Flailing Astros envision alternate ending: 'There's a hundred wins in this room'
As the managerial death watch spreads, assigning culpability to the Houston Astros’ last-place showing illustrates how complicated that can be.
BALTIMORE — Sometimes, an incomplete grade is just that. Red ink can fill the margins, pointing out the pupil’s many failings, yet it’s possible to understand that this is a rough draft and not, hopefully, the final product. That concept has been increasingly harder to grasp across Major League Baseball in the past 72 hours.
Alex Cora is out in Boston , the Red Sox deeming a 10-17 start cracking open a window to fire their highly respected manager, who indeed needed less than 24 hours to find another job offer. That came from Philadelphia , as club president Dave Dombrowski flirted with Cora even as his own manager, Rob Thomson, skippered the club Sunday in Atlanta. Nothing personal, Thomson said after he, too, was fired .
Just an underachieving $283 million club needing a scapegoat. That brings us to Houston, where a once-perennial playoff club has sputtered to an 11-19 start, with both a manager, Joe Espada, and a general manager, Dana Brown, working without contracts this season. It is natural to wonder if the Astros will be the next to issue a pink slip to their manager.
Yet as Brown noted to USA TODAY Sports: It is very early. And there is an alternate reality the Astros imagine themselves experiencing this season. “I know there’s a lot of talent in this room.
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