Firing First Base Coach Jose Cruz Is THE Key To Turning Around The Astros

Yeah, sarcasm. I'm getting good at it. Drayton fired, uh, I mean, "reassigned" all of the Astros coaches except for Dave Clark and Sean Berry, the hitting coach. I was sorry about the latter and hoped that maybe Drayton would put out the bucks to hire Jaime Cevallos, who turned Ben Zobrist from Eric Bruntlett to almost MVP. At the very LEAST, perhaps he could have done something to reverse the teaching that "aggressive", which is I guess, swinging at every single pitch thrown, if possible, to increase the probability or GIDP, is not necessarily good. Yeah, I know that a good deal of the media writers and announcers incessantly express cpontempt for any ballplayer who, for some unknown reason, won't swing at bad pitches, referring to him as (WARNING - BAD LANGUAGE coming up) a "Moneyball" player. I'm not sure why making an out or 2 swinging at the first or second pitch is so much better than taking a walk, but I guess Dusty Baker is not the only guy who believes that walks clog up the bases and why on EARTH would any baseball team want men on base? sigh Where was I? oh yeah Dewey Robinson is gone, which is a good thing for the simple reason that the pitchers didn't like him and went elsewhere for pitching help, such as to renowned pitching gurus as Lance Berkman and Doug Brocail. Ed Romero, the erstwhile 3B, bench coach is likewise gone and so is bullpen coach Mark Bailey. No idea where Dave Clark will be if he is not kept as manager. I've heard tell that Cooper didn't listen to anyone, players OR coaches (not that he was ever allowed to pick any of them) and perhaps it might could help if Drayton didn't think that he should tell managers who their coaches should be. Who knows if the coaches he DID have were allowed to do anything at all. I do know, as do all of all yall, that this year's team resembled a bunch of particles in Brownian Motion (thanks to Professor X for THAT one) which means that each particle meanders aimlessly all about without every displaying any hint of purposeful motion. Justice noted, in his latest column, that the fielders were positioned poorly this year and that opposition hitters got hits against the Astros that they didn't get against other clubs (must have gotten that from fangraphs.) This is the difference between watching on TV and seeing the games in person - the TV cameras seldom show how the fielders are positioned or how they move from pitch to pitch or batter to batter. I most definitely DID notice that Berkman made a LOT fewer plays, even before he injured his calf and that Miggy not only made 20 errors (that the scorer acknowledged) but another 20 or so that were stupidly called "hits" and at least another 20 botched DPs and that wasn't ALL positioning as moving more slowly and throwing less accurately are his own fault. As for Clank, well, Clank is Clank and you have to be grateful the for the times he actually DOES catch the goldurned baseball and awed for the few times he somehow manages to make any catch that is not routine (meaning he has to move more than 3 steps.) sigh Truth is that in spite of all the whitewash, this is just a minor way of "shaking things up" because if Drayton was REALLY serious, he would be at least TRYING to interview someone better than the candidates he has. You can replace all the bullpen and first base coaches you want, but if the manager isn't going to be able to turn the losing attitude around, the name of the first base coach won't make a shred of difference. Oh yeah - could Cruz have gotten fired because of all the "no comments" he made about Cooper? Oh, I mean, "reassigned" - exCUUUUUUUSE me...