*The Astros are 10-1 favorites to win the World Series, best in the American League.
*Jon Singleton, weighed by his contract, is still younger than George Springer. And beefier.
*Meanwhile, A.J. Reed has slimmed down.
*The Angels' Andrew Heaney reflects on how the Astros ended their season.
*Ken Rosenthal: A.J. Hinch's people skills took him from a managerial bust to one of the best.
He replaced a manager that everybody loved, he inherited a team on the decline and he had never managed a game in his life. There is not a person in the world who could have survived that situation.
-Eric Byrnes
*The Astros' Latin America Strength & Conditioning Coordinator, Rachel Belkovec, is breaking down some barriers. MLB.com has some video.
*Wandy Rodriguez's career has come full circle, as an Astro and as a mentor.
*The Astros and new tradin' buddies Milwaukee had talks about catcher Jonathan Lucroy, what with Castro becoming a free agent this coming offseason. Those talks went nowhere.
*MiLB ranked the Astros' farm system 4th, behind Colorado, Boston, and Arlington.
*Now that the Astros are good, it's harder to get to them at Spring Training.
*Speaking of farm systems, Jayne at What the Heck Bobby has the updated 2016 Houston Astros Farm System Handbook.
*And speaking of Amazon, Howard Megdal's book on the Cardinals comes out today. I'm told that Jeff Luhnow was generous with his time and there is plenty of material that Astros fans will find relevant.
We didn't come out here to play tiddlywinks, son.
-Hal Smith
