In my opinion, this is an area Drayton and his boys failed miserably to do. They relied on nothing but winning to get fans out to the stadium. That's why Drayton always tried to act like the Astros were one piece away from making that patented second half run, when the team was much further away than that. Essentially, he was making sure that the average fan was paying to see chicken salad when he was really selling chicken sh*t. 

via images.rcs.realclearpolitics.com

Below the jump are a few things I would do to try and get attendance up while you build the team the right way from the ground up...

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There's been discussion on the MLB being realigned to have 15 teams in each league instead of the current 16 in the NL and 14 in the AL. Of course, the team that has been speculated  to be moved to the AL is the Astros. It makes sense to foster a rivalry between the Astros and the Rangers...

This is not very likely to happen, but it's interesting to speculate on any major changes like this and to also think what you would to realign the MLB...

Here's the link: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=6651634

Here's the breakdown I just thought up in 5 minutes... it's probably way off base, but I was trying to think very simply.

3 division of 5 teams in each league.

15 games with each division rival (4 teams) = 60 games (it would have to rotate yearly who got the extra home stand)

6 games with each league rival outside of your division (10 teams) = 60 games

3 games with each opposite league team (15 teams) = 45 games

That would make the season 3 games onger, but at least the schedule would make sense... Feel free to destroy my simpleton approach.

The game thread 2 days ago had some decent uniform discussion with some interesting concepts. With Jim Crane imminently taking over, you have to think he will put his own touch on the uniforms to signify a new era in Astros baseball.

I'll go ahead and get my personal opinion out of the way. I'm a traditionalist, so I want the colors switched back to Navy and Orange. I think they should go with a modernized version of these:

via www.astrosdaily.com

Lose the pin stripes. Lose the Brick Red and Gold. Go back to what started it and stick with it.

Of course, like we all do, I try to match up a current big leaguer, or one from recent history... with our minor league players.

JB Shuck is an athletic player whose instincts keep him from being able to play CF and cause him to fill up the Caught Stealing stat column. He does walk at a good rate and hits for a decent average though.

In my humble opinion JB Shuck = Reggie Willits of the LA Angels.

Of course, I could be completely off base with this comparison. It just dawned on me today and I quickly checked stats to see them decently match up. What do you think?