He is also the player that stood up after the Manfred scandal and was out-front taking the heat.
In 2018 they got bounced in the LCS by a better team (at least w.r.t. wins) that went on to win the WS. In 2019 they lost to an equivalently loaded team with an equivalent record down the stretch, in a seven-game series chock full of chaos. In 2020 they were the plainly inferior team in each and every round of the postseason, yet they went 5-1 against their WC and DS opponents and lasted until game 7 of the LCS against the league’s best team.
This is not underperforming.
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I’ll echo what others have said and say that Correa has to be the choice if you have to choose between him and Springer. I love Springer as much as anyone but Carlos is younger, plays a position that is harder to replace and has upside to still get better, age wise he is just now entering his prime.
I would try to get Springer on a six year deal, Brantley on a 2/3 year deal, let Reddick walk, non-tender Osuna/Peacock/Devo and try to add a bullpen piece and at least a backend starter. Take the payroll bullet in 2021 knowing you have salary relief coming after next year(Verlander/Greinke is like 60MM).
I love this team, what they have done on this 4 year run is nothing short of amazing. Teams don’t just go on runs to the ALCS/WS 4 years in a row very often. This group has never been knocked out in the first opportunity. Not 15, not 17 or 18 or 19 or 20. That’s just insane when you really think about it. Every other contending team has at some point in the last 4-6 years has been one and done in the postseason. Not this team. This team shows up when the lights are brightest and though they are not perfect they have been better, gone further, shined brighter, than every team in baseball these 4 years.
If this is the end of George Springer as an Astro, thank you George. You were a bright shining star in the black hole that was being an Astro fan in 11-13, even before you ever played for the big league club. Your humility, your joy, your performances on the big stage, the dives in the outfield, the dingers at the plate, even your spinning strikeouts, all will be missed. Thank you for just being you. Now go get paid, wether it’s with the Astros or not, I wish you all the success and money you can get.
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So your conclusion is that they didn’t win the World Series this year because they didn’t want it enough. Alrighty then.
Springer is 31 years old. Someone will back up the truck and dump an insane amount of money on him, and I say good for him. That team will get one or two or maybe, maybe three good seasons out of him and then he’ll be a financial albatross. Maybe it’ll be a team that doesn’t care. Maybe it’ll be a team that gets seriously hamstrung by having a very expensive replacement level player. Maybe he’ll end up being a good DH when he’s 36, you know, what the hell do I know.
Not really, but it is a team that pissed around for 60 games, assuming they’d make the playoffs, waited til they were down 3-0 in this series to step up, waited until late in the game last night til they had more frequent competitive ABs. They tend to coast until it’s time.
Also, they had little league defense by their star and generally bad ABs in crucial situations all series. The Rays are a good team, but with the Astros pitching as good as it was, yeah, it was there for them.
I agree it was was within reach. I think your assertion that they just weren’t hungry enough for it is absurd.
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I am 100% confident in saying that if this was a regular year, 162 games, no 16 team postseason, this team would have won 90+ games and still made the postseason. They pissed around because they knew they had a spot and can you really blame them? This is a perfect example of why 16 team playoffs are a terrible idea but if you have it, take advantage and they did
Your attitude, JBM, is one of the things wrong with sports today. I abhor the “if you do not win it all, you underachieved” attitude. Winning is hard, no matter how good you are. Makes me think perhaps you never played.
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Stros were also pretty banged up in the '18 postseason
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I played through high school, and I understand not every team is a champion. I‘ve played on teams who over-achieved and also played on teams where we did less than we could. I never gave a second thought to me or my teammates when we expressed that we could have done more.
Anyways, I appreciate, greatly, what they’ve achieved for me as a fan. It’s been a great run.
That too - forgot about the fact that Altuve’s knee was so bad he had surgery within 24 hours of the team’s elimination. There may be others I’m forgetting too.
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Glad to know you played, but your real experience with winning and losing makes your comments more inexplicable to me. The “win it all or you did not do enough” attitude is common among LL parents and the coffee shop experts in small towns. I abhor it and experienced it in my life.
We were treated to the Golden Age of Astros baseball, and I do not think their falling short every year but 2017 diminished their accomplishments one iota. I am grateful I was there.
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McCullers TJS
Correa back (no surgery)
If you haven’t seen this yet, you should watch it. A really thoughtful interview by CFM about winning, beating a really tough team, and asking people to not assume the worst about the Astros.
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If we had to lose to one guy, glad it was to CFM.
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This, David. This.
He is so high quality, and he knows the Astros made him an elite pitcher. The Astros made Cole elite too, but I doubt he would admit it with such humility.
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I had a lot of fun this postseason. After Game 6 I thought for sure I had tipped and would be devastated by a game 7 defeat, but that didn’t happen.
I couldn’t watch them during the regular season. They were just too middling. Watching them struggle is worse than watching them win is good.
I have absolutely nothing new to add: Correa yes, Framber, the young horses, amazing, Strom they should probably name something after, my love for George Springer is boundless, I still remember his first taking questions from reporters and thinking: Say, that fella’s got a stutter…hard to believe that was as long ago as it must have been.
Deeply concerned about Altuve and the yips. A sufferer myself, it is an awful thing to be yanked from naturalness, to have an easy fluid mechanism dissected and destroyed by thinking. Maybe it’ll be easier to let Brantley go if he has to DH…
Very interested to see who this Click is, exactly. He doesn’t strike me as a particularly, well, a particularly interesting man. He strikes me as “nice”. I wonder where the Hun is these days. Talk about an underrated GM.
Hell of a fun postseason. I listened to the LDS and had to resist the temptation again and again to tune in to the A’s feed: I like those guys and figured the schaudenfreud would be keen. Maybe I still will.
This Void at least promises to feel short, even absent a trip to the dance, since pitchers and catchers will ostensibly report in February instead of August or whatever.
I hope they keep the band together but not at the expense of the future. The wallowing-in-the-trough bit has lost a lot of its glamor—and everyone’s doing it! Losing 90 games is good for a 15th pick or something.
Anyway, this sure was a great place to hang out. Enjoyed y’all. It was funner I think than ‘18 or ‘19, when our team’s unsullied glory made us stressful and joyless. Now we are rotten and like sticking it in people’s eye. Better to be friends with that guy. We’re the Bad News Bears.
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Great post, Devin.
Speaking of yips, do any of y’all remember Mike Ivie? He was a good-hitting catcher who suddenly became unable to throw the ball back to the pitcher.
I have heard that story.
I think this has been discussed here before but The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach, is a good novel that deals with the yips.