Patience

Jack Cust is hardly the savior of the Astros franchise.  He isn't the guy that springs us to contention, and he is not intended to be that guy.  Judging from Twitter reaction yesterday, people were seeming to believe that we had signed a starting outfielder.  Clearly Luhnow had lost his mind.  I have come to this conclusion.  Astros fans have very little experience with truly rebuilding.  I was born in 1980, so I don't have much to draw on before that time.  The Astros teams of the eighties were never terrible. They were always within shouting distance of .500.  They finished about .500 every year but 1987, 1984, and 1982 with the worst record coming in 1987 with a record of 76-86.  Notice that the losing was spread out, and there were no terrible years.

Let's look at the nineties.  There were only two losing season in the nineties, and those seasons were 1990 at 75-87 and 1991 at 65-97.  That is hardly rock bottom rebuilding considering that we had a young core already in place with a young Craig Biggio and the 1991 Rookie of the Year, Jeff Bagwell.  We had three division titles during the nineties and battled during the middle of the decade.  Who knows what would have happened in 1994 when we were 0.5 games back win the strike happened.  Again, there was not sustained rebuilding going on at this time.

The 2000s brought some of the most special Astros moments with a World Series appearance and the construction of Minute Maid Park.  The first season at then Enron Field was a tough one.  It was clear that the team was still build for the dome, because our pitchers were getting knocked all over the place.  We rallied in 2001 with young pitching to win the division again.  We wouldn't win another division title, but we saw two wild card seasons that lead to some of our finest moments.  We would only have two sub .500 seasons in the decade in 2007 and 2009.  

However, 2010 and 2011 would prove to be two of our worst seasons, and the writing was on the wall.  The Astros were going to need to undertake their first major rebuilding project in my lifetime.  From 2009 to 2011 was the first time in my lifetime that the Astros had a losing record in three consecutive years. 

I didn't realize how good we have had it until I started looking at the records over the years.  We really do have a lot to hang out hats on.  However, patience may not be our best attribute.  We aren't used to waiting long periods of time for a turnaround.  A five year wait feels like an eternity to me, but we will emerge again and continue our tradition of consistant winning records.