“But I don’t know anything about the Astros organization,” she said. “I don’t follow them, and I don’t care about them.” This lone sentiment by a middle-aged Fresno baseball fan to the Fresno Bee in 2016 characterizes Houston’s relationship with their Triple-A Fresno Grizzlies affiliate since 2015. As the kids these days would say, “It’s complicated.”

This thunderous round of indifference, though, along with a few other key factors, may be what’s leading the Grizzlies to head east to central Texas, being reunited with Nolan Ryan, and being that much closer to Minute Maid Park for promoted players.

Related: Astros Reach New PDC Deal with Express

And, it just might be the Grizzlies’ fuzzy, mustard-hued mascot Parker and the city of Fresno that will help them load the trucks… eagerly.

Giant Chasm

On one hand, many of the same Astro players who clinched the 2017 World Series title funneled their way, at some point, through Fresno’s Chukchansi Park. But, providing riveting minor league ball for the just over half-million people in the center of California’s San Joaquin Valley just wasn’t enough, apparently. Fresno’s Triple-A Astro players, in 2017, finished second in their PCL division, just three games out and 12 games over .500.

The Fresno community’s collective heart, though, belonged to a team that left after the 2014 season, and with them went any chance of loving and following the “baby Astros” who took their place to become eventual world beaters. Such is the fickle and frustrating merry-go-round that is minor league baseball.

Related: Texas Rangers’ AAA Round Rock Express Likely Houston Astros Property Again

and, Triple-A Tango: Express to Astros or Rangers? The Dance Begins

“I Left My Heart…”

The love affair between Fresno fans and the San Francisco Giants began in 1998, when the MLB team signed a player development contract (PDC) with the Grizzlies. Oddly enough, the Fresno franchise was Houston property once before (from 1980-1996) but operating out of Tucson, as the longtime AAA Toros. After a cup of coffee lager as the Milwaukee Brewers’ affiliate in 1997, the Toros moved to central California, giving the city its first Pacific Coast League team since 1906. The Toros were renamed the Grizzlies and became the Giants’ new Triple-A affiliate.

The Grizzlies more than excelled in training and readying future Giants during their tenure, and those players subsequently knew what to do once they hit the big leagues. Hopscotching a couple of pesky odd-numbered years, San Francisco pulled out World Series Championships in 2010, 2012, and 2014.

One can hardly blame Fresno fans for falling in love with the Giants, located almost 200 miles to their northwest, and feeling pride in helping to “raise” their new big league heroes.

None may verbalize it, but imagine the anger and resentment that may have festered in fans when, shortly after the 2014 Giants’ celebration parade, their beloved Grizzlies players were yanked and moved 200 miles north to Sacramento. They became the River Cats, where they still play today to an entirely different stadium of appreciative fans, who witnessed a team that came in last in their four-team PCL division, with a .454 winning percentage, 15.5 games back in 2017.

The Intruders

Pro football fans in several cities, in recent memory, have experienced similar surgical incisions that only serve to remove, for whatever reasons, familiar players from adoring fans. Houston pigskin aficionados remember all too well when owner Bud Adams pouted and picked up his ball and went “home,” or at least to Nashville, TN, thus yanking the fabled “Luv Ya Blue” Oilers from the enraptured clutches of the Bayou City faithful after the 1996 NFL season.

It was two years before the team settled on the name, Tennessee Titans. Many Houston fans followed the Titans for several years, not just because it took until 2002 to land the new Houston Texans, but because the players they came to follow and know (sometimes personally) moved away like a best friend from high school. A Houstonian finding a Tennessee game on TV in the late-90s felt like a letter from an old friend.

And, who could forget the late-night skulking away of the Baltimore Colts by owner Bob Irsay to Indianapolis in late March 1984? Ask a Baltimore citizen old enough to remember, and stand back for an outpouring of bitterness, anger… and, yes, some tears.

Just Who Are These Guys?

It’s never justified, but the cool reception, and even blame, foisted upon the incoming team (the Ravens, ultimately, in Baltimore, the Texans in Houston, and back to baseball, the minor league Astros) is to be expected. Like a jilted lover, the pain of loss gives way to resentment long before reluctant acceptance settles in, if it ever does.

And, the Astros-as-Grizzlies, after what will have been a scant four years, never got a chance to establish a meaningful relationship, especially after Fresno spent 17 years with its baseball soul mate, helping to nurture “little Giants” into world champions thrice.

Returning to the aforementioned female Fresno fan, dressed in an orange Giants shirt and cap, she told the Fresno Bee‘s Marek Warszawski that she attends about a dozen games a year and almost always cheers for the Grizzlies.

Just not when the River Cats are in town.

“If (the Giants) had stayed, I’d be rooting for Fresno,” she said. “But they left.”

Warszawski makes this point in his summer 2016 article: “Since then, the Grizzlies (as Astros) have become both Pacific Coast League and Triple-A champions (which they did in 2015, their first year in Fresno), something that would never have happened if the Giants had stayed.” A check at the 2016 National League standings proves his assertion.

“Yet she’s still a little bummed over what happened. ‘I am,’ she replied with a nod of the head, ‘and I know I’m not alone.'”

Amazingly, a PCL crown and the Triple-A championship were not enough to win the hearts of the Fresno fans, even in the Astros’ inaugural year in town. The Giants-as-Grizzlies simply had a head start of too many emotional miles (and three big league championships, the last one in 2014) for any “replacement” team to overcome.

As the Bee‘s reporter put it: “Which only goes to show that a good number of Fresno-area baseball fans would rather cheer for a lousy team affiliated with the Giants than a stacked one affiliated with the Astros, an organization they don’t care much about.”

Especially a lousy Giants team whose MLB parent club was close enough to visit at a moment’s notice. Houston may have just as well been Jupiter.

Warszawski continued to try to persuade the woman in orange: “First, just compare the two rosters. While Fresno’s [summer 2016] is loaded with prospects – sweet-swinging shortstop Alex Bregman being the latest and greatest – Sacramento’s has a bunch of retreads.

“Second, compare how the Astros and Giants treat the Triple-A level. Whenever the Astros promote a player from Triple-A to the majors, he is almost always replaced by someone who’s tearing it up at Double-A Corpus Christi.

“Whenever the Giants promoted a player from Triple-A to the majors, he was almost always replaced by a bench player from Class-A San Jose or someone who materialized from extended spring training. Names like Ryan Lollis and Juan Ciriaco [both elected free agency in November 2017, after Sacramento tenures] immediately spring to mind.

“While the Astros have made winning at Triple-A a clear priority, the Giants couldn’t have cared less. Just so long as their call-ups contribute to the big club.”

And, a World Series banner atop Minute Maid Park proves that the culture of winning at AAA carried into winning for the matured “baby Astros” in 2017.

Crunching the Numbers

Rarely do the stars in the minor league firmament align to this degree, but the Houston Astros’ PDC just so happens to expire at the same time as the Texas Rangers’ PDC expires with the AAA Round Rock Express (end of the 2018 season). So, this fact seems to move Astro assets, not unlike the progress on a game board, that much closer to Texas.

The location of Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan, now, moves the Astros’ token even closer to the finish line. Ryan pitched for both Texas MLB teams and was once the Rangers’ president and CEO. He’s currently an Astros special assistant, and his son, Reid, is an Astros executive and the 2000 founder of the Round Rock club.

Nolan Ryan, citing a desire to spend more time on his ranches and with his family, stepped down as CEO of the Rangers at the end of October 2013. He was hired by the Astros on February 11, 2014.

The final dice roll that will land the Triple-A Astro players back at Round Rock will simply be the rapidly declining attendance racked up at Fresno’s Chukchansi Park since the Giants’ minor leaguers bolted to Sacramento, and were replaced by the players on the Astros’ AAA roster.

Common sense dictates that if the Astros players (read, anybody other than the Giants) couldn’t and didn’t draw as well as the previous lessees, where’s the guarantee that anyone replacing the Astros will draw any better?

As with any other relationship involving people, not to mention the special adoration fans have with their faves at the minor league level (some players stay at peoples’ homes, for crying out loud!), common sense is not a factor in this equation.

Despite the Astros’ Grizzlies capturing the first PCL championship for the franchise in 2015, their first season in town, average attendance at Chukchansi Park was the lowest in stadium history at 6,457 per game. As the Fresno Bee reported mid-way through the 2016 season, “With a front-loaded home schedule – 50 of 72 home games coming before mid-July’s all-star break – that figure has further dipped to 5,900.”

The end-of-2016 figure evened out to a still-slumping 6,189 average nightly attendance, breaking 2015’s previous all-time low by 268. Adding insult to ignominy, the 2017 average attendance figure had an increase by the smallest of margins, besting the previous year by a scant 19: 6,208.

In all three of the Astros’ years in Fresno, the team ranked ninth out of the 16 PCL teams in average attendance. In those same years (2015-2017), the Texas Rangers-fueled Round Rock Express finished second in two out of those three years, with 2016 being the season they came in a PCL first-place with an 8,637 average attendance.

The Astros hope this eventual switch won’t end up being a Fresno scenario all over again, while baseball fans in Round Rock (and nearby Austin), with a AAA team feeding into a contending team just a couple hours away, better not be heard uttering the words of our Fresno friend: “But I don’t know anything about the Astros organization.”

We’ll boil it down: Round Rock’s Dell Diamond is 87 miles closer to Minute Maid Park than Arlington is.

Oh yeah… and, the Astros are World Champions.

For current further reading on the Fresno franchise:

Fresno Franchise Obtains New Ownership, Vows To Not Move Team (3/1/18).

Tacos, Oreos and Three Amigos: The Man Behind the Most Fun and Creative Minor League Promotions and Theme Nights in Baseball, Sam Hansen.