With apologies to Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II and in-house parody songwriter Mr. Bill …..

Baseball organizations normally have some kind of philosophy they follow in building their teams. Some lean heavily on internal development. Some lean heavily on trades. Some lean heavily on going the free agent route to bring in key pieces.

We knew this, but it took Josh Reddick to make it official relative to the Astros’ current six-game losing streak. “It’s zero fun, I can tell you that,” Reddick said.

In 2019, MLB teams will be facing a single trade deadline at the end of July. The waiver trade deadline at the end of August is gone, so if a team wants to make their version of a Justin Verlander championship building trade, they better have their ducks in a row by 4 PM eastern…

The Astros and Yankees have a lot in common this season. They are both performing at high levels, and both leading their respective divisions after more than 40% of the season is gone (though the Yanks have the Rays breathing down their necks, while the Rangers are just breathing 9.5 games back of the ‘Stros).

There are certainly major reasons to not worry about the 2019 Astros.

Most Astro fans know the drill or at least think they do. The Astros traded reliever Josh Fields to the Dodgers for young Cuban Yordan Alvarez in 2016.

Today we return to an oldie but a goodie post called “What They Said / What They Meant”. As you may or not recall, an actual Astro related quote from mlb.com is cited in baseball-ese – followed by an interpretation of what the speaker really meant.