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.
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