Yahoo Sports' Jeff Passan breaks down the Astros' off-season, and it's not pleasant.
Passan lists four ways to not improve a team, and coincidentally, the Astros made all four moves (two are valid, two are asinine). But his main beef is with the draft:
Houston’s track record in the amateur draft is not just embarrassing. It’s stupefying, short-sighted, blatantly stupid, hilarious in a what-in-the-Sam-Hill-are-they-doing fashion and, well, if there’s one word for it, then it’s ironically appropriate: amateurish.
Since 2006, the Astros have spent $15.4 million on four amateur drafts. It is the lowest figure in baseball. Though they have coughed up $10.7 million in the last two drafts, the spoils won’t show for at least another two years...
...The 2006 and 2007 drafts are among the decade’s worst. No player from 2006 has made the major leagues, and the Astros spent only $1.4 million in 2007, which hasn’t graduated anyone, either. Houston’s insistence on hewing to slot recommendations at the behest of commissioner Bud Selig while most of the 29 other teams ignore them shows that playing company man isn’t always the best route.
The Astros are old. They are financially hamstrung. Their owner, Drayton McLane, is trying to sell. There is no quick fix here, not with Myers or Lindstrom or Lyon or Feliz, and they’re the only ones who didn’t see it coming.
And then there's a clever little haiku.