The most important factor in great offense is clobbering mistakes. All pitchers make mistakes, even good ones like Iwakuma.
Of course. Just the nature of the two different perspectives of this game. If our guy just gave up a mammoth HR to a sub .200 hitter, we'd be chastising him!
True, but I'd be much less apt to chastise a proven good pitcher. Most of our guys have sucked, so it's easy to get agitated.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>You'd never guess this, but the last <a href="https://twitter.com/astros">@Astros</a> pitcher to go 8+ in 3 straight starts was RHP Felipe Paulino from 5/30-6/9/2010.</p>— Steve Grande (@AstrosGrande) <a href="https://twitter.com/AstrosGrande/statuses/470689928792117248">May 25, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
You could see Keuchel was improving last season with his 3.63 SIERA, despite the 5.15 ERA... but I didn't think he'd be this dominant. His peripherals are still aligning well with his performance this season, too, so it's totally sustainable (2.92 ERA with a 2.46 SIERA). There was a good article on FanGraphs on him. Astros might have an ace on their hands. That, with Springer getting comfortable... watching lots of Astros games this season!
Cy-kel is pitching, dare I say Maddux-like. Damn, I remember that stretch from Paulino. Where's that dude at now?
That's the thing. I don't find myself being mad, turning the game off and throwing the remote in the 3rd or 4th inning anymore. The team we field is very competitive. What I see myself complaining about now is the little things in the late innings we could have done better to maybe have won the game. It's nice to have decent baseball back again.
To be fair, they're still at the bottom of MLB... but not a running joke, at least. We now have more than just Jose Altuve, too.
I am glad to see the team being competitive, it's refreshing to see them play hard. I agree that small errors still haunt the team during games