It can't be 100%. That would be absolving the players for not doing the jobs they are paid to do. He shares some blame. Unequivocally, it's a team loss because there is enough blame to spread around. Ultimately, though, we have to tip our hats to the Nationals. They got the hits and staged the comebacks we could not. And, their pitchers did enough to silence our bats to preserve their leads. That is what makes for a winner. We did it in 2017 playing LA in critical games when we were down. We didn't do it this series. Plenty of blame to go around on both batters and pitchers aside from Hinch. It is what it is.
Ok, he did not make a mistake, everything was fine, the Astros should lose the series regardless because another team was better. This board is just full of something else people, they can keep argue anything endless. Astros should win the series with the 3-2 leading, someone should take a blame for the loss. The furniture owner lost $11M because of the stupid GM mistake, the fans with the tickets over $1,000 should get some kind of refunds. The choke city labeling should be allowed until they can do something next year, but I am not going to believe it until I can see the result.
Incoming new avatar. HINCH ONLY FAN! *edit: can't seem to find Hinch's promotional shots wearing a Rockets Jersey. Anyone have them? need for avatar.
Mack didn't lose money, it was a hedge. He would have paid back way more than 11 million in mattress sales had the Astros won. I'd bet more than 50% of people made purchases beyond mattress when they went to his store and none of those purchases were going to be refundable. Also throw in that delivery charges and taxes were not refundable. He's going to do this again next year.
and this is why we lost. Hinch did manage horribly but if we get a few more hits in those 29 opportunities we win
It was a combination of things, mainly the Nats, but runners left on was a killer. Astros just couldn't score more runs, Nats did.
A.J. Hinch on why he pulled Grienke for Harris: Athletic” So going into the game, (the mindset is) it’s Game 7. I’ve been through a lot of them. I remember pulling Charlie Morton at like 60-some pitches in the ALCS (in 2017). I remember pulling Lance McCullers after two-plus innings in the World Series in ’17. So, there’s a natural feeling of being ready to go to the ‘pen early. When Zack was going through his outing and was doing very well and pitched himself out of any base runners — he got a couple double plays, he got some big swings and misses — the game kept extending to the point where you get to the seventh inning and you start counting outs. We have nine outs left. Who’s going to get them? Zack had pitched effectively the second time through, and I remember going over our plan of ‘Do we want him to face the middle of the order the third time through? When is that third time through going to be?’ The thought was that it was going to be perhaps the fifth inning or even the sixth inning, but it got to the seventh inning. At that point, you’re going batter to batter. You have nine outs left to finish out. You have a two-run lead. When (Anthony) Rendon hit the homer to make it 2-1, it obviously amplified those feelings of wanting to have the perfect matchup in the area of the lineup that we were in. Having him face (Juan) Soto I liked because of his ability to slow the ball down. He can throw the slowest of breaking balls. He can throw the changeup whenever he wanted. He rarely made mistakes with his fastball. And Soto had hit everything the entire series. And I thought Zack pitched him carefully — near misses, didn’t get our calls, didn’t execute, the at-bat got a little bit longer and then I’m faced with the (Howie) Kendrick decision. Will (Harris) was up from virtually the beginning of the inning for Kendrick or (Asdrúbal) Cabrera. I always target somewhere later in the inning. If things start to go south for Zack, I had our best reliever this postseason ready to go. Losing two hitters in a row, Kendrick having had the most history against Zack other than Cabrera on their team led me to go to Will Harris. Will Harris had struck out Kendrick earlier in the series in a big spot. He was our most effective reliever throughout the postseason. I had given him a little bit of leash, so to speak, of a couple hitters to get the outs and Zack was never going to face Cabrera given their history together.* And so I went to Will. Will threw a first-pitch curveball, he gets the swing and miss. He throws the down-and-away cutter on the corner as low in the strike zone and as far down and away in the strike zone and Kendrick hits the foul pole. And that was the result. But the process that led me to putting him in, I was extremely comfortable with. (*Note: Cabrera is 18-for-41 with four doubles and a triple in his career against Greinke. And while almost all of those at-bats occurred in 2012 or earlier, Cabrera was 2-for-4 with a double off Greinke in the World Series.)”
