Meet Me in the Middle

And now you’ve said worse to me, with that, than anything I or anyone else said to him.

not that I care. It’s just ironic or something.

 

This is amazing! I love so much about this post. It's like a mosaic of projection. Some highlights:

1. You tell me I should just worry about myself, then proceed to do the opposite yourself.

2. You tell me I seem frustrated I can't control others when you keep telling people they're arrogant, narcissistic (you frustrated?), and what they should do (control). Meanwhile I'm not frustrated or trying to control you, I actually literally said I get a chuckle from what you do (the opposite of both).

3. I consider someone who says the Astros season is over when it's clearly not a hater. When the Astros win, I like it because I love the Astros. It also makes people who say their season is over (haters) wrong.

4. You call me a narcissist when you clearly don't know what that word means, then say wow, then say relax. Then say I take things harshly. This is the chef's kiss - the pièce de résistance of your work. The one defending what he calls "emotional" (really just dumb) posts, El Capitan of the Daily Kneejerks, is telling someone else to relax and not take things harshly, right after calling them a narcissist while not knowing the definition is truly a work of art!

In conclusion, never change. You make a sweet thing even sweeter.

 

Duuuuuude. It’s not that serious. And what I said to you was not to be taken seriously.

The point is, we can all say and feel what we want as fans. Right? He voiced his opinion on things and still pretty much agreed with things being said by others about Dusty, Chas and Yanier. Where the issue comes in is, you can only say something so much before it just sounds like you’re the kid screaming in a Walmart shopping cart. You know that kid where you just don’t want to hear it anymore? How many dead horses are we going to beat?

What I read (and maybe I’m wrong) Is he was saying is it really so bad? Why can’t we come together and try to appreciate things as they are for better or worse. Dusty has a tendency to suck but let’s ride this bi*** out and try to win another title. We have 2. Anyone remember those? Not everyone has to ride the @MadMax train but why piss on the thread?

I’ve been a fan since 1980. I waited so damn long for success like this with the Astros. Man we all get frustrated but look where we are. I’d rather just talk baseball than everyone acting or thinking they are smarter than the next fan. No one is telling anyone how to fan but damn, how many times do we have to read the same ish over and over. Just because some of us don’t say it every day all day doesn’t mean we don’t feel similarly.

Dammit @Tomstro are you a detective because you got me dialoguing.

 

The main thing is just relax. Calm down, breathe and take it easy. Live and let live, amigo. Let others root for the Astros in their own way. There is no need to sit up all night, feverishly writing and proofreading your retort (in essay format- impressive) just to have the last word in a trivial debate on the bbs. It’s not worth losing the sleep, which is really important. Just breathe, bro. More to life, ya know?

 

Of course. Just take a moment to notice that in my lighthearted post that you are addressing, I said I don’t really care. So this whole idea that I took what you said too seriously isn’t really valid. I take nothing here seriously. I do take what Dusty has done to Chas seriously. Also Diaz. Thats about it though. I don’t sweat other posters. I may call them out from time to time but I don’t sweat them and they shouldn’t sweat me either. Calling out posters is an all day occurrence here. I’m just a small part of it. For instance, someone will call me out for this post. As I am writing it I see I’m being called out for my last post. Lol. Its all silly. Go Astros.

 

It's really bizarre that anyone has a hard time understanding baseball is a probablistic game and any one outcome isn't proof one way or another that a thing is smart or dumb. That all comes out in the wash over 162 games and we have all the metrics to tell us what happened and what's likely to happen.

 

And it's a lot worse because there are so few baseball first fans on here. With this being a basketball site first and foremost, we get a LOT of fans on here who are happy to follow the world champions, and would rather root for the Astros than any other team, but baseball isn't their first love.

And to be clear, that is 100% fine. It's just that baseball is so different from the other two big sports and if you don't truly love all the intricacies of it you aren't likely to understand much of how it works

 

What’s really kinda funny is the GARM is like a wild jungle compared this. No holds barred over there.

 

I love and have always loved the every day nature of baseball. The fact that there are a ton of different outcomes on each game, and most of the outcomes don't have huge sway but they all do. Every ball and strike swings an AB by a certain amount, and that difference in the amount of changed outcome changes run expectancy fractionally, and win expectancy fractionally and you aggregate about 1M of those together over the course of a season and add it all up and it's got enough outcomes that make it seem like it makes sense and you can know something about true quality of a team. And then we have metrics that show us that even over 162 games some teams get 2 wins lucky or 2 unlucky and we can further know what value should have happened and have an idea of the intrinsic nature of a team and player. But, that means nothing in the next AB. So it's order and chaos see sawing together all through an AB, a game and a season. Then that gets lit on fire in the playoffs in a best 2/3, then a best 3/5 then two best 4/7 and we declare that team a champ, praise them, write think pieces about what they did right and smart and good and then take 4 or 5 months off to do it all over again. That 4 or 5 months is probably the most important part of a baseball season (and I find it fascinating) b/c we do know so much about value that we can be reasonably sure we know who the good players are and the not so good players. Then there is the excitement of seeing a young guy like Yainer come up and see what he's got, or a 3rd year player like Chas take a step up and be someone we didn't know that he could be. It's fascinating stuff.

 

Amen, Brother Tomstro.

 

It really is. People complain about here? Give me a break lol.

 

This is the other real story of the season, after injuries and Dusty. The Astros now have TWO young all-stars no one knew they had this time last year. (Yes, we knew Chas was the best CF option … but a 900 OPS guy? I don’t think many expected that)

The fact that our manager chooses not to play the two all stars he was gifted full time because they aren’t “the big guys” is absolutely worth getting upset about, but hopefully one we can weather that and it won’t recur next year.

Which - especially if Abreu really was just hurt and Peña has figured it out - would just leave us with all-star caliber players at 7-8 positions and a few cy young caliber pitchers with good depth behind them once everyone is back from injury. So much for the window closing….

 

I want to be able to go to a game in which the Astros play their best available players. I want to be able to watch a game on TV in which the Astros play their best available players.

Only 5 times this season have the Astros started Alvarez, Altuve, Bregman, Pena, and Tucker with Diaz as catcher, Chas, and either Meyers or Brantley (Twice at home). Only 11 times have the Astros played Diaz as catcher, Chas, and either Meyers or Brantley (some of these had injuries, some of them are Kessinger, Julks, and Hensley games).

 

With what you see in the organization right now, assuming Altuve gets re-signed, bregman is 50/50 and Tucker and Framber walk- the window is:
2024 & 2025- absolute juggernaught destroyer of worlds 110 win team if health and ball bounces right
26-28- 85-95 win team if all Tucker, Framber, Garcia, Urquidy, Chas etc move on and the core of the team is an extended altuve (old), Yainer, Alvarez, Javier, brown, France etc. better if they develop more prospects, lesser if those guys fall apart. but yeah we should be awesome at least through 25.

 

That's my biggest problem with Dusty and the season as a whole. Just start your ****ing best players. Sure rest them when needed, but ****ing start them most of the time.

 

Max expressed my thoughts eloquently. The big takeaway for me is that these are the glory days for Astros fan and we should enjoy this and not given into misery so often. Afterall, baseball is *designed* for sadness, as Max mentioned. I have to remind myself of this all the time. As to the great Dusty drama, I tend to think managerial and lineup decisions on a game by game basis matter less than we might think. Yes, Dusty does some perpelexing things, but literally *every* manager is going to make decisions that are questionable. Sometimes, I think people lock into confirmation bias and group think to the point where the simple enjoyment of sports gives way to a kind of cancerous sadness where people almost prefer feeling sad and disappointed as long as they are right about their scapegoat. I don't know. Dusty, for all his faults, has been at the helm of the greatest winning era in Houston sports (outside of the Comets) in my lifetime. He has done this under great duress after the cheating scandal and however we feel about it, Dusty has been vital in helping the organization get back in the good graces of baseball and that's no small thing. I don't think he will be the manager past this year, unless they win another title. All outcomes are possible with this team.

 

If you can’t see why he quit responding on here then you are the one that is not allowing someone to express their own opinions. Nobody is trying to pump sunshine into anything. If he cares about his experience as an Astros fan then so be it, you should maybe respect that. You may not have injected hate into his post but you surely disrespected him. Passive aggressive seems to be your go to. MadMaxx has been here a long time and been a well respected poster and that in itself has merit. Seems that this has been an ongoing problem for both sides of the aisle and Snakedigett claiming this to be the worst thread of all time is just as disrespectful.

Well who the hell are you bigdaddy? I’m just that I’m bigdaddy

 

Lol. I just disagreed with his post. And I still do. He disagreed with mine. No extra drama needed.

 

SMH