The Stros 2008 season has been over for over a week now, so it’s time for my final review of the 2008 season (prior 2008 season reviews are here) and my grading of the Stros players for the 2008 seaons (my grading of the Stros from the 2007 season is here and from the 2006 season is here).
Although the Stros (86-75) played surprisingly well over the final 40% of the season (42-24, including a stellar 22-11 mark over the final 20% of the seaons), the club failed to qualify for the playoffs for the third straight season since their only World Series appearance in 2005. However, the Stros did handily beat my pre-season over/under prediction of 75 wins, so there is little question that the club out-performed most expectations for the season.
The Stros started out the final fifth of the season with a 16-3 run that pulled the club to within 2.5 games on September 13th of tying the Brewers for the lead in the National League Wild-Card playoff spot.
However, we in Houston recall all too vividly what happened during the morning of Saturday, September 13th – Hurricane Ike roared through the Houston metro area, leaving in its wake multi-billions of dollars in damages and millions of people without power.
The Stros were supposed to be playing a series against the Cubs at Minute Maid Park over that weekend, but the games simply were not playable in Houston under the circumstances. Frankly, the entire Cubs series should have been postponed and the Stros should have been told to prepare for their next series starting the following Tuesday against the Marlins in Miami.
However, despite the catastrophic damage to the Houston area from Hurricane Ike, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig insisted that as many of the Stros-Cub games be played as soon as possible.
That was a bad decision, but it was made even worse when Selig inexplicably rejected the use of perfectly acceptable baseball stadiums in close-by Round Rock, Corpus Christi and Arlington to play the games.
To compound that poor judgment, Selig then yanked the Stros players and coaches out of Houston on the afternoon of Sunday, September 14th — at a time when virtually all of their families were adjusting to living without power — to play the first of two of those games in that postponed Cubs series that night in Milwaukee, of all places.