Salary dump a part of Draytonomics
The bottom line of professional baseball is, of course, the bottom line. It's a business, and no business will survive for long if it cannot make a profit. Baseball, though, like any other professional sport, has a bottom line that goes beyond the bottom line. A team that is competitive on the field has a greater chance of being successful on the balance sheet. At times like this, it's easier to wonder if Drayton McLane fully grasps this concept. With the trade of Billy Wagner to Philadelphia, McLane and General Manager Gerry Hunsicker have sent a clear message to Astros fans that mediocrity is acceptable, that simply making the playoffs is enough.
BILLY Wagner says he was shocked.
Which can only lead us to conclude that the lefthander is at least mildly surprised each morning when he looks out the window and sees that ball of fire climbing once again in the eastern sky.
That Wagner was going to be traded by the Astros this offseason was the surest thing this side of royal princes William and Harry never having to panhandle for spare change outside Buckingham Palace.
Wagner's departure was on the clock from the moment he stopped flapping his gums about club owner Drayton McLane's failure to make the financial commitment necessary to win a championship. However, it had been preordained by the cold, immutable fact that Wagner is due to make $8 million next season, far too large a number for a team operating on the kind of budget that makes you wonder how it ever pays the light bill at Minute Maid Park.
Draytonomics means never having to say you're sorry. Not for a résumé of postseason victories that is anorexically thin. Not for coming up a clunker the past two seasons, unable to even reach the playoffs.
McLane now has a beautiful state of the art playground for his Astros. A reasonable person might have assumed that the extra revenue from Minute Maid Park would have allowed McLane to make a concerted effort to field a team with legitimate championship aspirations. Of course, if you're a reasonable person, you would have beed dead wrong.
It seems apparent that, as long as Drayton McLane is signing the checks, the Astros will be destined to be a consistently second-tier team. They will win perhaps 85 games a year, just enough to lull Astros fans into thinking that maybe, just maybe, this might be the year. They might make the playoffs, but they will make a quick and graceless exit. McLane has talked the talk about bringing a championship team to Houston, but his words have not been translated into action. If Astros fans are satisfied with an owner that is all hat and no cattle, now's the time to step up and buy those season tickets. At least you aren't going to have to worry about getting your hopes up.
When he fired away at management on the last day of the regular season and predicted he'd be traded, Wagner told Astros fans that the club would, as usual, field a "tape job" lineup next season.
"Well, we hope they trust us based on our track record," McLane said Monday.
That, of course, is the problem.
Indeed it is....
