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Houston, you have a problem.
Your ballclub is bad, really bad.
The Astros, a perennial contender for much of the last decade, have fallen on hard times.
From 1994 to 2006, Houston was one of the most competitive clubs in the National League.
During that twelve-year run, the Astros finished lower than second-place just once, in 2000, when the club played sub-.500 baseball for the first time since ’92.
The club made the playoffs six times in that stretch and won the National League pennant in 2005 before falling to the Chicago White Sox in the World Series.
As it stands, 2005 was the Astros last trip to the postseason.
Since that magical October, the franchise has been backpedalling into obscurity in the NL Central.
Owner Drayton McLane is largely to blame.
That may be a hard pill to swallow given the Astros have been one of baseball’s most successful franchises since he became owner, but those days are quickly fading in the rearview mirror.
Even during the club’s successful run, McLane bullied his general managers and has all-too-often relied on an aging roster of overpaid stars. It seems that McLane’s formula has finally come back to haunt him.
Despite possessing great young players like Michael Bourn, Tommy Manzella, and Hunter Pence the average age of the ballclub is slightly more than 31 years old.
To put it in perspective, the closest team in the NL Central age-wise is Milwaukee at 29.65 years old, a number which figures to go down significantly now that Braden Looper and Mike Cameron—35 and 36, respectively—are no longer with the club.
The Astros are old and overpaid, and until McLane allows general manager Ed Wade to move the contracts of his aging, yet still-talented, veterans, the club is going nowhere.
The obvious solution would be to trade the likes of Roy Oswalt, Lance Berkman, and Carlos Lee while they still have trade value.
As such, I’ve decided to take a look at the man who is probably the most valuable of the three, Carlos Lee.
(For an overall look at Houston’s future, check out this article by Jesse Mostiff, BleacherReport’s Featured Columnist for the Milwaukee Brewers.)
Carlos Lee is one of baseball’s premier left fielders.
Offensively, that is; with the glove, not so much.
Lee is a career .291/.344/.503 hitter who can almost always be penciled in for 25-30 home runs and 100-plus runs batted in.
Lee, 33, has also shown an ability to play in markets of all-sizes, as the Astros are his fourth big-league club.
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