I still check Astros.com and this site every day just to see if anything big happened.

But, for some reason this team is a whole lot harder to get excited about than in previous years. We have like, no young talent. We’re probably not going to sign anyone meaningful this off-season and we can’t win the W.S. as constructed.

I wish Wade would just blow it up and start over.

and the Astros’ front office isn’t going to do anything, I’m just waiting until basketball season starts.

I’ll probably still check out what the Astros are doing in Arizona, the DR, and Hawaii, but not much else is going to happen.

I don’t know if Wade can blow up the roster, or even if he has the acumen to trade away our good players well. He’d probably just trade away Oswalt and Berkman for junk, anyways.

As it stands, he’s got almost all of our good trade pieces locked up with no-trade contracts. And Tejada has such a ridiculous contract (and sucked so hard this year) that we probably couldn’t trade him, anyways. So maybe it’s best if he doesn’t blow up the team.

1. I am always interested in the minor league players, but I can’t usually follow them too well during the season, so I catch up on the farm system. It’s kind of fun to project when players might reach the majors, and make guesses about who will advance up a level, who might repeat, who’s going to flame out, and where’s the dead weight.

2. About the only time I ever learn about non-Astros players is when I look at free agents to see who might be beneficial.

3. The Rule 5 draft is in December, and I think Ed Wade will try to snag someone again this year. I think Wes Wright ended up working out quite well. We’ll have to see who is unprotected when December rolls around.

4. I check a variety of Astros fansites + MLBtraderumors just to see what transactions are being made, what rumors are floating around.

5. Texas Longhorn football.

like Astrosdaily forum, Crawfishboxes, Baseballthinkfactory, hardballtimes, and baseballmusings. Obviously, I’m not spending as much time on baseball, because I’m not watching baseball games. But I like to follow the hot stove league. It’s interesting to follow trades and signings by other teams, as well as try to guess what the Astros will do in the off-season. The best baseball analyses come out in the off-season, because the data can be fully examined after the season is over. I might spend more time perusing some of the analyses and player predictions.

I keep the same baseball sites in my RSS feeds and read whatever they post on a regular basis.

I relish in the post-season because even though I generally don’t give a damn about who’s playing in it, the games still have drama, key match-ups, and everything about baseball that I love. I know that in just a few weeks baseball be will be out of my life for a few months, so I try to squeeze everything that the season can give me.

For me, being both a fantasy baseball nerd and an Astros fan, the hot-stove season is almost as good as the real season. I refresh MLB Trade Rumors obsessively and I run scenarios through my head all day playing fantasy GM…it’s just supreme.