The Astros Dugout Site Is Updating 10/16/2009
Hi all yall The site is in a state of transition, which is why the comments aren't posting properly. Please don't post any comments on any article until the next entry is up (should be by tomorrow.) Thanks and sorry for the inconvenience.   Lisa

Firing First Base Coach Jose Cruz Is THE Key To Turning Around The Astros
Yeah, sarcasm. I'm getting good at it. Drayton fired, uh, I mean, "reassigned" all of the Astros coaches except for Dave Clark and Sean Berry, the hitting coach. I was sorry about the latter and hoped that maybe Drayton would put out the bucks to hire Jaime Cevallos, who turned Ben Zobrist from Eric Bruntlett to almost MVP. At the very LEAST, perhaps he could have done something to reverse the teaching that "aggressive", which is I guess, swinging at every single pitch thrown, if possible, to increase the probability or GIDP, is not necessarily good. Yeah, I know that a good deal of the media writers and announcers incessantly express cpontempt for any ballp

Brad Lidge Saves Consecutive 1 Run Games To Help Phils Win NLDS
Yeah, I know it is not Astros news, but I like Brad. It has been a postseason of Closers Who Fail - and interestingly enough, Brad, who has had, uh, his share of struggles this year, has come through, unlike Papelbon, Huston Street and Ryan Franklin. What's that old Stones song - When The Whip Comes Down... Got an, um, interesting comment purporting to be from "Jack Zduriencik" informing me that I should not quit my day job as a cosmetologist (at least he didn't say stripper or Hooter's, uh, serve-person) because, in fact, Bobby Heck was NEVER a scouting director, just an underling in the scouting dept and that he, Jack, was, in fact, the scouting director.

Astros Top Prospects For 2010 And A Few Words About Jim Fregosi
Top Prospect Alert has beaten Baseball America to the punch and named the top 10 Astros Prospects and yes, I KNOW they really REALLY had to look long and hard to think of 10 of em. Just because you sign all the guys you draft doesn't mean that the guys you drafted were all that. This year, especially, pretty much all guys signed almost immediately (and there were no guys who had to be paid more because of signability and no Boras prospects, like duh.) And, by the way, the Astros haven't signed any more guys/year than in the previous 10 drafts...

Reviewing the 2009 Astros Relief Pitchers
In this entry I am going to evaluate pitchers who ONLY relieved and had no starts (the guys who swung both ways are going to get their very won entry.)