Double plays...situational hitting...blah blah blah. Give me the W, even if we broke a franchise record for GIDP along the way
Well but the issue is they aren’t even trying. They are very content to swing away. Hakeem once said “humble and hungry”. The humble and hungry approach is to exercise great plate discipline, bunt, run the bases, hit the other way and claw out runs. We did this to an extent in the 2017 playoffs. Game 7 first inning was great manufacturing of 2 runs when Altuve and bregs both grounded opposite field. The arrogant approach is to swing at the first pitch, try to pull the ball no matter what and swing as hard you can regardless of count. I don’t think it’s s possible for a team exercising the former to lead the league in double plays. But I think a team who’s approach is the latter can easily get suckered into GIDP because they are basically indifferent towards a concerted effort by opposing pitchers to throw pitches in locations designed to induce ground balls.
quietly Cleveland is playing great great baseball. Two straight wins in Fenway. Wow. Another season where Cleveland is disappointing the first half of the season and then explodes in the second half. What is scarier? Cleveland’s starting staff or Boston’s lineup? The AL playoffs will be a bloodbath with Cleveland Boston New York and hopefully Astros and Oakland. Any one of these teams would be favored to win the NL!
Extra insurance, more flexibility (when we start to pull ahead some of our main guys can get an off day here and there to rest them for the playoffs). Big fan of his switch hitting bat, I feel the lineup is too righty-heavily, and I've said that a lot. Especially since we face the Indians in the ALDS when we win the division (yes, we will). Also, Gattis probably does not belong on a WS roster if we make him. In NL parks all he'd do is pinch hit once and that's that. Extra defensive value comes especially in handy in those games.
For the record, if we trade for Smoak: Springer CF Bregman 3B Altuve 2B Correa SS Smoak 1B/DH (S) Gurriel 1B/DH Reddick RF (L) Gonzalez LF (S) McCann C (L) Bench: Marisnick, White, Maldonado Rotation: Verlander/Cole/Keuchel/Morton Bullpen: Rondon/McCullers/Osuna/Smith/McHugh/Peacock/Pressly/Devenski; Valdez/Sipp/Perez battle for the last spot Nice balance there, down to 5 RHH in the lineup, with two of the non-RHH being switch hitters. Jake is the pinch runner/defensive sub, White is the pinch hitter, Maldonado the backup catcher (could also start). I like the way the pitching is in my roster, just need more time to decide who the best LHR is. I LOVE Kemp, but it looks like he's cooling (or as another poster said, regression to the mean; I don't think his numbers in AAA were THAT high), and his defense is not as good as Marisnick/Springer/Reddick/Gonzalez.
Nice showing for a guy who was pitching in the lowest level of minor league baseball three years ago.
Absolutely. At this point any win is gold. Only bad win is if it occurs with a key player getting hurt. But a win that occurred despite some seriously poor offensive and defensive play that must improve if we are to have another deep playoff run against a loaded AL field. The young pitcher saved our bacon tonight.
It's a dice roll. 1-4 are outs, 5 is a walk/non-HR hit, 6 is a HR. Mostly all or nothing, way too streaky. And I already explained why DH-only guys are a problem on a WS roster (Assuming we make it). Our hitting lineup is way too RH heavy, part of trading for Smoak is to balance it. I also feel like Smoak (or another trade for a bat) might just provide that extra spark we need, the way JV did that last year. If Gattis is red hot in September and White cools down considerably, then you can sub in Gattis for White, though it sucks that he can't play anywhere on the field at least serviceably.
Did we win the game? There's a thread or 5 already for your tradey stuff. Thanks for not mentioning Realmuto.
Nice to wake up to an Astro win this morning. After reading about it, it looks like we were lucky to win with all the DP's we hit into. No help from the Rangers. They truly ****. I wish I had time to watch the replay but we are catching a plane to the west coast. Going to the game Fri night against the Angels. I hope our hungry we want to win offense shows up and Keuchel throws a gem and doesn't throw gopher balls. Just like the offense is inconsistent you never know what type of game you are going to get out of him.
