Today is a simple post from your Astro blogger and counsellor. Please, answer the following and your loyal servant will give you the correct numbers below:

The Astros’ front office — due to the team’s great success — has gone through a bunch of turnover in the last few years. This has included David Stearns becoming GM of the Brewers, and Mike Elias becoming GM of the Orioles and bringing along Sig Mejdal to be his top assistant.

Time again for a Chipalatta special — the Free Blog Weekend. Our loyal readers can go in any direction you want as long as it has to do with the Astros or baseball and as long as it is fit for our blog family.

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).