At last with no pressure upon them and the race in the National League Central over, the Astros said farewell for another season to 37,977 of their fans at the park in downtown Houston by playing hard and beating the Milwaukee Brewers 8-5. Houston collected ten hits and smashed four home runs--two by Jeff Bagwell, who drove in four runs all told to hit the century mark for the season, one by Lance Berkman, and one by Jason Lane--and received a solid first three innings of pitching from Kirk Saarloos, who struck out the last six men he faced. Saarloos didn't get the win, however, as Jimy Williams nearly emptied his bench as the game went along. Everybody who was anybody played for the Astros before it was over, and that was nearly the case for the Brewers as well. Ricky Stone (6-4) was awarded the win, but Mike Gallo and Dan Miceli pitched after Saarloos and Rick White and Kirk Bullinger pitched after him, with White giving up a run in the eighth and Bullinger surrendering two in the ninth, slightly spoiling what had been a pleasant 8-2 Houston lead.

With Saturday's win by the Brewers and the loss by the Astros already on the record, neither team pitched today's scheduled starters, Ben Sheets and Wade Miller. Bagwell's two early homers--a first-inning blast off Luis Martinez and a third-inning bomb with two on, also against Martinez--were bittersweet hits to conclude the season. I'm as pleased as can be that Bagwell finished the season with 38 homers and 100 RBI, but I also lament the fact that these hits came today rather than yesterday.

Saarloos pitched from the stretch during his outing, as he had done all year out of the 'pen. The Brewers scored in the first off him when Scott Podsednik doubled and later scored on a groundout, but he froze the last six men he faced with good breaking stuff, pitching both down and up in the strike zone. Berkman homered to LF in the fourth off Martinez with Hidalgo aboard to push Houston's lead to 6-1 for Saarloos and Gallo. The homer was Berkman's 25th of the season and his fourth right-handed. Podsednik, making a strong bid for NL Rookie of the Year, struck again in the sixth, leading off against Miceli and driving the ball out of the park to RF. The Astros got those two runs back in the bottom of the seventh against Ruben Quevedo when Eric Bruntlett singled to CF and Jason Lane, who started in CF for Craig Biggio, cracked a homer deep to LCF. White and Miceli finished up over the last two innings, somewhat unimpressively, but at least the umpires were not in all that big a hurry to see this one end. Biggio made a final appearance and was gifted with an infield hit by 1B umpire Bruce Froemming in the bottom of the eighth.

Geoff Blum played some 2B, spelling Jeff Kent, who got in a couple of at-bats; Jose Vizcaino took over at 1B for Orlando Merced, who had spelled Bagwell; Merced later took over in LF for Berkman; Colin Porter played some in CF while Lane shifted to RF so that Hidalgo could call it a season; and, in what I think could be the most significant substitution of the day, potentially the last at-bat for Brad Ausmus in a Houston uniform came in the sixth, when Ausmus lined out to LF to end that inning. Raul Chavez entered the game in the seventh, along with Stone.

The question of whether Ausmus goes to San Diego or stays with the Astros in 2004 is, in my opinion, the key question Gerry Hunsicker has to answer as he re-tools the club for next season. It's a hard question, too. Ausmus provides enormous comfort for the pitching staff behind the plate, but his defensive throwing fell off over the second half of the season, and, although conventional wisdom says that a team can afford to carry a light-hitting catcher as long as he's good with the glove, I am not certain at all that management would wish to carry a .230 hitter with four homers and 47 RBI. For the past two seasons, Ausmus has done nothing offensively for the Astros in the season's first-half, and it may be time for the Astros to wean their pitchers away from dependence on Ausmus and sacrifice his defense for a bit more offense. Ausmus's $5.5 million salary may also be more than Houston is willing to pay. There are alternatives to Ausmus in the lineup and they began to show themselves after Gregg Zaun was released. Raul Chavez is no great defensive catcher, but he hits better than Ausmus does, and I like his hustle. Mitch Meluskey is also a possibility back there, but I don't know if his shoulder would allow him to catch every day. John Buck, who returned to the Zephrys at AAA after a knee injury sidelined him for much of the season, is the hope of the future. He may or may not be ready to take on big-league catching duties, but speaking only for myself, I'd be willing to let Ausmus go off to San Diego and live with a Chavez-Buck tandem, which would be about as good as the Ausmus-Zaun pairing or the Ausmus-Chavez one. Letting Ausmus go would give Meluskey a shot to add another left-handed bat to the lineup, and it would open the door for Buck. It might also open the door financially for a free-agent deal or a trade or two.

Beyond the question of what to do about Ausmus, I do not know exactly what Hunsicker has in mind or will do to re-shape the Astros. For every player I could name that might get traded or leave on his own--Ausmus, Geoff Blum, Richard Hidalgo, Ron Villone, Dan Miceli, Rick White, Orlando Merced, Tim Redding, Billy Wagner, Kirk Bullinger, Mike Gallo--some fan somewhere will write back and say, "Oh, no, don't trade him; he does this, or he does that; the Astros can't afford to lose him." And therein lies the problem. Today was Stat Day at the ballpark. And if there's one thing the Astros are good at, it's rolling up some nice stats. The stats that Bagwell and Biggio have rolled up over their careers have led to playoff appearances in four of the last seven seasons. Those are the kind of statistics I like, and Bags and Bidge can keep theirs with honor. But think of Geoff Blum, for example. .262/10/52 this year and .283/10/52 in 2002--twenty points below his BA of a season ago, yet exactly the same in homers and RBI. But some people will say, "You can't trade Blum; he and Ensberg make a nice platoon." Or look at Orlando Merced. .233/3/26. "You can't trade Merced," they say, "he's one of our best bench players. And he's a great guy to have on a ballclub." Well, if nice stats and a pleasant personality are the standards one always uses when judging a team, then the Astros are the team for you. The odds are better than even money that these three, at least, will be back in 2004.

But are nice stats and a pleasant personality the standards we ought to be using to determine who should play on a big-league club? I don't think so. Is a successful season always measured by the number of games a team wins? I don't think so. Equating success with simply winning more games than a team loses is like equating a paying job with being rich. In endeavors of personal creativity or everyday business, the only competition one should have is with oneself. The only goal is to be better each day. But in big business, or in sports, fields in which there are acknowledged leaders or a recognized goal has been set, a standard to which all teams should aspire, then only one thing matters--reaching that goal. In baseball, the goal is to reach the World Series and to win it. There is nothing else.

Of the players on that list above, it will be most difficult to trade Hidalgo or Wagner because of their contracts and because of the nearly-irreplaceable skills they bring to defensive RF and to the mound. Everyone else on this list can and should be let go, either by release or by trade. Aside from the Ausmus question, where to play Jason Lane next season is a big issue. He could be a starter in RF or CF, but that would require either trading Hidalgo or making Biggio a bench player, a move the latter probably wouldn't accept. I'd settle for Lane displacing Merced, something that should have happened this season at the end of Spring Training, when Lane was still healthy. Lane would get plenty of at-bats next year, and he would not only be a high-quality replacement for Biggio, if Biggio remains a starter, he could give both Berkman and Hidalgo, each of whom wore down in September, as much of a break as Biggio got this season.

In retrospect, the key decision this season was in releasing Shane Reynolds. The move allowed Jeriome Robertson and Redding into the rotation, but it also meant that the Astros searched all season long for a bona fide third starter from a gallery of pitchers, each of whom is really no better than a fifth starter on any club. Yes, Robertson won fifteen games, but he got run support that Scott Elarton of the 2000 Astros could identify with, the same kind of run support that frequently saved the mediocre Reynolds in Atlanta this season. Yes, Redding was the ERA leader on the club at 3.68, but 9-14 is no more impressive than the 6-8 record I had projected for him before the season began. Although there will be problems and questions associated with the returns of Carlos Hernandez and Santiago Ramirez, Houston will not lack for starting pitching candidates next season. Thus, the Astros would be better off packaging Redding with another player in an off-season deal to bring in either a top-flight starting pitcher or a position player. If the Astros are to get better in 2004, they have to find a dependable, winning third starter. They cannot count on developing it from the starting pitchers on hand. None of them is good enough to carry that responsibility.

If Biggio remains the starting CF for 2004, I'd like to see him dropped to sixth or seventh in the order, with Adam Everett taking his place at the top. Although one would like to have speed at both the top and bottom of the order, it's most vital at the top. Everett won't strike out as much as Biggio and he'll steal a base when you need it. Biggio will give the Astros some pop in the seventh spot that they haven't had in a long time, too.

Looking back on the season, I was too optimistic about the impact of Jeff Kent. I figured that his addition, plus a less-weary bullpen, would add up to 91 wins. When the Kent deal was made, however, I thought at the time (and may have written) that it was a signing that would make an 84-78 club into a 86-76 team. Houston's 87-75 finish was much closer to the latter thought than the former, primarily because Jimy Williams once again used the bullpen far too much. Seventy-eight games for Wagner, seventy-six for Dotel, seventy-eight for Lidge. Too much. Sixty-five (the number of appearances for Stone) is more reasonable. Somehow, Williams, Hooton and Hunsicker must realize, or be made to realize, that the starting pitchers have to go deeper in games. That can be accomplished by a change in philosophy in regard to conditioning and throwing in the off-season and during the year, a la the Atlanta Braves and pitching coach Leo Mazzone. That change in philosophy, however, may not come, because all of the coaches have been offered jobs next season, and all are likely to accept. I find that a distressing prospect.

I find it distressing because it represents the same stay-above .500-second-place philosophy we saw in 2002. That's not good enough. The object of this game is to win championships. It is not to rack up nice stats and finish ahead of the Milwaukee Brewers. I want to see a front office that burns to win; I want to see a manager for whom winning championships is the only thing that matters in his professional life. It is unlikely that I shall see either of these things for the next several seasons. The Astros might lose assistant GM Tim Purpura in the off-season to another franchise (the Reds have been rumored to be interested in him), and the team's payroll situation will not improve until and unless the new Rockets/Astros TV package comes about; it might not improve even then. I shall not see Jimy Wiliams manage any differently, either. He's a nice guy, and his players put up nice stats. But there's a difference between Jimy Williams and his predecessor. Larry Dierker was a nice guy, too; but he was also, in his day, a world-class starting pitcher. Jimy Willams, who loves the game, and can teach it to young infielders, was a bench player over a very short career. Many fans had as much disagreement over Dierker's decisions as they do over Williams's, but I submit that Dierker reached a level of excellence, both in playing this game and in talking about how to reach that level with his players, that Williams has yet to find. The comparative results of the two managers, with now seven seasons in the books by which to judge them, are unarguable.

It has once again been my pleasure to be with you in Astroday this season. I thank each and every one of you for your daily e-mail and your messages on The Astros Daily's message board. I will be taking a brief break from the column over the next week or so, but Astroday will return in this space during the off-season if The Astros Daily and its readers wish it to, and the column will be online, somewhere, for a fifth season in 2004.