The Athletic ranked MLB franchises over the last 25 years. The Houston Astros won two World Series in that time span. See where they rank and watch the reaction from Payne & Pendergast.
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00:00the Astros. Rated the fifth best franchise of the last 25 years by the athletic. Is that
00:07pass the eye test of Seth C pain? I wouldn't only because it's hard to erase the memories
00:14of the early aughts when they were just stringing together 90 plus lost seasons with, with alarming
00:21regularity. Some of you might remember and feel that, yeah, you have the emotional scars from all
00:25of that loss, 111 one year. Yeah. And the fact that there's teams that have won multiple, well,
00:31you know, the Red Sox, the Red Sox were above them. This is an objective list though. They go
00:35by a point system. It's totally done empirically. It's X amount of points for world series wins on.
00:41Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But for the entire, I think the one thing that you kind of forget though,
00:45too, because the eras of this current world series run Astros, it it's so far removed from
00:52the early two thousands when the Astros were going to world series and still very good.
00:57That it makes sense. Once you think about it, there is a part of me that even puts the world
01:01series, the first world series that went to, I almost put that in the 19th in the 90th century.
01:06Yeah. Yeah. There's a, the centuries for my Astros are like pre 2010 is almost the 20th century.
01:16Yeah. Yeah. It's, I think it's amazing that their fifth and there's zero recency bias with
01:22this. They don't wait the, the, the, the most recent years that they've had, the athletics
01:28said they've had people suggest they do it that way, that the more recent stuff gets weighted
01:32differently. They had Dom. Yeah. They've added some rank in the best of the last 25 years.
01:40That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I agree with you. It's amazing. The Astros are
01:44fifth though. When you consider they from 2000 through 2014 made the playoff, made the playoffs
01:51three times, not one, a world series. I mean, they made it to a world series.
01:55They made it to an LCS. They made the playoffs in a one over a 15 season period. They made the
02:02playoffs three times and in 10 subsequent seasons, they did enough to get them to be the fifth best
02:09franchise. I mean, it really, it's a, it's a numerical empirical way to look at just how
02:14amazing this run that they've been on the last 10 years has been to go to the ALCS as, as
02:21frequently as they did in those consecutive number of times in non COVID seasons. It's,
02:28it's really remarkable. It was a remarkable stretch. There is a someday I'll be old and
02:32grumpy enough to feel jilted that they only, only one, two world series. I know, I know.
02:37It will. And, and especially when you consider the, you know, the 2019 one where they just had
02:43to win one game and they would have had a third, you know, that does hurt to go back and look at,
02:49man. So, so I thought that was pretty cool. If you haven't seen that in the athletic,
02:53the teams that are ahead of them, by the way, Yankees one, these are the best teams
02:58just based purely on accomplishments post-season and otherwise Yankees one Dodgers two and closing
03:04fast on the Yankees, St. Louis three, St. Louis is like the opposite of the Astros.
03:09They did all the, they made all their hay in the first part of the century and they've been
03:15trusting Boston four on a tiebreaker with the Astros,
03:19a tiebreaker with the Astros. The fact that the red Sox one four world series is one of the things
03:25that, that, that was the, that was the number one tiebreaker, I believe, which is honestly,
03:31in my mind, the fact if you, you know, you can make a criteria up however you want. I mean,
03:36the red Sox is one for freaking world series and not to mention the number of titles that
03:40other teams in that city of one, they, I, I feel like emotionally, I want to put them
03:45higher than the Cardinals or the Dodgers just by virtue of how many, how many world series they've
03:49won. The, the thing that the tiebreaker though, that where there wouldn't have even had to have
03:53been a tiebreaker. And this is the weirdest thing amongst these top five is that the Astros got
03:58docked points for three consecutive 90 losses. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
04:04If you're a losing team for a sustained period of time, they've come up with some negative points
04:08for you. Yeah. The Yankees, the Dodgers, the Cardinals and the red Sox had zero consecutive
04:1390 last season. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so fifth is pretty good, man. When you consider I was,
04:19I was opening up that list yesterday. I'm like, I don't think this is going to be as high as I
04:22think it is. Fifth was a pretty good. You know what I liked about this? I, I hesitate to even
04:27click on articles like this anymore because I dread the inevitable reference to the being better
04:32than everybody else scandal. And there was no reference to that in this blurb. No. So
04:39tip of the cap to the athletic time. Two Astros youngsters prospects are getting some love this
04:46morning. Massive love for cam Smith from this Jeff pass an article that I'm looking at here, Jeff
04:55pass and had prospects that scouts are buzzing about right now down in, or what I say down in
05:01Florida, either in Florida or Arizona, wherever your team happens to do spring training, the
05:06Astros are in West Palm beach, cam Smith getting, getting a ton of love. And I think, look, I,
05:12there, I, I, I hearing it from people. I'm seeing it like, boy, if he keeps doing this,
05:17is he going to make the major league team? He's not, he's not making the major barring injuries.
05:23He's not making the major league team out of spring training. I don't think. Yeah. I feel
05:27very confident in that. And even barring injuries, including if the Astros get off to a
05:33bad start, I think they he's had very few games in double a even five. Yeah. You just, he was
05:41playing college baseball this time last year. I think you got to pump the brakes a little bit.
05:45I don't, it's not like I see people agitating that you got to play cam Smith. No, no, no, no,
05:50no, no. Here's what I'm saying. They're entered today. They're, they're allowing it to enter the
05:53chat. They're like, well, maybe he'll, he'll make it. And selfishly, this is what is an Astros fan.
05:59You shouldn't want cam Smith to get elevated early, just by virtue of service time. You want
06:04to, you want to wait until after the service time deadline to where you get an extra year
06:08of arbitration out of them before he hits free agency. Because I I'm just telling you, everybody,
06:13Sean and I were lucky enough to be at spring training last week. Wait until you see this
06:17guy in person. It's amazing. Wait, it doesn't look right. Him at third base. He's, he's,
06:22he looks like a wide receiver playing third base. He is physically impressive. He's very,
06:26and now there's a chance. So to one of those, let's say injuries or horrendous performance
06:35off the field, because there's a good chance that if Chaz doesn't get it going,
06:40they're going to have to start thinking about somebody else at right field. And cam Smith
06:43might make a lot of sense out in right field. Maybe even long-term given how big he is.
06:47Yeah. I think it would probably be, that would probably be in conjunction with the team under
06:52achieving. You know what I mean? Like if the team's winning and they're mucking it together
06:56with an outfield, that's definitely, I mean, I have a hard time envisioning this outfield being
07:01anything but subpar, even on a good team. If they're winning, I think they'll, they'll muck
07:06it a little bit longer if they're losing games. And if they're losing games, you got to do
07:09something, you know, look, this is the thing I get most excited about. It's an extremely
07:13small sample size. At the time that this article was written, he had seven at bats
07:19where he's had two home runs and a triple, but then walked four times against one strike. So
07:26that is an extremely small sample size. And yet that's, that's judgment at the plate right there.
07:32That's not, we've seen plenty of prospects come up. Some of them that might be on the opening
07:37day roster that hit a bunch of home runs or hit for power, but strike out like crazy.
07:42And that has not been, that's not been the case so far with Cam Smith. That's a, that's
07:47a really exciting thing. Yeah. Here's here's Passon's Passon's last sentence on this whole
07:52scenario with Cam Smith. I'm with you. I'm super excited about Cam Smith.
07:56Before we get to the next prospect here, Passon says power is great. Good swing decisions are
08:02imperative. Both together is a rare combination. And while the Astros infield defense would be
08:08questionable with Smith at third and Isak Perete is moving to second.
08:15It's going to have, that's, I mean, you know, passing is stating it as fact that it's going
08:19to happen at some point here. The Smith at third and he's second saying, and that's where
08:25it'll be. It's some, it's some point. I mean, that, that doesn't mean this year, even just
08:30saying it's going to happen. Yeah, it's going to happen. No, the, the way that, the way that
08:34Dana Brown and a spot to talk about, about Cam Smith is way above and beyond how they've talked
08:40about any other prospect that I can remember. Since those guys have been there for the short
08:44tenure. Yep. Spencer, Eric Getty's the other one. Who's getting some love from the athletics,
08:49six of MLB's top breakout pitching candidates for the upcoming 2025 season. And they raise a
08:56bunch and Spencer Getty Seth has been kind of, kind of like sort of a forgotten man in, in all
09:02the, you know, in the, in the, the, the pitching litany here for the Astros, because Hunter Brown
09:07is getting that, that ACE love. He wasn't great yesterday in his start against the Cardinals.
09:11By the way, if you missed it, the Astros beat the Cardinals yesterday, six to five,
09:14who's L2 had a home run. Jeremy Pena had a home run. That was good to see.
09:19For Amber's framer, he's always going to get some love. And then I think you've got Wisniewski
09:23who came over in the trade. So he's under a lot of scrutiny. You've got Rennell Blanco.
09:27He's under, you know, he was performing at an all-star level at a point last year.
09:31So there's a boy, can he sustain that? And then there's sort of Spencer Arroganti,
09:35who's kind of been floating in the middle here, who, who
09:38Had a very promising debut last year with extremes though, right? Like the bad starts
09:43were really bad. The good starts were really good. Yeah. I like, I thought, well, I saw growth
09:49in his mindset last year. You know, there were times where
09:56Flirt with strike zone and he's addressed that he addressed it within the season,
10:00but this year in the off season, he's made it a point of focus to just attack the strike zone
10:06to more. You're not going to, you're not going to fool major leaguers the way you could fool
10:11minor leaguers. Brian McTaggart had a good interview with him where he talked about that
10:14and that like that part, because I've, because I saw it because we saw it last year, him actually
10:20make those adjustments in season. I feel relatively confident given the Astros ability to develop
10:25pitchers that he's just going to continue on that same track. The, the, the optimism,
10:30the reason why this article showed so much optimism in Arroganti is they said that the
10:33reason why he had an ERA of four and a half last year, despite some of the advanced stats saying
10:38that he should have had a better ERA, three reasons, bad luck walks Homers.
10:44Now, one of those things is just, you can't control bad luck. And they said that they said,
10:47he'll, you know, the chances are his luck will be better this year. The other two, you go, well,
10:52walks and Homers, those are kind of a problem. A the point they make in this article is that
10:58there were, there were some positive signs with his command as the season went on.
11:02And the command is something that's not very sticky year to year. There, there can be a lot
11:07of variance with command from year to year. So there's, there should be optimism or could be
11:11optimism that he gets better in that department. Well, I think the big thing is the big thing
11:16that doesn't necessarily change year to year that you can get better at is that how do you manage
11:21your command? And like, what do you know? And that speaks to him. I think feeling like his
11:27level of command was better than it was when it comes to the major league. And, and when you try
11:33to get to cute strikes on, you just, you can't get away with it because they're going to, they're
11:39going to go out and, and crush it. Then Rocky, if you don't have pinpoint command, the Homers,
11:46the thing they cite here is it's just not a big enough sample size yet to know if he has a home
11:49run. He's never had a home run problem before he had one last year. So wait and see is kind of
11:55what they're saying, but they're very bullish on Spencer Arrighetti as am I know. And I think the,
11:59the one big thing last year with him was that he had a, he had a few really bad games.
12:04The one that was the worst one, June and June, he gave up seven earned runs in one and a third
12:08inning. He had another one where he gave up. He gave up like six runs and a couple of innings
12:15another couple of times, but it was, so you take out the outliers and everything
12:21and it was a pretty damn good year for a rookie.