the team going to great ends to try and resurrect a bat (Jose Abreu) that looked hopeless and aged the last time we saw him? Because he is due to make about $33 million over the remainder of his contract.
  • Why is the worst hitter (Alex Bregman) in the lineup with Abreu gone, hitting cleanup? Well, he is also the highest-paid player on the Astros ($30.5 million), and the Astros want to look like they are going to get their money’s worth along the way. Yes, Justin Verlander makes more than Bregman, but the Mets are picking up a big chunk of his salary.
  • When the Astros started the season without Justin Verlander, Jose Urquidy, Luis Garcia, Lance McCullers Jr., and soon also lost Framber Valdez and Cristian Javier, why did the team not sign one of the many free agent pitchers floating around to help them survive a very rocky start of the season? Well, I’m guessing it has to do with money.
  • Why does it cost an arm to get into a ball game and a leg to buy food, drinks, and souvenirs? Do I have to answer that?
  • Why do successful teams eventually hit the wall and digress? Follow the money. How much is a sunk cost that is not getting the value in return that it should earn?

This is probably an overly cynical tome at this time as Jim Crane, despite the complaints listed above, has been the best and most successful owner of the Astros. Under his guidance, the Astros have had an almost full decade of excellence, so if he gets blamed for a shaky start to 2024, he also deserves praise for what has happened up to now.

There are not many folks with the money to buy a baseball team, and the Houston fans have been lucky that Jim Crane led the successful bid to buy their team. But it is time for him to re-earn the fans’ trust.

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30 responses to “Astros 2024: The meaning of life”

  2. Re-earn the fans trust? I find that a little bit of an overreach. I like the rest of the fandom do not like the production to this point. But the goodwill of seven straight ALCS appearances should not be erased by a subpar 50 games. I think your most valid point is the question mark surrounding Click. That seemed to commence the unraveling of the fabric. When I heard Bagwell and others speaking about getting back to the basics of baseball and not relying so much on analytics… well I’ll just say I really liked him as a player. There is no accounting for Bregman. I think it is by now obvious Maldonado may have served as player coach with the pitching staff.(I think Framber has a hundred dollar arm and a ten cent head). Maybe, after Click the biggest miscue is Espada. Had he become too familiar as “old Joe”? What’s happened to Yordan? He is not the beast we expected. If “prominent” Astros were truly complaining about Joe’s communication, it only makes sense it had to be him and one or more of the back of the bullpen boys over a defined or perceived role. Cranes been good. He wouldn’t be the first to become star struck by the attention from hall of famers ( it’s just your money Jim) or convinced of his brilliance due to his good fortune ( God bless Jeff… Lunhow). We still have a chance to turn this around but Jim the businessman needs to over rule Jim the “baseball savant” identify his sunken cost and let the GM/Manager do their jobs.

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    • Overreach. After 50 subpar games calling the hiring of Espada the biggest miscue since Crane moved Click out as we were still celebrating a World Series win. The staffing committee did not give Joe much of a rotation to work with. They still have not provided stability at first base, even as a possible solution sits on the bench under their noses. As experts, maybe they should have seen yet another miserable start by Bregman or a continuance of Framber’s highly erratic play, all the way back to last years All Star break. Heck, even your player coach Maldonado could not fix Framber, not even for the post season. And assigning Yordan and or the back end of the pen to be alleged prominent Astros complaining about Joe’s communication? That stuff is unsubstantiated click crap we can read everyday if we want to.

      To this fan, I don’t have a whole lot of confidence that Joe and Dana are being allowed to play their roles fully. The Abreu situation is a folly at this point, changing daily. With a fair amount of hoopla, the club brought up our hottest prospect. He could have gotten squeezed into a game at first base. 20% of his minor league games were started at first. The stats are available. Instead we had a guy start over there last week with 18 innings of first base under his belt in 12 years of professional baseball. Never even played the position in the minors. So yeah, I don’t trust the mechanisms going on behind the scenes of our organization today. We lack transparent leadership. And it’s up to Crane to fix. If this team tanks in 2024, Crane might well lose half a million customers next year. That would hurt in several ways. It behooves him to fix the Astros.

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    • I always find the discussion between analytics and fundamentals an intriguing one. What surprised me is to hear a hall of fame player, and quite honestly my favorite player of all time, an analytical superstar, talk about it like its a one or the other approach. But the two things are symbiotic. Good fundamentals creates good analytics. Analytics are just results. Where those results turn predictive of future good results is simply looking at players with superior fundamentals.

      What makes Jose Altuve so exciting isn’t because he is analytic Jesus. He is. But really, its because you so rarely catch his hands out of position, or his footwork in the box getting sideways. His head stays down. His hips always lead the bat. His bat speed doesn’t see even micro adjustments, it’s just as consistent as the day is long. His swing looks the same as it did in 2014. You can say the same thing about most stars. Their backbone is fundamentals. That backbone builds things we can see in the numbers. One creates the other. I think that was Bagwell’s point. But I would disagree with his assessment of what you do in the front office.

      In the front office, you look for patterns in the numbers. And you make decisions about guys based on those patterns. Some are hits. Some are misses. But analytics are becoming popular because they miss a LOT less than some old ballplayers gut. The White Sox did not even give the idea of resigning Abreu a second thought. Their front office saw something ours didn’t, because ours, at the time, was being ran by a bunch of old dudes that happened to be very good at baseball one day long ago, very long ago for one of them, and didn’t see whatever it was in the White Sox front office that made them turn away from their fan favorite star. And the fact that they were outfoxed by the White Sox front office is unacceptable. The White Sox.

      Is there anything to the rumor that Click was not enamored with the power that Bagwell, Biggio or Jackson were demonstrating in personnel choices? Maybe. He certainly couldn’t have been happy with GM’ng by committee. Who knows what was happening in the halls of MMP. Maybe they were saying things during those golf games that made Crane go OOOOHHHH. I mean, Jeff Bagwell knows baseball. Every time he talks I stop and listen. But it’s very easy to mistake baseball acumen, on the field, for front office acumen. Jeff Luhnow is not going to break down how a pitcher is going to approach this at bat or how the hitter will, certainly he knows a little about it, but he ain’t going out there and executing it. Maybe Jeff should leave the player evaluation and personnel choice to people that spent their lives preparing for that job.

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  3. Interesting topic Dan. I still trust that Crane wants to win. I still trust that he doesn’t see a “window” that is closing.

    I can see the Jerry Jones comparisons. Come in, surround yourself with smart people. Win a bunch. Have an issue that comes along, fire those people, and then see the next guy (or people) win with the first guys players, and think, see, everything is OK. And then, you start seeing the holes. It is very possible the Astros go the way of the early 90s Cowboys, a franchise that never saw that run repeat despite having an owner who was willing to invest.

    The question is, can Crane not repeat the Jones mistakes? Can he recognize when he got bad advice? Can he pivot fast enough away from the people that are taking him down bad paths before it becomes another hard reset being necessary, knowing you don’t have the same guy to run that reset again?

    Can he say to himself, maybe it was more Jimmy Johnson than it was me, hey, I can’t get that guy back, but maybe I can find the next one? Maybe right now the guys I’m listening to aren’t those guys?

    I get where kelly is coming from. A bad 50 games isn’t the end all. And really, it was a bad 25 games followed by a better 25 games. They went from 12 games under to 6 today. Its probable they are .500 by 15 June. Maybe they still win this division.

    But the real question is the long term. Does he have the courage to put down those voices that gave him Abreu, Montero’s contract, that ignores young talent for underperforming veterans, can he find the next innovator that can find markets no one else touches, do they have the courage to bench veterans. They are smarter than us. But that is not a high bar. They have to be smarter than their competition, and that is a high bar.

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  7. I’m with Kelly on this one – fans don’t get to dump on their team who has run off unprecedented success and brought home so many pennants and WS trophies because of a bad stretch of games. If we’re being realistic, we should be about 8 to 10 games better in the win column right now. Glass half-full guy says if they just don’t beat themselves they’ll auto correct and win the division. Glass half-empty guy says the team has a lot of mileage on them and is history says they’ll run out of gas at some point.

    We skipped an MLB game in April in favor of seeing a AAA one because of obscene ticket prices. Last week we went to an Atlantic League game because my youngest son was part of a group singing the national anthem. Ticket prices were cheap and concessions were reasonable, but they really hit us hard on the souvenirs. It was still a great environment, beautiful night outdoors, and I got to see Delino Deshields, Clint Frazier, Keon Barnum, and a few other guys who never panned out attempt to look like ballplayers. Later this summer we’ve got tickets for a few more minor league teams, a college summer league game, and a game at Boston (puke). My kids will get to see a wide variety of teams and a lot of new stadiums. When I was their age we would have probably seen the same number of games or more, but they all would have been in Houston. I know a lot of people who just aren’t going to MLB games much anymore and price is the leading factor.

    I always thought the Bregman extension was premature and a move dreamed up and executed by Crane. Realistically, we applaud the idea of locking players like Bregman or Tucker up but have to be prepared for the back end of those deals not panning out. A realistic question at this point is how much does he need to turn it around in order to be offered a contract next season? I’m sure Crane and his brain trust have been discussing the likelihood of finding a new 3B next season, but if Bregman can’t get the 9 figure deal he was dreaming of are we going to see Crane swoop in to give him an Abreu/Verlander type deal?

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    • Devin,

      Which fans here are dumping on their team? What I absorbed from Dan was a criticism of how the team is being run by a dubious management structure. And I agree.

      Bottom line though is that fans certainly get to dump on their team if they want to. But they should be prepared for further commentary when failing to provide factual criticism. Personally I welcome it.

      This little group here is pretty good about not saying F so and so or this guy is trash, or this guy is ass, which seems to be a popular refrain these days.

      Without our differing takes on issues, Chipalatta likely would have gone out of business years ago.

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      • While this is the only blog where I leave comments it’s not the only one I read. It’s always possible the other “Astros fans” are really trolls who cheer for another team and are just trying to get under our skin, but if you look around there are plenty of people who have written the team off and enjoy nothing more than dumping on them.

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  8. I wrote this piece to be a bit provocative. Sometimes I do that to get some discussion going.

    I am very thankful, as I said, that Jim Crane was the one that bought the team and brought us so much success over the last decade.

    I am afraid of where things are heading. Jim Crane would probably tell you that his success in his base businesses before buying the Astros was based on having the right people in place in those businesses, trusting their judgement and giving them the guidance and the resources for success. It is unfortunate what happened with Jeff Luhnow as I think he was the right person to guide them to long term sustained success and that was Luhnow’s fault, not Crane’s. But I think Jim Crane is struggling right now to find his “center” in guiding this team. All the folks that have left Luhnow, James Click, Reid Ryan, Mike Elias, David Stearns, Sig Mejdel and others have taken a piece of the team’s success with them and perhaps just like with the players, they may have reached a tipping point. I hope not.

    I have no problem with people disagreeing with me or with each other on the blog – just please remember this is fluff fun and please disagree in a respectful way.

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  9. Why does it cost an arm to get into a ball game and a leg to buy food, drinks, and souvenirs?

    . . . I’ll answer that! Because that’s exactly what fans are willing to pay. And has absolutely nothing to do with how much players are being paid (or the team is willing to spend on payroll).

    For better or worse Baseball is a for profit business and they will always charge as much as possible to maximize revenue.

    A more mysterious question is: Why are fans willing to pay high prices for tickets, crappy food, and sixteen different team jersey variations?

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    • I still own tickets in name only. Younger generations in the family have been paying for them for years now. Fair to say though, since soon after Crane took over, the Astros have put a good product on the field and marketed it well.

      When I go to games, we always eat somewhere on the way to the park.

      Occasionally I’ll get a new hat at Academy. I’ve not been in a stadium shop since the Dome.

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  10. I guess JL is relegated to the bench until Abreu shows up and he gets sent down. Really a shame to have a quality talent sitting anywhere.

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  12. Good morning!

    Man, that Urquidy injury is unfortunate for the team going forward, but mostly for Jose Urquidy. At this point, maybe the arm is just not going to hold up. I look at his work prior to 2023 and see really solid stats for a guy always willing to start, come out of the pen or do whatever. Remember he went 13-8 with a 1.17 WHIP in 2023 and was left off the ALDS and ALCS rosters, finally getting a chance to throw 3 shutout innings against the Phillies in the World Series. That’s depth.

    Jose Abreu did not have any hits last night, but did pull 2 grounders to the left side of the infield, the second one at 99.7. The swing does look better. Maybe a cortisone shot?

    Jake Meyers sure is producing. He does not need a scheduled rest day right now. I wonder what happens when the league stops throwing fastballs on the inner half though. Can he go to right?

    Yordan is hitting .356 with a .934 OPS against lefties. He’s hitting .217 against righties. That will change any minute now.

    If the Astros play .525 ball on the road and .625 ball at home for the balance of the season, that’s 87 wins. It would not be a remarkable feat. Another streak or two and 90-95 wins would not be too big a reach.

    Now I’m getting carried away, but the West is so weak right now, we could be in first place by next weekend.

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  13. Urquidy – this feels like what we have seen with other pitchers like McCullers – trying to rest their way through forearm discomfort and eventually having surgery. I hope not and as they say I am not a doctor, but it sure has happened before.

    Abreu – Sharp groundouts might be a slight improvement….yes, if he hits like he did at times in the second half of 2023 and the post-season that would be better than Singleton, but I’m not counting on that.

    Meyers – he did hit a slider last night even if it was a spinner inside. Right now he is so locked in he is hitting whatever mistakes are made. He will cool down, but I think he is a much better fundamental hitter than he was.

    Overall – right now they are like the three guys running away from a jaguar. They don’t have to outrun the jaguar (Yankees, Guardians, Orioles, etc.) – they just have to outrun the Rangers and the M’s. They are a 1/2 game back of the Rangers (tied in the loss column) and 3-1/2 games back of the M’s (3 in the loss column).

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  14. didn’t see the game and glad I didn’t but the burning question is why is Bergman batting cleanup or maybe why is he even in the line up? What a waste of 30mm

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      • If I have one problem with Joe Espada, it’s his insistence to try and get another inning out of his starters when it’s clear they are gassed. Every guy in the pen would much rather come in and start an inning. That said, great job by Ronel!

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  15. I feel your bewilderment,Z. Espada slotted Diaz back because of regression chasing. He slotted Abreu back because he wasn’t hitting at all. Pena and Meyers slotted down for hitting well. Under no circumstances would I slot Bregman in the 4 hole like Espada does now until his AB’s improves.

    Yipes, back-back DP’s!

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    • I forgot about Bregman hitting clean up. Gosh what happens tomorrow when Bregman and Abreu are both in the starting 9?

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    • That they did 1oldpro. 2 of 3 on the road against anyone is a good thing. Heck, I’d take 2 of 4 in Seattle.

      Should be an interesting week. Jose Abreu is back. A bit of our future has been dismissed for the time being. But considering all options, it’s the best move for JL at this time. He should have been playing somewhere last week. But alas, the club is trying to salvage a significant investment. I just want to see a quick resolution but how? I suppose a .700 OPS will keep him around. But how long can Jose hang on with a .500 OPS?

      We’ve lost two of our four planned starters for this series and the immediate future for both Urquidy and Javier is cloudy. I have to admit though, I’m wondering why Reptil made two starts in which he only hit 91 a couple of times.

      Our pitching has largely stabilized. Can that continue? Remarkable that after the Rockies, we still have the second worst team WHIP in MLB. An Astro team? But Scott keeps helping. Most of the guys we counted on are settling in. If there was ever a time for Framber to string together a bunch of quality outings, it’s now. Brown and Arrighetti have become essential components of the rotation. They have to pitch that way.

      When I look at our line up, it’s amazing to me the Astros lead MLB in BA. They’re 4th in OPS. 3rd in SLG and OBP. 5th in homers. Last in strike outs. But we’ve got a lot of guys that are not hitting, including Altuve. And yet we’ve still got one of the best offenses in MLB. I think the Astros can and will improve offensively at some point.

      I just don’t know if our pitching can keep us in enough games.

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  17. Alex Bregman’s OPS of .601 over 216 plate appearances has been as hurtful to the Astros as Abreu’s pitiful stats over just 77 plate appearances. This is especially true when you consider that Bregman’s failures have come in the 2-3-4 spots in the batting order.

    I am very interested in seeing how the Astros fare in their next 30 games. Pretty bad against tough competition in April, pretty average in May against lesser teams.

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  18. I seldom comment on Astro P. The numbers, metrics, ect, out of my league. Ditto the offense, other than what I see. A few gms ago Blum showed a graphic on Alvarez. Can’t remember if it was swings/hits or strikes/ hits. From 2019-2022 Alvarez was in the 20-30% + range. Last yr it was 60+. It is at -1 this yr thus far. That revelation was jaw dropping not understanding what it meant.

    Blum also noted Yordan is chasing more & swinging at 1st P this season. Whatever Yordan is trying to accomplish is still a work in progress. No wonder then he has looked out of sorts to me.

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