The Mount Rushmore of the Houston Astros |

1979 Topps #68 - Joe Niekro

We turn our attention to the Houston Colt .45’s, who came into being in 1962. Three years later they were rebranded as the Astros.

In their first 35 years, the Astros had limited success with just a couple of post-season appearances. Come 1997, though, they had 6 playoff appearances in 9 years, culminating with their lone World Series appearance in 2005. They’ve been pretty dismal since then, though.

Let’s take a look at their best players.

Rk	Player	WAR/pos	From	To
1	Jeff Bagwell	76.8	1991	2005
2	Craig Biggio	62.6	1988	2007
3	Jose Cruz	48.5	1975	1987
4	Cesar Cedeno	47.4	1970	1981
5	Lance Berkman	45.5	1999	2010
6	Jim Wynn	39.4	1963	1973
7	Joe Morgan	29.3	1963	1980
8	Bill Doran	28.6	1982	1990
9	Terry Puhl	26.3	1977	1990
10	Bob Watson	21.6	1966	1979
11	Glenn Davis	17.3	1984	1990
12	Doug Rader	16.8	1967	1975
13	Richard Hidalgo	16.3	1997	2004
14	Dickie Thon	15.3	1981	1987
15	Steve Finley	15.2	1991	1994

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 5/25/2012.

Wow…some great players.

On the pitching side:

Rk	Player	WAR	From	To
1	Roy Oswalt	43.6	2001	2010
2	Larry Dierker	31.9	1964	1976
3	Don Wilson	25.8	1966	1974
4	Nolan Ryan	23.2	1980	1988
5	Mike Scott	22.9	1983	1991
6	Joe Niekro	20.6	1975	1985
7	J.R. Richard	19.9	1971	1980
8	Shane Reynolds	17.4	1992	2002
9	Ken Forsch	17.4	1970	1980
10	Roger Clemens	16.1	2004	2006
11	Billy Wagner	15.7	1995	2003
12	Turk Farrell	15.4	1962	1967
13	Wade Miller	13.5	1999	2004
14	Mike Hampton	12.8	1994	2009
15	Mike Cuellar	12.8	1965	1968

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Play Index Tool Used
Generated 5/25/2012.

Some more great players. Larry Dierker stands out. Aside from being the team’s second best pitcher, he was the manager when the team became a contender again, and also has worked as a broadcaster. I imagine he’s well-loved in Houston.

Then how do you skip over guys like Nolan Ryan and Mike Scott?

Let’s move right on to the poll…please pick 4 guys.

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Voomo Zanzibar

12 years ago

I went with Biggio, Bagwell, and Oswalt.
The 4th could go a lot of ways, but I went with “what could have been” and picked JR Richard.

Robert

Reply to Voomo Zanzibar

In the early 70’s, Houston could have fielded an allstar team, with John Mayberry at 1st, Joe Morgan at 2nd,Radar at 3rd, Watson in left,Cedeno in center, and Jim Wynn in right. Pretending that the NL had the DH, that job would belong to Rusty Staub. Pitchers: Mike Cueller, Don Wilson Larry Dierker and Dave Roberts, with Dave Guisti and Fred Gladding in the pen.In most of these years, Morgan and Wynn would have walked over 100 times, as did Mayberry in 72 and 73. Off the bench would have been Greg Gross, who had 189 hits in his rookie… Read more »

bstar

Very, very glad to see Jose Cruz below Bags and Biggio in career WAR. He was one of the more exciting players to watch back in the day; he had an athletic flair to his game that made you root for him. So I’m going Bagwell, Biggio, Oswalt, and Cruz. Lots of great honorable mention picks here, including Dierker, Berkman, Nolan Ryan, J.R. Richard, Jimmy Wynn, Cedendo, etc.

Phil

Bagwell, Biggio, Ryan, and (whenever I can tack on a reasonable pick primarily on the basis of ’70s nostalgia, I do) Jimmy Wynn.

Love the baseball cards you’re using on this series of articles, Andy. I didn’t visit much back then, but didn’t you used to have a ‘Card of the Week’ series back on the old B-Ref blog, or am I confusing you with someone else? That Joe Niekro card is a ’79 Topps, a set that I came very close to filling completely by buying pack after pack after pack. Anytime I’d get a dollar, I’d walk to Food Town, buy 3 packs at 30 cents apiece, and sift through them on the way home. I must have 2,000 of those… Read more »

Author

Andy

Reply to bstar

bstar, yes it was me who did the Card of the Week posts. I try to do them here, but mostly I use cards for images on other posts.

Steven

Cedeno, Wynn, Dierker and Bob Aspromonte.

Hartvig

Reply to Steven

Bob Aspromonte- I made an argument with the Mets that Casey Stengel should be included to represent the early days of the franchise and when I started reading the article and started thinking about who would fill that role for Houston a clear image of Bob in his Colt 45’s uniform on a Fleer baseball card that’s somewhere down in my basement immediately came to mind. In this case, Jimmy Wynn will have to fill that role for me (at least he donned a Colt 45’s uniform even if he wasn’t there the first season) plus I have to go… Read more »

Latefortheparty

This one, as I suppose many others to come will do, ate me up. I chose Bagwell, Biggio, Cruz and Scott. I saw the last three as Astros (and Cruz as a Cardinal). Studs all. But others called out to me: Wynn, Dierker and Cedeno. Then there were the others who put up their monster years elsewhere: Morgan and Ryan (not to say they didn’t have monster years in Houston, in that dark, dark stadium).

Reply to Latefortheparty

Cruz, as a Cardinal, was one of those “when he finally puts it all together” players. So they got rid of him after about three or four frustating years, and he finally put it all together.

Amazingly, Cruz’s son was the exact same kind of player. Toronto and Seattle both tried to wait for him to put it all together.

Reply to Andy

It wasn’t even one of the Cardinals’ classic poor 1970s trades (Carlton for Wise; Reuss for Scipio Spinks; Reggie Smith for Joe Ferguson, etc.). They just sold him to the Astros.

Library Dave

I went with Biggio, Bagwell, Scott and Dierker. B and B are obvious. I chose Dierker for his long-term multiple successes with the team, and Scott for the glory of 1986 and his last day of the season no-hitter. It was really tough to leave off Cruz. And in all seriousness, Alan Ashby is someone I would have considered for his contributions both a player and broadcaster. Still can’t believe they fired him.

DaveR

Bagwell, Biggio, Cruz, and Mike Scott.
The killer “B’s” and two fan favorites.

e pluribus munu

Very tough after the two B’s – the Astros really have had a lot of top quality players for long tenures. Over the years, I’ve generally wondered why they weren’t doing better in the standings – 50 years and still waiting to win a WS game. I chose Dierker third because of his range of strong contributions and virtual 100% association with the Astros – I’m guessing that’s what an Astros fan would do. I spent a long time thinking about others, especially Ryan and Oswalt. For reasons of sentiment I went with JR Richard – he was so clearly… Read more »

Darien

I went for Bagwell, Biggio, Berkman, and Oswalt. Those Astros teams of the early 2000s are really “the” definitive Astros teams in my mind; they were relevant every single year, and those four guys were the core of players that really made the Astros what they were.

I went with the Toy Cannon (gotta love him) and Oswalt as my other two (I feel the need to pick a pitcher in these threads). Those years Morgan put up there at ages 21 to 23 were a forecast of things to come I’ll say…

brp

To be frank I’m very surprised at the lack of support for Cesar Cedeno. I think of him, Toy Cannon, JR Richard, and even Nolan Ryan before I think of Lance Berkman.

Also I voted without looking at the WAR charts; it feels more “real” that way.

Tmckelv

this one was really hard. The only guys I know I DIDN’T want to include are Nolan Ryan, Roger Clemens and Richard Hidalgo. 🙂

Biggio and Bagwell are obvious (which really hurts Berkman since they are the same era)

I have always loved Jose Cruz and how do you choose then between Cedeno, “Toy Cannon” or having ANY pitchers (specifically Oswalt, JR Rixchard, & Scott).

Biggio, Bagwell, Cruz, Cedeno. “Just let the kids play!” – Bad News Bears in Breaking Training

Special nod to the Uniform worn by Joe Kniekro in the 1979 topps baseball card posted by Andy.

Paul E

If it was about pure, home-grown talent:

Morgan, Cedeno, Wynn, JR Richard….

Sentimentalism:

Bagwell, Biggio, Jose Cruz, Nolan Ryan

This organization sure has made some pretty awful trades in their first 15 years of existence. If they weren’t playing in the Grand Canyon, maybe they would have realized the quality of the talent they were dealing

Larry

I’ve followed the team for 50 years. My dad took me to the second game. In the early years, Jim Wynn was a legitimate star. In 1967 he battled Hank Aaron down to the wire for the HR title – with the Astrodome as home field. In homage to all the other budding stars that could have made the team a powerhouse, I’ve got to go with Wynn. Same nod to Larry Dierker. In the 60’s he came up as an 18 year old, took perfect games into the bottom of the ninth twice, was the team’s first 20 game… Read more »

Jim Bouldin

Reply to Larry

Where does Cedeno fit in tha mix? Is he not one of your big four?

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