Gotcha. They really oughta get rid of the 162 game season... and give every team these critical 8 games, and go from there.
Now, that's just silly. The next 8 games are a high leverage situation. Considering how much you rail on Josh Fields...you understand the concept of high leverage. Edit: Granted, if the Astros played the previous games differently, these 8 games might not be high leverage. You gotta win games at both times, but considering the high leverage nature of the playoffs...high leverage regular season games are the closest thing to them.
The Josh Fields situation took care of itself... he didn't need me to point out the hollow nature of his stats. Anyways, we seem to be saying two different things. Chances of making the playoffs is one thing (which yes, if they don't hold their own over the next 8 games, those chances could be slim to none)... but actually having playoff success is something totally different and basically unmeasurable (unless you're also simulating each team setting up their rotations and lineups exactly how they would in a playoff situation... also, need to play games on random weekdays at mid-day to simulate the timing).
The astros bullpen, I think, is going to propel them to a wild card spot. If we can get to the 5th inning with our starters we can hold leads.
The biggest correlation to playoff success is making the playoffs. At this point, I don't care a damn about who beat who as it won't matter if you are sitting at home. A chip and a chair is all that matters at this point.
what if we have a storm of biblical forces tomorrow and mlb decides to make up the games against the cubs in a neutral city, south side chicago? we would be doomed.
They played poorly last September and were 6 outs away from eliminating the eventual WS champions after winning the WC game on the road. Getting in is all that matters; what happens once the slates are cleaned has little bearing on what happened in the regular season.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">The Orioles lose to the Rays. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Astros?src=hash">#Astros</a> now 1.5 back in AL Wild Card. Tigers .5 game</p>— Alex Del Barrio (@alexdelbarrio) <a href="https://twitter.com/alexdelbarrio/status/773622101240492032">September 7, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Astros need to come up with another surprising game tonight. If they can win this Indian series then they are surpassing expectations.
It sure would help if we got to the playoffs to have a #1 and #2 starting pitcher. I guess we could roll with Peacock and a good bullpen and see what happens. These next eight games are all high leverage. What the Astros need is some starting pitcher to step up their game.
That's absolutely true - but no fixing that at this point. But the way they are playing with bandaids against contenders at least bodes a little well.
