Poor Brad Mills

What a smile on Mills huh?

Who is Brad Mills? Well, he is the former manager of the Houston Astros. Mills got fired yesterday after 3 very poor seasons in which his record came out to 171-274. The lone thing he can even hang his hat on is finishing 76-86 during the 2010 season because it was the only time the team didn't finish last in the National League Central division.

All that being said, this was the worst season for Mills and the Astros by a long shot. The team is currently a comfortable 34 games out of first place in their division and 27.5 out of the wild card with their 39-82 record. Now even though this is a terrible showing, you can't put this all on Mills. In fact, you can't even really put this on the players. This is all on the front office. They have traded away every decent player that the team has had.

The trades started when the team shipped pitcher Roy Oswalt to the Phillies in 2010, who they actually made a decent trade for by receiving budding young pitcher J.A. Happ. That was about the only semi-productive move made by the Astros front office. They then moved Lance Berkman, Hunter Pence, Brett Myers, Wandy Rodriguez, Brandon Lyon, Chris Johnson and face of the franchise Carlos Lee for basically nothing. They even traded J.A. Happ who was actually a decent pickup.

This is why I feel for Brad Mills. He must have walked into the clubhouse every day taking attendance to see who is even still on the team, and then pick the lineup from there. Imagine how awkward that would be when a guy got traded? Mills would be going through, "Jose Altuve?" "Here." "Carlos Lee?" And then silence. Where would you go from there? Mills would have to try and remain confident, "Ok guys we just lost our best player, that has hit over 350 career home runs during his successful career and not to mention was also the clean up hitter for quite some time. Soooo.....Francisco? Ben Francisco, you are now starting in left and batting fourth."

I can picture the confused silence going on in the locker room when that was announced and can't keep a straight face. Ben Francisco. He has a few more hits in his career than Carlos Lee has home runs, and you want to know something funny? Francisco is the highest paid player currently active on the team. Francisco Cordero and Jed Lowrie are hurt and Ben Francisco is the only one left making more than $750,000. Awesome.

One Last Thing: The new manager that now gets to inherit this "team" is Tony DeFrancesco. Now I don't know if the Houston GM is just looking for guys whose name has a form of "Francisco" in it with Tony DeFrancesco, Ben Francisco and Francisco Cordero, but it is definitely something to think about. Either way it seems to be working, and good luck Tony, you're going to need it.