Marvin said:
Rustys-Beef-o-Reeno said:
All I do is Nguyen said:
Beat40 said:
I cannot tell you how bad I want LMJ to contribute to the 2025 season in an important way.
Same. I love his passion not only for baseball but you can tell he loves this city too
I'm not sure he has that same passion as 2017-2020 McCullers
Maybe I misinterpreted your comment, but how in the world could anyone make an assessment on that? I'd actually say the opposite. He keeps getting hurt trying to come back.
It's been a long time since I've been a real sportswriter, but I did work for a tennis website for a few years and interviewed Martina Hingis at an event one time. If you don't know her, she was #1 very early in life, but hurt her hip and took forever to come back and was never as good.
I'm paraphrasing here because it's been 15 years or so, but we had talked about the comeback process, and she had something to the effect of - the worst of it is, that all you want to do is get back out there at your full potential, but suddenly you're having to change your goals to "can I plant my foot here without it hurting to the point that I feel like crying" and similar things. She came back and won a couple of titles and then got hurt again and said at some point you just get burned out trying to make it to these small milestones that are only a tiny part of actually playing the game.
I have always enjoyed LMJ, but it feels like we've heard 5 different times "He's throwing on a flat surface again!" But even that is so far gone from being a worthwhile contributor to a big league team. Even coming back to the team, how much does he know about our current catchers or Espada's strategy or the 25% of the league's hitters that were probably not there in 2022?
It just eventually starts to look like too steep of a hill. If I were him, I sure as hell wouldn't retire or give up either because that money builds your family's wealth for generations to come. But from this fan's perspective at least, the Astros have now paid him $49.6 million to pitch 8 regular season games and 3 post-season games in the last 3 years.
It's awkward watching him goof around in an HEB Mexican soap opera commercial knowing he's getting paid for that on top of the $17.6 million he's getting paid in general while not contributing anything. When your only time hanging around your teammates is in commercial featuring Orbit's evil twin, maybe it's time to let it go.
Life is better with a beagle