Astros Playing Nothing But The "Hits" This Season

If you play keeper or dynasty fantasy baseball, you may want to consider trading players like Jose Altuve and Yulieski Gurriel.

Sell and fade your Houston Astros fantasy baseball players.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has put the Astros in the jackpot this season.

Manfred has been falling all over himself for about a month while doing nothing to change the situation after his slap on the wrist penalties were handed down over the sign-stealing scandal that has rocked the league to its core.

This just leaves MLB players to police themselves with their own backward brand of justice under the "unwritten rules of baseball."

I hate the unwritten rules of baseball. They are dumb, and they need to go away.

Throwing at players accomplishes nothing. Do you want justice? Try winning the game.

However, the level injustice that is being allowed to occur has put a target on every one of Houston players' backs considering the over-under for the times the Astros players will be hit a historic 83.5 times this season.

Seven players have already been hit and we aren't even through a week of spring training games.

While we are all anticipating our pound of flesh, I think the penalties for the Astros will be less apparent than throwing at every player who steps in the batter's box.

Watch for other teams to be slapping tags on Astors players' faces and coming in spikes up when they slide.

Plays like that put Carlos Correa and Jose Altuve in the crosshairs primarily.

Correa also doesn't need any more excuses to find his name on the injured list. He's missed more than 50 games in the last three seasons.

Plus, think about what this is like from Altuve's perspective at the plate.

You take a pitch -- everyone says how you took that pitch because you knew it was coming.

If he swings and misses, we shout, "See? I knew he needed the signs to tell him what was coming next."

Take it a step further, if you are an unestablished player like Kyle Tucker.

Tucker has been a prospect darling clobbering AAA pitching for the past two seasons.

However, every time he gets a chance in the big leagues he's hitting below .200.

At the end of last season, he finally started to show he was better than a AAA player, and he made the playoff roster finishing the season with a slash line of .269/.319/.537.

Did that come because he turned a corner, or was he getting –– some help?

We don't have a baseline for any of these guys now.
 
Almost every MLB team has shown outrage at the situation, but the fact that the Astros' fans are leaning into it and pretending to be martyrs makes it seem like they are rubbing everyone's faces in it.

https://teechip.com/stores/houston-astros-hate-us-t-shirt

This is who they are now. This is what they want to be.

It's all just some alternative facts, kind of ridiculous doubling down which has become all too common because everyone guilty of anything has never done anything wrong and the "haters" are all just trying to take us down.

Which is why you leave a press conference like this apparently?

https://www.instagram.com/p/B8gv6NthNVj/?utm_source=ig_embed

In the short story "To Build a Fire," the main character has a decision to make.

As he's freezing to death out in the wilderness, he decides to stop running from the inevitable.

He falls into the freezing snow prepared to die from hypothermia at the hands of his own mistakes and arrogance.

However, in accepting his fate he's able to find peace and greet death with a kind of grace by burying himself in the snow.

It's kind of haunting and beautiful at the same time.

The Houston Astros aren't going to accept any responsibility for what they did, but they need to be resigned to their fate of paying the price for the mistakes they have made. 

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Chris Steele

Is a prospect fanatic, and person who finds himself asking why he is so tired all the time while playing The Show at 2 a.m.