Category: Astros
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Nothing’s changed: Pitching and defense still wins baseball games
In football, if you can’t run the football and play defense, you aren’t going to win many games. In hockey, a strong goalie — or not — often defines your win-loss record. In baseball, it’s pitching and defense. History is replete with examples of great hitting teams that run up against good pitching and fall…
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Untouchables: Ranking the Astros’ core and nucleus
Most valuable? Most difficult to replace? Most sought after? Untouchables? Available? Houston has a long list of players that other teams covet. There are some that could be pried loose and others who aren’t going anywhere. But which players are the most coveted and which ones might be available are probably in the eye of…
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Hey MLB, when are you going to punish the Cards?
Between 2013 and 2014, Chris Correa, the St. Louis Cardinals’ scouting director at the time hacked into the Houston Astros’ servers multiple times and accessed confidential data about potential Astros’ draft picks, player information and trade talks among other information that he should not have seen from one of his 29 competitors. Federal prosecutors estimated this action as costing…
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Free Blog Weekend: Backwards thinking, drools and futures
It’s Friday and if you’ve been around these parts for long, you’ve come to expect a Free Blog Weekend from time to time. It’s a tradition that emanates from my radio background when the old DJ used to offer Open Mic Friday and anyone could chime in on any subject they wanted. In other words,…
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Are sabermetrics sucking the life out of America’s past time?
Recently on these pages, a new stat was introduced to followers that apparently is “all that” in ranking pitchers. Over the past decade, sabermetrics and sabermetricians have become as popular as flies on a cow’s tail, and while many of those stats may have merit, those of us old schoolers are often pessimistic, skeptical and…
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Astros’ orbit: Spending moves budget into all-time high…already
This time last year, the Astros were involved in what was a ho-hum off-season. Houston had just non-tendered Chris Carter, traded Hank Conger to the Rays for cash, and Jeff Luhnow was about to make his biggest splash of the winter, trading former #1 Mark Appel, Vince Velasquez, Brett Oberholtzer and others for Ken Giles.…
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How does that Astros’ 2017 World Series prediction look now?
Any questions you may have had previously about Jim Crane putting up the money and any questions about whether Jeff Luhnow could spend it wisely should be out the door for the time being. Those soothsayers and prognosticators about the Astros’ World Series chances in 2017 look a lot smarter this morning too. When you…
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Random questions in a random Astros’ off-season
Sometimes the mind wanders, especially the sporting mind in the middle of the 2016-2017 hot stove league. So, here are some random questions to chew on for the next few days. Did Brent Strom get really stupid in one season? The pitching probably over-performed in 2015. Was that mostly due to Strom? Did the “modification” to…
ALL THINGS ASTROS 