Astros: A Short Tribute to the Great, Roy Oswalt

With Roy Oswalt joining the Houston Astros’ Hall of Fame, it is worth recognizing what he meant to fans and the franchise.

In the Houston Astros‘ short history there have been  only a handful of franchise aces, and the short list is astounding.  From one of the best of all time pitchers in Nolan Ryan, to dominating pitchers in the early Astros era in pitchers Mike Scott and J.R. Richard, there are plenty of historic great franchise aces.

For our purposes here a franchise ace is not a short time starter with the Astros, but rather an Ace that stays at least 5 years and who’s impact and stats are consistently top of the league. With all that said, where does recent Astro’s Hall of Fame inductee Roy Oswalt rank?

There are endless options of memorable Astros moments and legendary starts, but the list would be way too long to include all those great moments so here’s the best I can assemble, feel free to chime in on your list!  Joe Niekro, J. R. Richard, Nolan Ryan, Mike Scott, and Roy Oswalt.

Could I have included a few more, absolutely, I know younger Astros’ fans will want Dallas Keuchel included and he defiantly deserves consideration being a part of the only World Series in franchise history, but with an inconsistent history year to year, I left him off this short list.

I can imagine ranking Roy O in several different positions, second behind Nolan Ryan, perhaps 4th just in front of Mike Scott or maybe last on this amazing list. I don’t think there’s a bad position at all on this short list of greats, but I’m going to settle on 2nd behind Ryan, the legend.

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Oswalt the 3 time All-Star, dominated the National League throughout his time in Houston with a career .636 winning percentage, a .325 ERA, two 20 win seasons, and a league best .298 ERA in 2006.

Most memorable of all for Astros’ fans is probably his clutch game 6 performance in the 2005 NLCS where he dialed up 7 innings of 3 hit ball notching the win, allowing only 1 earned run.

That amazing win launched the Astros into the World Series for the first time in franchise history and also landed Oswalt a shiny new Tractor.  That makes me think, after this past weekend of inductions, I think we need another RoyO Tractor giveaway night.

I can only imagine how much more Roy O would have won, and the Astros of course, if you could have added 4 more years of the Killer B’s with Oswalt together and of course another Tractor.