Astros are ****ed. They need to trade for another pitcher right now not wait until the deadline. We can’t keep doing three man rotation and give up the other two games
They must really not trust McHugh to go more than two innings, because wasting him the night before a game where he seemingly could be an innings-eating savior makes no sense to me.
I was thinking about that too and the only thing I came up with was it allowed Valdez to start his day vs the middle of the Angels lineup rather than the top of it. Maybe they thought he would last longer that way. As far as not stretching James, he had thrown 38 pitches two days earlier.
Lack of starter depth has magnified the bullpen issue. As far as what we started the season with, who could have guessed all the young guys (James, Framber, Whitley, Martin, Sneed, Perez, Guduan, Rodgers) would all flunk out and Peacock and McHugh would be largely ineffective as starters?
If only Charlie didn't have this injury problem, I think he's an Astro right now. I'm sure Luhnow struggled with this. Even now, we're not sure that Charlie will make it through the end of this season on his new team. But the exacerbating factor is just that the one weakness of the Astros organization is its comparatively-weak ability to develop pitchers through its own system. Luhnow got dealt a tough hand last year when it came to starting pitching. At the beginning of the year, holy crap, potentially legendary staff. By, the end, though, Charlie was fading and needing all sorts of additional rest, which did not seem to positively help him in the playoffs. Keuchel was a warhorse that still managed to pitch over 200 innings, and we're desperately missing those innings from our collective staff this year. However, he underperformed in a contract year and then overasked. McCullers, who I regularly forget is still on the team, is totally out from surgery this year. Oh, and the bats majorly underperformed last year, so Luhnow had to do something about that, and he did. And I trust that he's really working hard on this and will pull something off. But, man, this is not a pleasant experience right now.
This is silly. He made that call thinking that Keuchel was still a possibility for the 3rd slot, McHugh the 4th, and Miley the 5th. While Keuchel was no sure thing, it was known that there were ~5 guys in the minors who could potentially step in, one of whom might pan out (Valdez, Martes, Whitley eventually, James, C Perez...I'm not even counting C Martin who actually came up) -- with a trade as a backup option. Keuchel was expected, but otherwise so much has gone unexpectedly, from McHugh not being able to go back to SP at all, to Martes getting suspended, to Whitley bombing so far, etc. I don't see why he should regret the call he made at the time with the information he had
Luhnow will do what he needs to do. In hindsight it sucks to know all we needed to do was keep our own, Keuchel and Morton, and most if not all of our pitching issues might not even be there. I still hope we can land MB or Greinke.
So right now if he could know what he knows about Morton and go back in time and fix it would he? Yes. That's called a regret. They happen.
Ok--fair enough. I guess we have different definitions of a "regret" then. I don't consider something a regret unless I should have made a different choice. Nothing about this says "wow, that was a mistake".. just "well damn, hindsight sure is 20/20, huh?" To me, that's luck of the draw and nothing to regret.
Tonight is going to be another rough one. Pitching is absolutely THE biggest need on this team if we want to have a legit chance come playoff time.
McHugh hasn’t done much to inspire confidence since his early season success. I think he’s tipping pitches combined with lingering injury and just not as good stuff as he had previously.
