Monday Morning Astros, etc. Round Up

by Stephen Higdon on Jun 29, 2009 7:00 AM CDT in Link Dumps

Tonight will be a late night as we're on the West Coast, but here are some news and notes to keep you occupied until game time:

This is just a big quote from Coop about what we're going to do with Felipe Paulino, Russ Ortiz, Mike Hampton, and Brian Moehler, when Hampton returns from the DL:

"We’ve talked about it and made some plans, just got to figure out if that’s a good plan," Cecil Cooper said. "It’d be pretty hard to not run Felipe out there. Russ has pitched well. Wandy’s one of the mainstays. Roy’s a mainstay.

"Moehler’s pitched pretty good, and so has Hampton. What do you do? We’ve got to figure out how to map it out to where they all stay on the hill somehow. ... We’ll go with matchups or something. I don’t know. "

Cooper likely won’t go with a six-man rotation because that hasn’t been considered. "We’d have to cross that bridge when we get to it," Cooper said. "I like four. That’s old school. "

Richard Justice claims the following:

Unlike some of you, I never stopped believing in this baseball team. I believed in the talent. I believed in the chemistry. I believed in the manager. Remember the success I predicted back in spring training?

Also from Justice (this post is stuff I've clipped over the last two days): Apparently Ed Wade and Drayton McLane have good relationship. This article is loaded with tons of insight into how the management works and Bobby Heck discussing how he was reluctant to come to Houston based on Drayton's reputation. Truly some interesting stuff.
Again, from Justice, he claims that there is magic afoot for the Astros.
The Unofficial Scorer lets us know that Hunter Pence is the only Astro, objectively speaking, deserving of an All-Star bid.
For those who will miss Brandon Backe, McTaggart writes the most glowing piece about his career I've come across.
Aaron Boone has been cleared to work out and could be ready by September, according to Bob.

0 recs | 5 comments

Comments

Justice's article about McLane and Wade...

Some things I found interesting:

Wade admitted that he has presented McLane with moves which McLane rejected. It would be intriguing to know what those were.

Bobby Heck said he and Wade presented McLane with a well thought out plan for re-supplying the farm while also keeping the Astros major league team competitive. He implies that this is how you convince McLane to spend money on the draft.

clack - June 29, 2009 reply

Cooper on the rotation: “We’ll go with match ups or something. I don’t know.”

That certainly encourages me about the way the rotation will be handled in the future.

clack - June 29, 2009 reply

Yeah

I pretty horrified by his inability to make a decision. This will just lead to awkward bullpen appearance, inconsistent routines between starts, and, therefore, terribile pitching performances a la Russ Ortiz in April.

Stephen Higdon - June 29, 2009 reply

never listen to justice anymore

used to love the guy, now i cant stand him…

he trashes our teams and then when they start doing well he claims hes with them…hate those kind of ppl. and now i just hate justice…if u look at the comments ppl agree with me…

EveryHoustonTeamRox! - June 29, 2009 reply

Richard Justice claims the following:

Unlike some of you, I never stopped believing in this baseball team. I believed in the talent. I believed in the chemistry. I believed in the manager. Remember the success I predicted back in spring training?

I’m too lazy too lazy to look this up, but I know he’s called out Coop, Ortiz, and Hampton.

I think it’s pretty clear he’s just being facetious.

Only_A_Lad - June 29, 2009 reply

The Crawfish Boxes