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I thought after new ownership was approved, I was done with these types of article. Boy, was I dead wrong.
I only wrote two of these during the Ed Wade and Drayton McLane regime, but this has the chance of being a weekly column in the Jim Crane era.
I chuckled at this article by Deadspin, I bit my tongue after reading this article by Terri Schlather at Tales From The Juice Box, I almost wrote a follow up article to this one by John Royal at the Houston Press, but after this tweet I can't hold back anymore:
Learn your players!!!RT @astros Watch J.D. Martinez put the #Astros on the board in the 9th with this two-run homer: atmlb.com/PBylPm
— Sean (@native_astro) September 30, 2012
/Facepalm
After being one of the leaders into the social media forum the Houston Astros have officially become the village idiot of MLB teams regarding social media. With apologizes to Jeff Luhnow, Mike Fast, Kevin Goldstein, Dave Raymond and every other Astros employee on twitter (Mike Acosta, Steve Grande, Stephen O'Brien, etc.), the business/PR/marketing side of baseball has gone in the crapper and it started with letting Alyson Footer leave. For all the crap Drayton McLane got for driving the organization into the ground, one of the best things he did was approve the organization's foray into one of the fastest growing medians involving fan interaction.
I wanted to vote on the Astros "You Make The Call" contest, and I would have liked to have seen my favorite Astros player at the local Best Buy, but either I didn't know where to go to vote or I didn't know that Astros players were out and about interacting with people. The Astros have lost their voice, and whats left of the fan base is being insulted by crap like the above tweet.
I can understand a slip up here and there, but this is getting ridiculous:
J.D. Martinez just had surgery.
Joe Niekro is dead and for future reference so is Ken Caminiti.
Jed Lowrie has batted cleanup exactly zero times this year.
Alyson Footer is the best thing the Astros ever let go and if the Astros break up Jim Deshaies (notice the spelling) and Bill Brown, a top five broadcasting crew according to Fangraphs, they're going to be digging the hole even deeper. After consecutive 100 loss seasons the fan base has been whittled down to only the most passionate of fans, willing to look past the organizations flaws, however, this is a blatant slap in the face.
It's time to clean it up.