The Post-Hype Limbo of Jon Singleton

Have we forgotten Big Jon? This man deserves to play.

On June 2nd, 2014, the Astros announced both a contract extension and promotion to the Major Leagues for first base prospect Jonathan Singleton, then a 22-year old who was hitting .267/.397/.544 with 14 HR and 43 RBI through 54 games in the Pacific Coast League. Singleton had been a top-100 MLB prospect for four consecutive years through his rise in the minor leagues, according to both Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus.

The Astros On Vacation

Championship ETA? With Carlos Gomez: now.

In his brilliant psychological thriller The Visible Man, Chuck Klosterman has a great line about the psychology of being rich -- the kind of rich the Astros were from June of 2012 until July of 2015:

"The rich can take vacations, which isn't nearly as essential to day-to-day happiness as the process of looking forward to all the vacations you'll experience later."

This concept -- that laying on a beach never feels as great as the security and self-esteem of sitting in your living room knowing that you can lay on a beach whenever the heck you want -- is a fairly common sense way of explaining how hope and imagination work.

From the moment Jeff Luhnow took over baseball operations

July 6-9 - Astros @ Cleveland: Series Preview

Before we begin, a quick word to wrap up the Red Sox series. As predicted here, the Astros really struggled with Clay Buchholz on Saturday, split the two coin-flip games and got out of Boston 1-for-3. The Astros are now sitting 12 games over .500, and due to the Angels demolition of the Rangers in Arlington, their AL West lead is down to three games.

Cleveland is, in many ways, a similar foe to Boston.

Can Houston Be a Baseball Town?

Just another Tuesday night at MMP. Does it have to be?

The Philadelphia Phillies are fielding the worst team in baseball, both objectively and subjectively. Their win percentage puts them further from .500 in either direction than any team. Their players are unhappy, their manager abruptly quit after those inside and outside baseball had concluded he was hopelessly over his head. They have one of baseball's most dangerous dynamics: a lame duck baseball operations staff, and one that is being tasked to make big decisions about a future they have no hope of participating in. They are six years removed from losing the World Series and have been steadily falling apart ever since. They are, essentially, the 2011 Astros.

The Phillies are averaging a reported 24,472 fans per game this season.

18 Thoughts on the First Half

The 47-34 Astros have exceeded all realistic expectations so far. They have the best record in the American League, three months after not a single national expert at ESPN, CBS Sports, Grantland, Sporting News, SBNation, Yahoo! Sports, or Sports Illustrated projected them into one of the AL's five playoff spots. For those prognosticators who broke it down by division, nobody placed the Astros higher than fourth place in the AL West, and for those who broke it down further by record, Keith Law's 78 wins was the high number.

July 3rd-5th - Astros @ Boston: Series Preview

by Mike Mitchell

On Friday night, the Astros (47-34) will open the second half of their schedule with a three-game series at Fenway Park against the Red Sox (37-44). The Astros lifetime record of 6-17 vs. Boston, and 2-9 away from home, combined with the Red Sox platinum-franchise mystique, can provoke an impulse of mid-market inferiority in even the most confident Astros fan.

The 2015 Red Sox, though, are a dumpster fire of the highest order.