I said at the start of the season that Coop at least seemed to be learning from his mistakes. But it seems we’re seeing many of the same mistakes from last season. He orders stupid plays, he overuses his bullpen and makes nonsensical decisions on whom to use in any situation, and he continues to alienate his players. Cooper is definitely not why the Astros are failing right now, but he’s not helping any.

I have always thought it was cool that he is an Astros’ organization guy too.

The one negative is that the Nats apparently concluded that Acta wasn’t able to get through to the young players on the team—albeit that several of them were known knuckleheads. How that would translate to the Astros, who knows? Maybe he would be good for a team of veterans. Maybe he would work well with Astros’ youngsters because their makeup is better. Or maybe the Nats were just plain wrong. When I read that the Nationals’ front office undercut Acta in his efforts to keep Lastings Milledge in the outfield, I realized that it would be a bad situation for Acta, as well as possibly ruining Milledge’s career.

Fangraphs had an article which points out that Acta is really the victim of a team constructed with perhaps the worst defensive players in all of baseball. When you construct a team with three LFers in the outfield, you will have fielding problems, which will show up in the pitching numbers. And we know Acta tried to do what he could, even bringing in some of the best fielding outfielders of all time (including Cesar Cedeno) to try and work with the outfielders.

you’re old