The Houston Astros and the art of sucking

[bevo barry]

What I read here doesn't surprise me...I already knew that the Stros were gonna suck...but it is still depressing:

From Yahoo Sports

 

[petscii]

I suspect that the Astros wont finish the year dead last in the AL West.

 

[NB_LONGHORN]

stranger things have happened. we will still hit a few games this year. still love baseball, crummy team or not.

 

[ViperHorn]

Conventional wisdom says the Angles will win the division, but until 162 games are played we will not know. Every team has holes so the Astros are not as far behind as they appear to be now:Angels - Pitching and inconsistent play from everyone except Trout. Cannot wait for the first Hamilton slump/quitting spell.
A's - Overachieving rarely lasts more than one season.

M's - King Felix cannot pitch every day

Rangers - Pitching - Two championship quality starters and a championship level closer. With the exception of Ross and Lewis money could be saved by dumping the remainder of the staff and soliciting pitching prospects from the stands daily with the same results. Very disappointed in Nolan's seemingly consent to this staff. Hitting - if Berkman can have an average to above average season the run production might not suffer (see pitching - all available runs will be needed when Yu and Harrision are not starting). Fielding - The solid piece of the team (and will be better on the days Kinsler is not playing second base).

All in all every one should be chasing the Angles from day 1, but the remainder of the division should be interesting with injuries playing a big part of the final standings.

 

[Brad Austin]

Rangers have a better shot making the postseason this year than last. Pitching, pitching, pitching. The bats are still live enough to win consistently no doubt. Not to mention they just picked up extra wins over teams in other divisions that they may be in a wildcard race with. The Astros will help their cause greatly vs. other divisions contenders. By that of course I mean they play the Astros much more often and will get relatively easy wins for the most part. Wild card races typically come down to 1-3 games of separation. You can see the importance of them playing the 'Stros this season much more than the Yankees, Red Sox, etc.

 

[Brad Austin]

Just FYI...Rangers play Astros 18 times in 2013. Red Sox play them 7 times, and the Yankees play 6. It does have an effect. The Red Sox were the worst team in the East and still had 69 wins. Astros had 55 wins last year and it looks to get worse this year.

Playing in a division with a team 15-20 games worse than another division's bottom dweller does help in a bigger way than expected. For this to matter, the Rangers have to make sure they're at least in 2nd place in the West so they are not in a Wild Card race with a team from the West who plays a similar schedule.

If the Astros had been in the West in 2012, there is no way the Rangers would have ended the Wild Card tied with Baltimore...no chance. And it would have been all because of a handful of wins over the Astros that Baltimore had no chance for.

 

[lhbruleshalftime]

The current situation reminds me of our annual family trip to Houston in the early 70's to see a pro baseball game; Dad almost always picked the Reds vs. Astros so we could see one really good team.

 

[HornTYS]

speaking of the Astros....I'm not feeling the new/old uniforms.

I like the old style and the color combos....the font just really bothers me. Actually the font on that style uniform just doesn't fit.

 

[huisache]

I will watch just to check on Altuve's progress. He was only in CC with the Hooks a short time but he was more fun to watch than Hunter Pence.

But they do look to be insanely bad this year