strange feeling about new era of this franchise...

[houstonboy01]

Is it me or does anyone else feel as if the Astros are on their way for a decade of mediocracy. The killer B's era is officially over... Now we have a group of mediocre players and a owner who never was and never will be willing to spend some extra cash for some studs. Its going to be hard getting used to it since for a decade plus the Astros had consistant winning seasons and were always winning or in the hunt for the wild card or division lead.

[RaoulDuke79]

Eh, we might be struggling the next couple seasons(then again you never know in this division).

However, if they dedicate themselves to strengthening the farm system which helped us to be so good for those many years, we have a good future. Oswalt/Berkman/Lee are in their prime and Pence is a young stud.

Problem is we've let our farm system go to hell. I like seeing them offer arbitration to guys like Loretta(they should have done that for Clemens/Pettite) because if he doesn't re-sign with us we get a draft pick. We need to keep doing that, and actually SIGN our top picks.

Also bringing in some good young prospects like Bourn and Ramirez is a good thing. Who knows what we get out of trading Burke/Scott but we shall see. Also we're getting younger at catcher as well, Towles is only 23 I believe, and seems to have potential.

That's the way to go IMO, keep bringing in good young prospects and signing our top picks, and even if we struggle a bit the next year or 2 we should still be competitive and be right back where we were in the postseason before you know it.

And as much as I hate our owner let's not pretend he hasn't dished out some cash before. He offered a damn good deal for Beltran, and he dished out a big load of cash for Lee. Also, remember the Hidalgo deal? Bagwell?

I think he will spend just not the way the Yankees/Sox do, unfortunately. What always made us good was having a strong farm system to produce good players(Berkman, Oswalt, Pence, etc) and also being able to use them for trades to get good players(Beltran). That's what we're lacking now and atleast it APPEARS Wade is attempting to rebuild that. I'll wait and see what happens in the next year before I panic too much.

Honestly as of right now I see only one reason we won't be competitive in our division next season: the starting rotation. Way too many holes to fill, but the offseason isn't over. We shall see.

[Roxflynorth]

Actually Astros is heading to right direction. Pence, Berkman, Lee are both star caliber. Many people don't like Lidge's trade but Wade was once manager of Phi so I thought Borne will have a breakout season. I will be disappointed if they trade everett for tajeda because what we need is some solid starting pitchers. I don't like the Anderson trade I think if Anderson plus a prospect we may get a pretty decent starting pitcher. However, I am still pretty optimistic about the Astros if they continue to rebulid two more years.

[zhollywood]

All the changes we've made in the off-season should lift us above mediocrity.

[A.J.]

All the changes we've made in the off-season should lift us above mediocrity.

glad to have you zhollywood

the like the direction we are going, we are in a win now mode, while wade is trying to build a good farm system, aignt nothing wrong with that