When I thought Javier was going to be back in Mexico or the series right after in MMP I started calling that the first day of the rest of our lives. We are 7-5 since then. Not good enough, but stabilized. The extra 10 days to get Javier back, and not skipping the Brown start cost us 3 games. Hope that doesn’t kill us in the grand scheme of things.
But what if Javier now stays healthy the rest if the season and would have been health-managed instead of fully healthy if he returned 10 days ago. What if, because of those 3 games, he can average 5 1/2 -6 IP instead if 5 IP the rest of the year? What if he can be 2022 Javier instead of 2023 Javier? We will never know.
We've now won 4 out of 5 and FINALLY have some games against non-playoff teams coming up. The A's and Angels have traditionally been a good way to pad our win totals over the last 7 years or so.
Fangraphs playoff odds 4/23/24 Mariners: (14-12) 60.0% Rangers: (14-13) 44.9% Astros: (7-19) 43.1% Angels: (10-16) 7.2% A' (11-16) 1.1% Today; Mariners: (25-22) 58.9% Astros: (21-26) 56.2% Rangers: (24-24) 27.4% Angels: (18-29) 2.0% A's: (19-30) 0.2% Since 4/23/24 Astros: 14-7 = 108-54 pace Mariners: 11-10 = 85-77 pace Rangers: 10-11 = 77-85 pace Angels: 8-13 = 62-100 pace A's: 8-14 = 59-103 pace Still have work to do, but the emergency appears to be over.
We are one (Verlander) pitch away from being on an 8-game winning streak right now. We've got the Angels and A's this week, while the Mariners have a 4 game series at the yankees and arlington has a 3 game series at the phillies. Then we get the Mariners head to head. Guys, I'm thinking 1st place by June.
Certainly the division lead should be in play when the Astros go to Seattle. Exciting yet predictable turnaround.
They don't cite weaknesses. They take the info at hand like remaining schedule and run 20K simulations. Then take the average record of those. They say the Rangers project to 80.7 wins in their model. ( Mariners 84.9, Astros 84.5)
