Astros Worst of the Decade Team

This past week, the Astros released their All-Decade team, highlighting their best players from 1999-2009. All the familiar names were present: Bagwell, Biggio, Berkman, Oswalt and Lidge all got their proper recognition. And while that's all well and good, a hearty reminder of the glory days of the mid-Aughts, we figured that there's also been enough mediocrity to spread around, too.

So we combed the records and the rosters, and came up with the opposite list. The No-Decade team features scrubs, flops, and nice guys who couldn't hit worth a damn. Let's meet them, shall we?

C - Mitch Melusky. Once a promising prospect with a hot bat, his 10 cent head got him in trouble from day one. Well-documented clubhouse cancer whose bad behavior precipitated a trade to Detroit for the team's previous starting catcher, the man he replaced: Brad Ausmus.

1B - Russ Johnson. This one is tough, because no one besides Bagwell and Berkman have been the consistent starter at first for the past decade. Naturally, this thankless position falls to a marginal major leaguer, who had a perfectly serviceable career as a pinch hitter, but was pretty much the textbook definition of vanilla.

2B - Jason Smith. His 2009 spring training showed a lot of promise, with a hot bat and a glove to match. He was a perfect fit for a utility infield role, particularly with injury-prone Kaz Matsui ahead of him on the depth chart. He didn't get a single hit in 21 games in the bigs, and was released.

SS - Julio Lugo. Before he signed to the Dodgers for crazy money, he was just a lanky Astros prospect with an unfortunate tendency to (allegedly) bang his wife's head into car doors outside Minute Maid Park. He was summarily released almost immediately.

3B - Chris Truby. Before Geoff Blum asserted himself as a super-sub, he and Truby fought for the starting job at the hot corner in 2001. Truby wasn't horrid as a starter, but it wasn't enough to keep the team from replacing him with Blum the next year.

LF - Daryle Ward. The most anticipated pudgy Astros slugger since Eric Anthony arrived with a bang, hitting 20 homers in his first full season. But as good as he was with a bat, he was more horrible with a glove. He's been a fourth outfielder and power pinch hitter for six different teams since 2003.

CF - Glen Barker. It's hard to dog on a guy whose main roles were pinch running and late-inning defensive replacement, but once Glen lost a step, he wasn't as good at either. He's now a coach in the Astros system.

RF - Jason Lane. Look up "highly touted prospect"; in the dictionary, and you'll see Lane. The risk of prospects is that they are only hypothetically good. Lane wasn't horrible; he had a great glove in RF, and could hit for power, but he wasn't the second coming of Berkman as some hoped he would be. Too inconsistent to be a starter, and bad off the bench as a pinch hitter. Bad combo.

SP - Tim Redding. He now plays for the Nationals, and he's one of their best pitchers. That should be enough, but he's basically Melusky on the mound, all bluster and no talent. He';d lose his head over bad calls and before you knew it, it was a 7 run inning.

RP - Dan Miceli. 2 loses in the 2004 NLCS to the freakin’ Cardinals will put you here. The Beltran Year, before that mole-faced traitor took the money and ran to Manhattan, was magic in a way that even the 2005 World Series wasn't. But Miceli couldn't keep the ball down, and so it goes.

Manager - Cecil Cooper. Does this even need to be explained? Really? Okay: bad inter-personal management, bad game management, bad roster management. Wouldn't trust him to manage a Chick-Fil-A on Sunday. Case closed.

The fact that most of the names on this list are also-rans and bench players does tell us that it was a remarkably successful decade for the club, unsurpassed in its history. It may be a while before the shine returns to the club, but in the midst of the current hand wringing about the State of the Franchise, let's not forget how good we've had it.
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photo: flickr user sulla55