Roy Oswalt won't take economic woes as an answer

draft picks are always gambles. Even ML-ready talent (which we aren’t in a position to get, anyways) carries some risk to it – David Price could have blown out his elbow in June, Kerry Wood could have died in an accident or something. But your 1st round pick is the closest thing you have to a sure-thing in the draft.

Consider that the Astros’ best prospect right now (as per Baseball Prospectus) is Castro. We have so little talent in Corpus Christi, Round Rock, and even Salem that our best prospect played last year in Low freaking A ball. Yeah, the Astros have other talent, and this first year of the 2008 draft class has looked good, but it really means something that BPro thinks a guy who has only played 39 games is our best bet to contribute in the coming years.

Simply put, the Astros just can’t afford to lose any more of those top picks. Bobby Heck needs to find good players in the lower rounds, too, but their first round pick is the Astros’ most precious non-Oswalt/Berkman asset.

So that’s the calculation you have to do, if you’re Ed Wade. Yes, Sheets is close to a guarantee right now, production-wise (though no pitcher is a known quantity; they’re just too injury-prone), but I’d argue that the Astros need another strong draft more than they need a few more wins from Sheets. One means the Astros might win a championship in a few years, the other means that the Astros still have to hope and pray to make the playoffs this year, despite having another $14 million contract obligation for the year.

On Drayton’s money: look, I’m the first to say that the economy isn’t quite as bad as people like to make it out to be. But Drayton, like every other billionaire, probably had most of his money tied up in the stock market. We have no idea how much of a hit his assets took. Faced with a risky economic situation, I can see why he doesn’t want to add another multi-million dollar obligation to his expenditures.

Baseball is exactly like Kraft (actually, given the level of gov’t subsidy, I’d say it’s more like car manufacturing or airline operation). You have a final product (wins on the field), inputs of labor (the players and employees), and inputs of capital (the ballpark and its amenities, as well as human capital). These inputs all have costs associated with them, and you need to find the right set of inputs to make a profit. And, like every other firm, the Astros are forced to make tradeoffs. Drayton has less of an excuse for spending little money, compared to the owners of the Royals or Pirates or Padres since he owns one of the more wealthy clubs, but the Astros are still nowhere near as wealthy as the Mets, Red Sox, Cubs, or Dodgers (and the Yankees are worth about THREE TIMES what the Astros are). He’s firmly amongst the league’s upper-middle class of clubs, and he’s just as affected by the economy as they are.

Of course, that isn’t stopping the Braves from offering Burnett a significant contract, but their own financial risks are their business.

And if Houston’s pride is tied up in its sports teams, we’re all screwed.

And, Andy, I agree. It really sucks that the Astros are in this sort of economic and organizational position. It was made this way because Drayton and Purpura didn’t understand what they were doing. and it’s going to take a while to fix. In the meantime, the Astros face a tradeoff between the quality of the MLB team and the quality of the organization. Unfortunately, that’s really boring.