The Best of CrawfishBoxes in 2019

Happy New Year’s eve everyone. We were talking in the writers channel and decided to make a “best of 2019” post highlighting a single article from each of our writers that the group thought was our best for the year. Most of these had a ton of reads already, but I’d highly recommend reading through any you missed.

Bill - Jake Marisnick taught us to live and love on a baseball field.

A heartfelt and touching piece. In an act of retaliation, the Angels intentionally threw at Jake Marisnick. His response was outstanding with him waiving his teammates back into the dugout. A great read on a player who I’ll personally miss

HH - Pay Inequality in the Minors

This topic was not a new one, but I took a look at the common misconception of players signing for millions and took a realistic look at pay, the Save America Act, and dig into if things should change. Since this was written, Manfred has threatened to cut ties or eliminate 42 minor league teams.

CKuno - The Reinvention of the Rebuild

The Astros became the poster child for the modern day rebuild. Ckuno takes a deep look at the system and flaws both past and present to see how we got here today.

Scotty - JV No Hitter Recap

Re-live every glorious moment of Justin Verlander’s No-Hitter with Scotty’s excellent color commentary. It does an excellent job of capturing the excitement in the moment and re-telling of the history of the moment.

Theo - 13-inning come from Behind Win Recap told in the context of Ex-Astros

A thrilling 13 inning come from behind victory is not enough for you? Well, Theo turned it up a notch by re-telling the story with each inning as an ex-Astros. A fun way to re-live not only an excellent game but a lot of your favorites (or the opposite) in an interesting re-telling of the game.

Spencer - The Next Wave of Astros Pitching Prospects is short

The Astros have had some great success with short pitchers over the years. Spencer takes a deep dive into the Astros pitching prospects and may have found them to come up short - though not in a bad way

Cody - Taking another look at Chris Devenski’s ongoing struggles

Once un-hittable wielding the mighty circle of death, Devenski has fallen from grace. Cody takes a deep dive to see what caused his struggles and if the issues are able to be fixed.

Stephen - Collin McHugh helped rebuild both the Astros and my Fandom

A heartfelt and touching piece about the potential end of McHugh’s tenure with the Astros. Stephen takes a look back and re-lives the memories that made us all love McHugh so much. McHugh and McCullers both re-tweeted the article.

Exile - What the Miley Meltdown means

Through the first ²⁄₃ of the season, Miley continued to defy the odds, owning one of the top ERA’s in baseball. The advanced stats screamed regression... and then it hit. Exile paused to take a look at it and what it meant for the Astros going into the playoffs.

Eric - Astros Make Four Trades for Now and Later

In a strange trade deadline year where one of the biggest purchasers (Mets) everyone believed would be sellers, the Astros were aggressive in their acquisitions. Eric took a deeper dive in what the trades meant and captured what amounted to a crazy deadline.

Hatter - Deconstruction of the Catcher

In my opinion, one of the under-appreciated pieces in this list. Hatter did extensive research and built a system to truly gain an understanding of how each catcher built their value, how valuable different aspects of a catcher’s game were, and proved that he spends way too much time thinking about Catchers!

Jimmy - All Prospect Team During Luhnow’s tenure

A look into the All-prospect team based on MiLB performance for all players in the Luhnow era. Interesting perspective both from those who made it, and those who didn’t.

Jason - Fishing for Nets

After a tragic incident occurred at Minute Maid Park with a child being hit by a foul ball, the nets debate re-emerged front and center. A divisive topic generally, Jason wrote an article on his perspective. Interestingly the polls ended up 58% to 42% on whether or not nets should be added at every park.

Chris Perry- How to Survive a Rebuild

Our sister site had reached out, with them and their fanbase in the middle of a rebuild, they looked for solace trying to bring a glimpse of optimism and a look into what it was like for Astros fans. In a series of questions and narrative, CRPerry told his experiences as the Astros went through a similar rebuild.

While some of the photoshop work we’ve had here has been decent, there is no question, MHatter’s photoshop skills are the unparalleled winner for best of 2019:

Tell us, what were some of your favorite pieces? What would you like to see more of in the coming year?