SpaceCityAg05 said:

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Fans tend to overreact to slumps and struggles and want team meetings.

But the number of guys making mental errors, playing sloppy, etc. screams reset. SOMEONE (we all know it won't be psychology/morale extraordinaire Dusty) needs to take charge in the clubhouse and put an end to this crap.

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Quote:

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AT 5:40 P.M. on Wednesday, the Houston Astros hitters met in the batting cage at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. Less than 24 hours earlier, the Phillies' lineup unleashed an unprecedented barrage of home runs, tagging Astros starter Lance McCullers Jr. for a World Series-record five long balls. Game 3 of the World Series ended in a 7-0 loss and 2-1 series deficit for the Astros, and Michael Brantley refused to treat such embarrassment with silence.
Brantley, 35, joined Houston in 2019, before news of the scandal broke, and re-signed in 2021, when the fusillade of hatred toward the team accompanied the return of fans to ballparks. Brantley listens far more than he speaks. A high-batting-average, low-strikeout throwback and a five-time All-Star, Brantley has spent the past four months on the injured list with a shoulder injury that required surgery, but that hasn't diminished his standing in the clubhouse. He showed up every day, quick with a pointer or a compliment.

When Brantley asked the hitters to gather in the cage, he intended to offer neither. Brantley was mad enough that hitting coaches Alex Cintron, Troy Snitker and Jason Kanzler, aware of his frustrations, left before the meeting began. Only the players needed to hear what Brantley wanted to say.
The Astros, Brantley said, are an extremely good team -- and if something didn't change, they were going to lose the World Series, just as they had to the Washington Nationals in 2019 and the Braves last year. In Game 3, they let a coterie of Phillies pitchers control the tempo and beat them up, he said, and they needed to play their brand of baseball. No more complacency. No more losing.
Six years earlier, during a 17-minute rain delay between the ninth and 10th innings of Game 7 of the

World Series, Chicago Cubs outfielder Jason Heyward gave a speech that lives on in lore as the impetus behind the franchise's first championship in 108 years. Brantley found himself on the other side of it as an outfielder for Cleveland, the Cubs' opponent. By this season, he had been on three World Series-losing teams. He could not abide a fourth.

"I'm sick of giving sad hugs," Brantley told the team.

The response was immediate.

"We were all ready to run through a brick wall," Astros first baseman Trey Mancini said. "He's somebody I've admired immensely throughout my career. I mean, the model of consistency. His words carry a ton of weight. It meant a lot to us. It turned the series around."

Word of Brantley's soliloquy soon filtered to Astros pitchers. They had buoyed the team during the season and for much of the postseason, as leadoff hitter Jos Altuve and slugger Yordan lvarez's struggles weighed down the offense. And in Game 4, they ran square through the Phillies' offense, twirling a combined no-hitter. The offense, meanwhile, touched up Philadelphia for five runs in the fifth inning to log a 5-0 victory and even the series.

"I didn't like how we responded in Game 3," Brantley said four days later as music thumped and champagne corks popped amid the Astros' celebration. "They hit Lance hard, and we did nothing to respond. We didn't get into their bullpen to use their main weapons. We didn't do our job. We made our task harder. So I wanted to let everybody know that if we stuck together, did what we do, played our way, that didn't matter. I wanted to reiterate that.

"It was straight from the heart, what I believe, what I was feeling, I went to bed that night thinking about it. I woke up that morning and I just had to get it done. I had to say it."
Following the win, Astros players awarded Brantley as player of the game for a game in which he did not play.

"That was probably the best speech I've ever been part of," said Altuve, the longest-tenured Astro. "He came to us, he had a little meeting and then we won three in a row."
Baseball clubhouses are living, breathing experiments in human behavior, subject to the whims of fickle men, fragile enough to splinter at the first sign of tension. When Baker took over, the Astros were a lit fuse that he helped to snuff out. Over time, the shared experience of being an Astro -- being a villain -- bonded the team. And what Baker had fostered during his three seasons emboldened Brantley, who had learned from the best and knew where his homily would fall on the fine line between leadership and overstepping.

"He can do whatever he wants to do," Baker said. "I'm serious. That's how much faith I've got in Brantley. He's gonna tell 'em the right thing."

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stoneca said:

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Cant strand 2nd and 3rd no outs

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CFTXAG10 said:

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Time to send him back to AAA

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Rule#2 said:

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CFTXAG10 said:

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Time to send him back to AAA

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Time to cut him please

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