Well... maybe.
But clearly, they weren't sitting around talking about how neat it is that Carlos Lee is on the cusp of becoming the all-time home run leader among Panamanian-born players. No, there are bigger issues to deal with. The team entered Wednesday's series finale in Milwaukee with a 32-45 record, good for fifth place in the National League Central.
Purpura finds all of this "unacceptable." And changes are coming. Soon.
"With the way we're going?" Purpura said. "Certainly. This is unacceptable. You can't keep going like this."
Changes may not be made as early as Thursday, when the team returns to Houston for an 11-game homestand, but Purpura isn't ruling that out. And he shouldn't, considering the team is nearing the halfway point of the season and hasn't come close to establishing itself as a contender.
So it doesn't look like we're going to stand around and let the division run away from us(at least not without a fight)... but what can we really do? We have one of the worst farm systems in baseball and really little to nothing to trade. Our possible trade commodities were Morgan Ensberg and Brad Lidge... both of which have been injured/bad or whatever else they could do to lower their trade value. We have Mike Lamb who could possibly garner a little bit of trade value.. then again, he's been one of our only bright spots this season and not really sure if he would bring anything of value anyways.
I thought this was... odd...
Purpura is clearly dismayed by the recent results, but in some ways, he's not all that surprised that the bullpen is struggling.
"I still go back to the loss of [Brad] Lidge being a key component to what's going on here," he said. "Guys are forced into different roles, roles they might not be familiar with. I think that's a big part of it."
Really? I think he's giving these guys too big of a break. These guys are big league pitchers and it seems you are letting them off because they aren't pitching in their normal role... There is NO DAMN EXCUSE for the way the bullpen has pitched lately. I mean a 14.19 ERA over the last 8 games is re-damn-diculous. Pathetic...
Quotes taken from here.