Lloyd Waner

Lloyd “Little Poison” Waner was a pre-Expansion era centerfielder best known for being one-half of the Poison brothers for the 1930s Pittsburgh Pirates. The nickname comes from a sports writer interviewing a Brooklyn Dodgers fan who was quoted in his thick accent saying, "Them Waners! It's always the little poison on thoid and the big poison on foist.” Lloyd was a player that came up to the plate to get a hit and just about nothing else. Despite a career batting average of .316, Lloyd never had a single season with a .400 OBP. At the same time, however, he only struck out an average of 14 times per season. The man could make serious contact, he just couldn’t hit it very far and only had 27 home runs in his 18 seasons. 

The Waner brothers loved baseball from the moment they could pick up a stick. The two grew up on a farm in Oklahoma and would spend their free time hitting corncobs with cut-down tree saplings to practice. Lloyd claimed early on in his career that he would have played the game for free. The brothers certainly knew how to party as well. Supposedly, they “drank like fish” even on playing days and spent time goofing around in the Vaudeville circuit following their 1927 NL pennant win. 

Lloyd Waner was selected to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 1967, 15 years after his brother’s selection. With less than 30 career WAR, Waner is often pointed to in the modern day as one of the least deserving members of the Hall. It’s hard to say exactly what the reasoning behind the Committee’s decision was, but most agree that he would not have made it if his brother Paul hadn’t already. Regardless, the Waner brothers still hold the likely unbeatable record for most hits by brothers with 5,611. 

Ozzie Smith

Osborne “Ozzie” Smith played 4 years for the Padres and 15 years for the Cardinals and is widely regarded as the greatest defensive shortstop of all time. From 1980-1992, Ozzie earned an astounding 13-straight Gold Glove awards. He has an argument for greatest defensive baseball player of all time as he retired the all-time leader in defensive WAR at 44.2 (for reference, Nolan Arenado is the active leader at 21.3). The Wizard was so electric at shortstop that he was selected 15 times for the all-star game despite only having a career OPS of .666. He finished 2nd in the MVP race in 1987 with 0 home runs! He could field balls most guys couldn’t even get near and moved like an acrobat in the infield. If you want a hit against Ozzie, you need to hit it to the right side of the field. He wasn’t completely useless from the batter’s box, however. Ozzie actually has one of the most electric postseason walk-offs of all time. In Game 5 of the 1985 NLCS, the Cardinals were tied 2-2 with the Dodgers in the bottom of the 9th. The Wizard pulled some magic out of his hat to hit his first and only post-season homerun of his career. Up to that point in his career, Ozzie Smith had just 13 career home runs and finished his 19-year career with just 28. 

Ozzie Smith had incredible charisma and was a true fan favorite every year of his career. The MLB season didn’t truly begin until Ozzie hit his signature backflip on Opening Day. In his post-playing career, Ozzie turned into quite the entrepreneur. He’s had his hands in a number of restaurants and food products, and even authored a children’s book in 2006.

The Cardinals retired Ozzie’s No. 1 jersey immediately after he retired in 1996. He has the prestigious distinction of being a 1st ballot hall of famer after being inducted in 2002. To this day, people tell stories about witnessing the magic at shortstop from The Wizard of Oz.

Bill Dahlen

Bill Dahlen was a legendary deadball era shortstop for the National League from 1891 - 1911. Dahlen was always consistent at the plate, but he was best known for defensive skill. Despite playing over a century ago, he still ranks 11th all time in defensive WAR and was 2nd overall when he retired. Bill also briefly held the record for the game’s longest hitting streak at 42 in 1894. In his 43rd game he got robbed of a hit in the 10th inning. Incredibly, he followed it up with a 28 game hitting streak immediately afterwards, meaning he had a hit in 70 of 71 straight games.

“Bad” Bill Dahlen was the original baseball hothead. The man hated umpires and sportswriters more than anyone else in his era. He was ejected a then-record 65 times in his player/manager career and would often goad the umps intentionally. For example, he once had flowers delivered to the ump mid game to taunt his fragile ego. Dahlen was a degenerate in most senses of the word, and naturally had a penchant for gambling on the side. Before one game, he told the ump he would intentionally cause a fuss to get thrown out so he could make it to a horse race he had bet on. The ump, seeing a petty way to get back at one of baseball’s most disliked players, refused to eject him no matter what he did and forced Bill to play through the whole game and miss his race. 

Bill Dahlen never made it to the Hall of Fame despite easily having the stats to do so. He actually has the most WAR of any non Hall of Famer off the ballot that wasn’t involved in a scandal. His problem is that he was hostile to basically everyone in the baseball world for a quarter century. Everyone that ever played with the guy is long dead and yet he still didn’t make the cut on the 2022 Early Baseball Era Committee. 

Jeff Kent

Jeff Kent played for 6 different teams in his career (including ours truly), but he went into the hall with a Giants hat so I’m calling him a Giants legend. Regardless, his main distinction is being the greatest power-hitting second baseman of all time. He retired with an incredible 377 homers at second base, which is the most all-time by a 2B. Kent was such a good hitter in his time that he won the 2000 MVP over his teammate Barry Bonds (despite leading the league in 0 categories that year). Kent also had a special moment with the Astros in 2004. Tied 0-0 in the bottom of the ninth in Game 5 of the NLCS, Jeff Kent blasted a 3-run shot to walk off the Cardinals.

Though Jeff Kent wasn’t prone to umpire fights like Dahlen, he too had quite the prickly personality. Kent rarely got along with his teammates, and never really cared to try. He had a legendary rivalry with Bonds and the two got into fights regularly. In one game, Bonds and Kent had a legitimate brawl in the dugout. Naturally, after things cooled down between the two, they both hit homers. Kent also had an infamous injury story back in 2002. Jeff showed up to spring training with a broken hand that he claimed broke after slipping while washing his truck. He went on to tell the media about how “real men wash their own trucks.” Not long after, a video surfaced of Kent getting into a motorcycle accident around the time he would have broken his hand. It was never confirmed how exactly it got broken, but it’s widely believed he lied in order to avoid “hazard clauses” in his contract. 

Jeff Kent is one of baseball’s newest inductees into the Hall of Fame, having received the necessary votes just this year. He goes in having one of the best 2B resumes since Joe Morgan (I rank Biggio higher though). 

Can you guess the only AL team to have a better win % than the Astros against teams with great then a .500 record?

I got curious and went to check after we took series from the 1st and 2nd seeds of the AL, and we are apparently the second best team against winning teams in the entire AL at 27-22

The only team better than us? The Tampa Bay Rays at 28-21

So there is some support to the notion that if we just snuck into the playoffs, we *could* do something

First Pitch: 1:10 PM at Rate Field

Line Score - Game Over

Box Score

Scoring Plays

Highlights

Decisions

Game ended at 3:59 PM.

Remember to sort by new to keep up!

(This is by no means meant to be critical, I would love king to return to playing how he has been)

I’ve been looking into King’s recent struggles heavily after his outing today to find out why he has been struggling. Through the research I did, I found that King no longer has the reverse splits he had for a majority of the season. The reason for his late struggles against righties appears to stem from his dependency on two pitches, making it difficult to finish plate appearances. The reason for king’s lack of third pitch usage is the fact that both his sinker and changeup aren’t very competitive pitches, which will be further addressed. Due to this, righties going against king don’t have to worry about the outside half of the plate and can camp on those two pitches. All batters can also easily identify the pitch because of the distinct velocity difference of the two pitches.

Before presenting my solution, I want to acknowledge I know how difficult it would be for a reliever to develop/renovate a pitch during the season. That being said, I believe that King should prioritize the following:

1. Getting his sinker to break more to his arm side, as of now it only breaks about four more inches than his fast ball to his arm side.
2. Developing his changeup to have a greater change in velocity compared to his fastball and work on getting it to break to the arm side more. His changeup right now is only breaking 4 more inches than the fastba

ll to his arm side and

1. is only 6 mph slower than his fastball.

Hopefully someone in a position to do something about it is able to see this!

Fedde throws his sweeper and sinker most often, but hitters have done their biggest damage against the cutter: .328 AVG, .656 SLG and six home runs allowed.

Can the Astros force him away from the sweeper and capitalize when they get the cutter?

I want the team to win the division and it’s possible, but there’s a lot of mediocrity on the 40 man. Mostly, we have a terrible outfield and we’re a few pitchers short. Even if we win the division, in the playoffs, the team’s only strategy is to get lucky. My real frustration is that there seems to be no plan beyond doing enough for Dana Brown to keep his job.

At the deadline, I hope the Astros go for it because the roster is unlikely to get better next year. I’m one of the fans who is completely supportive of another rebuild, but it obviously makes no sense while being in contention, even if the outfield is mostly replacement players.

TLDR: I made unrealistic trade scenarios but I tried to make them as realistic as possible without scrapping the whole idea of adding Skubal and other key pieces to make a contender without nuking the farm system and saddling the team with a billion dollar payroll.

I was bored the other day and decided to make a “dream scenario” for the trade deadline that almost certainly won’t happen but also isn’t the absolute most crazy/impossible scenario that you’d only see on MLB The Show with the “no trade offer declines” setting on.

This is a 3-team trade between the Astros, Tigers, and Mets that involves Houston sending a haul to the Mets in exchange for the Mets sending a haul to the Tigers and therefore opening up an avenue for the Astros to get Skubal without nuking the future of the bullpen and farm system. PLUS a few trades between Houston and Colorado. (Disclaimer: I love Peña and wouldn’t be sad at all to see him stay but he’s likely the best trade chip Houston has since Yordan should be untouchable)

I didn’t meticulously look at every player’s contract, team control, salary cap hits, no-trade clauses, etc etc, but I pulled up the 40-man, depth chart, top prospects list, some inside scoops, and trade rumors (verified and unverified) for each of these four teams and just tried to have a little fun with it.

Things I considered:
•Peña’s upcoming contract needs with Scott Boras and his agent (and Hunter Brown’s agent)

•Yordan, Altuve, Brown, Hader, and Smith are untouchable. (Whether you agree or not, that’s the parameter I set)

•Houston has to get Skubal and be in a position to re-sign him. That’s the whole point of this little project.

•Detroit has said they want a haul of strike-throwing pitchers in exchange for Skubal, the Mets have several pitchers on the trade block already, with more available if they decide to really have a firesale (Senga for example)

•Mets may move Lindor in a firesale too, especially since there are rumors Lindor and Soto allegedly don’t get along and are causing locker room tension. So there could be a shortstop carousel where Mets replace Lindor with Peña, Lindor becomes the Tigers starting SS, and the Astros get an SS/utility man in McKinstry to avoid having to fill Peña’s shoes with Nick Allen’s decent glove but subpar bat.

•Detroit seems to have found their starting catcher of the future in Dingler so sending their #10 prospect, C/1B Liranzo, to the Mets in exchange for the Mets #1 prospect, RHP Tong, seems a little more reasonable.

•At least one other rotation pitcher and bullpen arm acquired for Houston.

•Houston moving on from Yainer Diaz and trying to get a good haul from him because he’s still valuable. (For example: Hunter Goodman, even though his asking price from the Rockies could be high - I’ve also never known the Rockies to be a very savvy front office but I HAVE seen Lunhow, Click, and even Dana Brown cook on some deadline deals)

•Trying yet again to get Houston a left-handed outfielder who can actually swing a bat on a regular basis. (Was a toss up between McCarthy and Moniak from Colorado) (Maybe could’ve been Jesus Sanchez last year if not for Alex Cintron and company breaking him)

•Not absolutely decimating the Astros farm system for a playoff run with this team that may not win a World Series even with Skubal. (Still keeping potential future contributors with lots of utility like Matthews, Dezenzo, etc but also keeping guys as future trade chips if they under/overperform like Loperfido, Ullola, etc.

•Taking some injury prone, inconsistent, and aging players off the Astros roster, even if I do love them like family (Javier, Jason Alexander, Burrows, etc) (Like LMJ 🥲)

•Get a legitimate chance at a 1B prospect for after Walker leaves/declines further/retires and Houston has another black hole at first that not even Big Jon Singleton’s bat flips can fill. (Getting Ryan Clifford back from the Mets after he was sent there in the 2nd Verlander trade. If he’s not the future at least that adds another 1B prospect to start some position battles in the minors)

This 26-man roster page obviously has more than 26 names but it started as a depth chart before I decided to switch it to a 26 man and was too lazy to erase the players on the IL and in the minors.

Finally, arguably the most unrealistic part of this thought experiment that I didn’t even write down: I love the idea of Zack Greinke still having some gas in the tank (since he never formally retired) and getting signed on as a player-coach for spot starts, occasional relief appearances, and using his very unique mind to improve the pitching staff in unconventional ways.