as I was about to fall asleep in bed last night with pleasant thoughts of the Rockets grinding out that chippie victory versus the Jazz, my wife says out of the blue "The Astros are World Series Champions". Talk about sweet dreams, damn I love that woman.
Agreed, such a bad contract, much worse than Pujol's contract. I thought the only way that they could dump that contract without picking up a significant portion of it is to package Miggy and Fulmer together. And I still don't know if it would be worth it.
I was there, too. Took a week to get my voice back. We were standing room only and constantly having to move to see. Didn't matter where we were, though. For every Astros run, it was a series of high 5's with strangers and lots of celebrating. I've never experienced anything even remotely close to that before. The only other playoff game I've attended was Game 3 of the NLCS. Great game by Clemens and Lidge but no drama even close. Honestly, any game i go to from then on will be pretty freakin boring.
That's the game that I was monitoring the ticket situation REALLY closely, trying to find an "affordable" SRO ticket. I never found one, and I missed out on seeing a historic game in person.
Even Dodgers fans were congratulating after the game... it was that epic. When both team's fans are exhausted and in awe of what they just watched... and are willing to congratulate each other on that... you know it was something special.
Had a trip planned to LA for months to go visit my sister and it luckily enough fell during the World Series. Got to go to Game 2 and I will never forget that experience. Just incredible.
Yep. If I were running the Royals Id try to add CarGo and Jay for $10M total. Then a lotto pitcher like Anderson, Nolasco, Alvarez, or Hellickson. Maybe a lotto reliever. They’d have a pretty competitive roster without hurting their rebuild at all since they’d have tons of trade chips at the deadline assuming they weren’t in the hunt: C Perez 1B Duda 2B Merrifield SS Escobar 3B Cuthbert RF Soler CF Jay LF Gordon DH CarGo Bench: Orlando, Goins, Mondesi, Butera Pitching staff: Duffy, Karns, Junis, Hammel, Anderson, Kennedy, Hahn, Peralta, Smith, Clippard, Maurer, Herrera
The next game Tucker plays at first base will be the first professional game he has played at first base.
K Tucker, White, Davis, and Fisher probably get to start today's game. Everybody has been marveling at Tucker's swing and that is much deserved. However it's useful to look at how some of the other guys with hopes of making the active roster are adjusting their swings and trying to improve too. Tyler White's batting approach is one that today is significantly better than it was in 2016. He successfully unlearned that jerky, flinching motion he used to have, which has helped him to cut down on swings and misses, and also to swing at more balls in the strike zone which he used to just watch go by. He's keeping his feet closer together and he's actually planting both feet on terra firma at the moment the bat contacts the ball. In the first half of 2016, he often had his left foot in the air and was balancing awkwardly on his right foot as he contacted the ball. This resulted in less than optimal swing outcomes (weak contact, fouling off middle-middle stuff that should have been driven out of the park, swings and misses...). Also, instead of flaring his feet toward right field like he did in 2016, White now tends to keep his feet aligned east-west, which is really helping him reach across the plate when he needs to and to hit against RHP, which was his big weakness in 2016. Those changes helped improve White's ISO from .161 in 2016 to .246 in 2017 and cut his pop-up rate from 15% down to 8%. His more stable batting mechanics also helped him up his Hard Contact rate from 31% to 43%. What it all meant in terms of results was that he went from a below-average, 80 wRC+ hitter in 2016 to an above-average, 126 wRC+ hitter in 2017. White has reached base in 6 of his 11 plate appearances this spring. While that OBP is unsustainable, he's getting these results in ST largely due to the adjustments he made in Fresno between June 2016 and June 2017. I'm sure this is not lost on Luhnow and Hinch.
I wonder if Davis has ever taken reps at 1B (I know they're working on him in LF, adding 1B may be a little much for him at the same time). Moving an OF/C to 1B takes serious work, anyone who has played the IF should be at least tolerable there with some reps (see Yuli), and some guys take to it faster than others. It's all about footwork. He and White both have the versatility that Hinch/Luhnow like, hopefully they both continue to do things at the plate this Spring.
I think Hinch mentioned that Davis was in the mix for first base during yesterday's in game interview.
Then again, Reed used to pitch in college. It might be fun if Hinch would give Reed a few innings on the mound.
