In the nascent days of this site, I was quickly outed as perhaps the only optimist about the Astros on our staff. Perhaps I’m delusional, driven mad by the Jose Cruz t-shirt that I’ve worn every day since September 14th, 1986, to the point that it’s difficult to see where I end and the shirt begins. That shirt went through puberty with me, and if that makes me crazy, then I don’t want to be sane. I do think that there’s a reasonable argument to be made that it won’t be ALL wailing and gnashing of teeth for the Stros this year, so allow me to put on my seersucker suit and straw hat and begin my soliloquy.

/tugs at lapels

I may not be a big city lawyer, folks. I may not have any fancy acronyms or statistics to reinforce my arguments, but I do know one thing: the Astros sure as hell aren’t the Pirates. And that’s something we can all be thankful for. Always think of folks less fortunate than yourself, that’s what my pappy always said, God rest his soul. Before you go to bed tonight, say a prayer for little Ian Snell; that boy can pitch some wildfire, but he may never be on a 75 win team. You think about that.

Lot of folks running around these days talking ’bout how the Astros ain’t got any pitching, and the offense has anal fissures, and the bullpen is two pieces of twine and Jose Valverde, and on the surface, you might be right about some of that. The anal fissures, to be sure.

/wipes forehead with monogrammed handkerchief

Shew. But let me tell you a few things about Ed Wade. See, Eddie ain’t too popular in Philadelphia, that’s for sure, and he’s starting to develop a reputation around these parts, too. But Eddie hasn’t been employed for this long around MLB by being dumb. Like it or not, the man had a plan, and he stuck to it. These Astros he’s brought in are fast, and good with the glove, and that was the stated off-season goal: speed and defense. Sometimes shit happens, like your lump-ass left fielder crushes the leg of the best defensive shortstop in baseball, and you have to let the rangy kid who couldn’t hit worth a damn but could make Gold Glove plays look routine go off to find himself in Minnesota. And while the guy you replace him with has a cannon for an arm (and a rocket for a bat), you’re gonna find yourself missing the ease that ol’ AE brought to the game.

But that’s the only exception to Eddie’s plan. Our little Oriental friend with the butt trouble, well, some say he’s a product of a high-altitude environment. Point to numbers, to PECOTA and OPS; well, I say PECOTA is a kind of veal, and OPS was an unheard hippity-hop song from 1990! You see, of course anyone’s road numbers in the NL West are going to look bad outside Coor’s; hell, every other stadium in that division (apart from Pac Bell) is a hitter’s nightmare. You try to have a road OPS over .900 when you play a large portion of your road games at Petco Park. Like my momma always said, you can’t catch a coon-hound with grease.

We never knew what the hell momma was saying half the time. Must’ve been all that time working in a lead paint factory that did it to her.

And let’s not forget the kids now! Kids are our future, our “hope” like that Osama guy likes to say. Hunter Pence! Now that’s a baseball player! So long as he doesn’t pop his damn fool head off diving over the right field railing to grab a foul ball, that boy’s gonna make men weep and women swoon (if they like guys with peanut heads) for years here. He may have a sophomore slump, but he’s no Luke Scott.

/ducks flying trash

Sorry folks, forgot the reaction that name gets. No, Pence’ll be a .300/30/90 badass before you know it, and he’ll steal him some bases, too. Speaking of stealing bases, I know there’s lots of you who talk about Wily Tavares like he was one step above crippled, what with his low OBP and whatnot, but that boy could disrupt a defense with his speed in ways that were a site to behold; well, Michael Bourn runs a 4.3 40. That’s NFL fast, and it’ll cause the same kind of hell that Wily T. did, and I will bet any man, woman, child or Chinaman that he’ll have a .390 OPS this season, since he seems to have gotten his free-swinging reputation in check this spring. Seriously, would you really like Lidge back, people?

Now, there ain’t much positive to say about the pitching. There just ain’t. I could tell you about little Wesley Wright, the 13-year old with the elastic arm who could become an eighth inning savior, but when that’s the silver lining in this pitching staff, well, that just about says it all. But I’d ask you to look at something before you say, “Them dumbasses Wade & Purpura traded all the studs on the farm for a flea-bit buncha mules”: let’s look at those studs.

• Jason Hirsh: less than 120 IP in 2007, 5-7 record, 4.81 ERA. Whee doggies! There’s a #2 starter!
• Taylor Bucholz : only 9 starts, mostly worked from the bullpen. Respectable-ish 1.33 WHIP.
• Troy Patton:

And everyone else is either a prospect or a reliever. So there’s really not a lick of good any of the pitchers we sent out of town could do for the 2008 team. Now, the future implications of this kind of thinning are pretty obvious, but I’m more concerned about the lack of position players in the minors right now; it looks like a damned goofball, feel-good comedy down there. When these “ancient” 32 year old offensive mainstays finally hang up their Twinkies and B12 and head home, who’s gonna replace THEM? Pitching prospects are a dime a dozen, but you have to pay bushels of money for a 35 homer-100 RBI slugger.

Well, I best wrap this up. Daisy’ll be calling me from the front porch for a pitcher of lemonade and a basket of her fried chicken. I swear, if I find any of those hard-to-eat thighs in there, I’m gonna beat that woman black and blue. But you need not be blue your own self: these Astros may lose, and they may lose a lot, but they’re gonna win about 77-82 games or so, and they’re gonna be a helluva lot of fun to watch when they’re hitting on all cylinders. Just you trust an old country lawyer on that one, y’hear?

Posted under Astros, Going against the conventional wisdom, Houston, Hunter Pence is a badass, Predictions, The Bourn Identity