{"id":11604,"date":"2011-08-08T07:01:34","date_gmt":"2011-08-08T06:01:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=11604"},"modified":"2011-08-09T12:54:44","modified_gmt":"2011-08-09T11:54:44","slug":"weekly-hit-ground-ball-do-the-astros-lite-make-a-mockery-of-the-majors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=11604","title":{"rendered":"Weekly Hit Ground Ball: Do the Astros-lite make a mockery of the Majors?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"WHGB11\"2011 is proving to be a long season in Houston.<\/p>\n

The recent trade deadline was a sad reminder for Astros fans of where their team has fallen to.\u00c2\u00a0 Losing fan favourite Hunter Pence to the Phillies and lead-off speedster Michael Bourn to the Braves was depressing enough.\u00c2\u00a0 Watching those players leave during the same period when Carlos Beltran moved from the Mets to the Giants made it even worse.<\/p>\n

The trade of Beltran didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t affect the Astros directly.\u00c2\u00a0 It was meaningful because it called to mind a very different, and much happier, time in Houston.<\/p>\n

The last time Beltran was traded in mid-season, it was the Astros who acquired him to add a spark to their 2004 postseason charge.\u00c2\u00a0 It was seven years ago; seven years that must seem like a lifetime.<\/p>\n

That feeling isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t limited to people residing in Houston. There is a decent smattering of Astros fans in Britain due to the team\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s period of success coinciding with MLB\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s stint on British terrestrial TV. Baseball arrived on Five in 1997 and that was the first year the Astros had made the playoffs since 1986.<\/p>\n

It started a ten year period when they finished first or second in the National League Central in every year except for a fourth-place finish in 2000.\u00c2\u00a0 Fans brought to the game by Baseball on Five knew the Astros as perennial contenders, led by the Killer B\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s of Bagwell, Biggio, Bell and then Berkman, with Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and Roy Oswalt ultimately providing the pitching to go along with the hitting.<\/p>\n

There are no Killer B\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in this Astros team.\u00c2\u00a0 Clint Barmes is a dedicated professional who gives his all, but he is about as lethal as a water pistol.<\/p>\n

Things are so bad that one Houston Press blog<\/a> went as far as to describe their lineup on 1 August as the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153worst lineup in Major League history\u00e2\u20ac\u009d.\u00c2\u00a0 There are people vastly more qualified than me that can assess the accuracy of that claim, but there\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s little question that it is an undistinguished group. Frankly, it looks Major League in name alone.<\/p>\n

And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s where the pain of Astros fans is joined by an uncomfortable feeling for others.<\/p>\n

The San Francisco Giants haven\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t played the Astros so far this season.\u00c2\u00a0 They will face Houston seven times over the next two months, after they have traded away their two best offensive players.\u00c2\u00a0 The Giants\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 main rivals for a postseason spot, the Arizona Diamondbacks, played the Astros three times at the end of May.\u00c2\u00a0 They won all three of those games, but how would they feel if they had been swept by that Astros team and they narrowly lost out in the NL West with the Giants taking six or seven wins against the Astros-lite?\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

That’s just one example, but it hints at a deeper problem.<\/p>\n

There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not much fairness when it comes to the MLB schedule and any sports schedule will be subject to an opponent\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s strength being weakened by injuries at a particular time. However, in this type of situation, the Astros have deliberately chosen to play out the rest of the season with a weakened team.\u00c2\u00a0 Wolves and Blackpool have been fined for doing that in the Premiership in recent years, yet it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s an accepted practice in MLB and seems to fly in the face of the general conept of things being done ‘in the best interests of baseball’.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a difficult situation because, like a lot of onlookers, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve watched the Astros going nowhere while holding on to veterans in recent years and stated that they should be rebuilding for the future.<\/p>\n

Rebuilding \u00e2\u20ac\u201c trading away your established players for prospects, acquiring some of the best young talent due to the high draft picks given to the worst-performing teams etc \u00e2\u20ac\u201c is not only a legitimate approach, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s arguably an essential one for teams without the largest financial resources if they ever want to have periods of challenging for the World Series.<\/p>\n

However, the current situation with the Astros shows the ugly side of this.<\/p>\n

There is no relegation in MLB, or any major North American sport.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not suggesting that should change \u00e2\u20ac\u201c there are plenty of negatives to having relegation and, in any case, introducing it would be close to impossible considering how professional baseball is structured in the States \u00e2\u20ac\u201c but the way in which organizations can get rid of their best players and field below-standard teams doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem right. It goes beyond the \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcrace to the bottom\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to secure the number one draft pick; the MLB competition over the season\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s final two months\u00c2\u00a0can be\u00c2\u00a0compromised by teams all but giving up.<\/p>\n

The big question now is whether the reported increase of playoff teams from eight to ten next season will change this through making less teams decide to completely\u00c2\u00a0blow up their roster?\u00c2\u00a0 That remains to be seen.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Seeing-eye singles<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was a shame, if not much of a surprise,\u00c2\u00a0to see Greg Halman optioned back down to Triple-A by the Mariners on Friday.\u00c2\u00a0 The Dutchman\u00c2\u00a0get off to a decent start\u00c2\u00a0when he made the Majors in June,\u00c2\u00a0but July proved to be a difficult month for both Halman and the rest of the team; as emphasised by their miserable 17 game losing streak.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0His first stint in the Big Leagues will have taught him a great deal about what it takes to succeed at the highest level and he can take heart from the favourable reviews of his play in the outfield and from hitting his first two Major League home runs.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

You\u00c2\u00a0can’t really argue with the decision to suspend Yadier Molina for five games for bumping the umpire Rob Drake.\u00c2\u00a0 Just like raising your hands in football, every ballplayer knows that making contact with an umpire will lead to a suspension (rightfully so, and Molina himself has accepted the decision).\u00c2\u00a0 However, it would be interesting to know\u00c2\u00a0if Drake’s part in the incident has been reviewed by MLB.\u00c2\u00a0 Molina was uncharacteristically angry because Drake called him out on strikes on a pitch that was clearly inside.\u00c2\u00a0 Nobody is perfect, but replays suggest he missed that call by a significant margin.\u00c2\u00a0 Players have to control themselves, but you can fully understand Molina’s frustration at\u00c2\u00a0getting a call like that in extra innings during an important game.\u00c2\u00a0 Molina got punished for his mistake; will Drake\u00c2\u00a0face any penalty for his?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Houston Astros were recently described as having the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153worst lineup in Major League history\u00e2\u20ac\u009d. Whether that’s accurate or not, the practice of teams trading away their best players is an issue for the integrity of MLB’s competition<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,4],"tags":[553],"class_list":["post-11604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-weekly-hit-ground-ball","category-mlb-2","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11604","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11604"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11645,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11604\/revisions\/11645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}