There is always a mix of over-optimism mixed with down in the dumps pessimism in the springtime for baseball teams.

In a full disclosure statement from this blog – the idea for this post came from elsewhere.

It is another dreary Saturday in Houston as it feels like we can’t string more than one sunny day in a row into our weather forecast. Perhaps the beginning of the baseball season, still about three weeks away will bring a cure to the weather blahs as well as the baseball blahs.

The Astros had the best offense in the majors in 2017 and while their pitching soared to the top in 2018, their offense sank back towards the pack due to injuries and some lesser performances.

In 2017, the Astros Championship year, Carlos Correa, George Springer, Charlie Morton, Dallas Keuchel, Collin McHugh, and Lance McCullers missed significant time for the Astros. For players, we will say significant is at least 20-25 games (5 or more starts for starters).

The Astros knew heading into 2019 that decisions about the pitching rotation could be the most critical to their success this season and heading into the future.

Spring Training can be a little bit of a let down in the blog writing world. You bop around for a few months trying to stretch from the playoffs (if your team is lucky) to the start of spring training, throwing off every speculative non-story subject you can think of just waiting for ST to…

As we wait for the first Spring Training game on Sunday for our Astros, it is a good time to bring back a Chip Bailey tradition….Free Blog Weekend. As always, you can hit on any Astro subject you want, but here are a few things to toss out there for consideration.