Dusty Baker on his batting order: “If Brantley is in the lineup, Brantley is No. 2 … I know Peña‘s been good, but Peña ain’t been good as long as Brantley.”

— Chandler Rome (@Chandler_Rome) March 5, 2023

. . . said:

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Dusty Baker on his batting order: “If Brantley is in the lineup, Brantley is No. 2 … I know Peña‘s been good, but Peña ain’t been good as long as Brantley.”

— Chandler Rome (@Chandler_Rome) March 5, 2023

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There ends the great debate of #2

Shots fired

it should’ve never been a debate to begin with, but folks started watching the team in October and drew wild conclusions off three weeks of games.

— Chandler Rome (@Chandler_Rome) March 5, 2023

Those are like BB gun or laser tag shots.

Someone really good is going to hit in each of the first 7 spots in the order.

No one who's inclined to see Peña hitting 2nd is going to be mad about Brantley hitting 2nd.

Like we talked about months ago, the only "downside" to that is the implication that our best hitter will be moving down a spot in the order. But maybe Dusty will do L-L in the 2-3 spots.

Yesterday was 27 days until opening Day. Nobody will ever wear #27 after Altuve hangs it up, but the # has some impressive history as well.

For starters, Bob Watson wore #37 from 1968-1979. Given his future status as GM, it's pretty surprising they didn't retire it somewhere along the way. An Astro draftee at age 18, he had a few cups of coffee with the squad he finally became s starter halfway through the 1970 season at age 24. His power came on slowly, but in 1972 he broke out with a season where he hit .312 with 16 home runs and 86 RBI, and the next season hit .312 with 16 homers and 94 RBI. He was an All-Star for the first time that season.
His best years were in 1976 and 1977. In 76 he had 16 HR, 102 RBI, and hit .313 with 62 walks and only 64 strikeouts.
In 1977, he set a team record with 110 RBI and a career high of 22 home runs. if you grew up an Astro an in the 70s-90s, that RBi record stood for way too long. Seems like every year, both league leaders would get more than our team record. It finally fell in 1994 thanks to Bagwell, who only needed 110 games to break it during the strike year. In 14 year as an Astro he hit .297 with 1,448 hits in 1,381 games, 139 HR, and 782 RBI. He also scored baseball's 1 millionth run on May 4, 1975. He was on second when Milt May hit a homer and famously sprinted home, thus beating Dave Concepcion of the Reds, who had homered and also sprinted around the bases.
He was the Astros' GM from the end of 1993 to the end of 1995 when he was hired by the Yankees.
He made some really bad trades in those 2 years.



Five years after Watson was traded, Glenn "The Big Bopper" Davis put on #27 when he was called up tot he Majors in 1984. He was also the closest thing we had to an MVP for a long time, finishing 2nd in 1986. The Astros drafted him in the first round of the January 1979 draft and he started slaughtering the ball from the get-go, hitting 65 home runs in his first 3 years in the minors.

He was called up about halfway into the 1985 season and hit 20 home runs and drove in 64 to finish 5th in the ROY voting. The next year, he did what no man had done before for our team, save Jimmy Wynn, hit a lot of home runs in the cavernous Astrodome. He hit 31 HR, drove in 101 runs, scored 91 and won the Silver Slugger and was named an All Star. He lost the MVP vote to Mike Schmidt by a 287-231 count. The Phllies finished 21.5 games behind the Mets, so Schmidt was obvoiusly really important. Davis hit .269 in the post-season against the Mets and in his first post-season at-bat took Dwight Gooden deep to dead center for the only run of a 1-0 classic. He was 3-for-7 in the 16 inning loss with 2 RBI.

Davis had two more 30+ home run seasons, with 30 and 99 RBI in 1988 and 34 in 1989. He finished in the Top 10 of the MVP vote both years. In 1990 he got hurt but still hit 22 home runs in 93 games. After the season, he was traded to Baltimore for Steve Finley, Pete Harnisch, and Curt Schilling. He never regained his health or his swing with the Orioles and was a huge bust for them. He played just 3 more years before retiring at age 32.



Harnisch also wore #27 for the Stros, from '91-'94. He was very underrated, going 12-9 with a 2.70 ERA on the Astros' 97-loss 1991 team and 16-9 with a 2.98 ERA in 1994.

Of course that leads us to our greatest player. The 5'6 giant slayer of all time.

Jose Altuve has played 12 years, all in Houston, has 1,935 career hits, 192 HR, 279 SB, a .307 batting average and an .830 OPS. he's led the league in hits four times, twice in steals, won three batting titles, is the first Astro to ever win MVP, and is a legendary clutch and post-season hitter. He has 23 career post-season home runs, 103 hits, is slugging .500 for his career, and I could just go on all day. He's the Astros' recent domination personified. If you look around "Fuq around and find out" in the dictionary, there he is.

6 silver sluggers, 8 all-star games, 2019 ALCS MVP, and big hit after big hit including.

"ALTUUUUVE! HAS JUST SENT THE ASTROS BACK TO THE WORLD SERIES!"

And to catch up, today is 26 days from opening day.

The #26 doesn't have a ton of history attached to it before the 1990s, other than my man Louie Meadows who hit a pinch hit grand slam off the Dodgers one Sunday afternoon. Back in June 1988, the Astros beat the Dodgers 5-4 in that insane 22-inning game where Fernando Valenzuela ended up playing first base and position player Jeff Hamilton took the loss for LA.

That game started at 735 p.m. and took 7 hours and 14 minutes to complete, meaning it ended at 2:49 a.m.

The teams played a 1:35 p.m. game on Sunday - less than 12 hours after the Saturday game ended. The Dodgers scored 5 runs in the top of the first and were up 6-0 after 2-1/2 innings. Meadws hit a grand slam off Tim Belcher as the Astros cut it to 6-5 in the fifth, tied it with 2 outs in the bottom of the ninth on a home run by some rookie named Craig Biggio, and won it in the best way of all time. Mike Scott came in to pitch teh top of the 13th. In the bottom of the inning, Doran walked, stole second and went to third on an error, ALejandro Pena walked Ramirez and Reynolds to load the bases, then Biggio hit a groudner to second and they got the force at home.
With one out, Scott batted for himself and hit a game-winning sac fly to center.

But I digress, because Luis Gonzalez took the number in 1990 and wore it until he was traded to the Cubs in 1995. He came back tot the Astros in 1997. he was part of a scrappy outfield with STeve Finley and had some nice seasons, hitting .300 in 1993 with 15 HR, 20 SB, and 72 RBI.

Then he went to Arizona and something magical happened. A wizard touched his bat and suddenly, Luis could hit home runs! He hit 57 in 2001 after never hitting more than 15 as an Astro. Amazing! Luis wound up with 354 homers! He had 62 in 7 seasons with the Astros and 224 in 8 years with the Diamondbacks. Cool stuff!




Just a few pals hanging around not talking steroids.

Smooth operator MIke Lamb wore the # from 2004-2007. I always liked Lamb because he was smart enough to realize that playing part-time with the Astros is better than full-time with the Rangers. He hit .281 in 4 years with us, including.207 in 126 games in 2006.

Here lately, #26 has been worn by guys that Dusty kept insisting he wanted to play so we traded them away, Myles Straw and Jose Siri.

Luis Gonzales and Brady Anderson may have been the two most obviously examples of just how much steroids could help a hitter. Sure we all know about what it did to Bonds but Gonzo and Anderson are on the Mt Rushmore of guys who turned into the Bambino with just a little help from a friend.