At least we touched the best bully, era-wise. If only we didn't surrender 8 runs against the 11th best scoring offense in the league.
Impressive MarGo 13 pitch at bat for HR #10 Hopefully his bat stays wake for the next series BREG TOO Have those bats ready for the Tigers damn it... close game losses again sting worse, but they fight and dont give up! Also someone in the Tribes pen finally looked human... nice to see that.
First time being swept (3-game series) since @DET last July. Speaking of the Tigers.... they're next up. They can go ahead and win tonight though.
4 innings was overload for him, but he did a great job. He was going to be out of commission for at least 2 days, so this helps bring some depth. Options on the 40 man: Dayan Diaz, David Paulino, Reymin Guduan, and David Paulino
Dallas Keuchel had a 5.20 ERA after his first 200 IP. Think Joe Musgrove can find a way to pitch well at this level.
Sure let's use Dallas Keuchel as a model for every pitcher that gets off to a rough start, that's entirely reasonable. Whatever growing pains Joe is going through, his peripherals have trended in the wrong direction (K% down, BB% up). I'll chalk the increased HR/FB% to luck but the FIP and xFIP numbers aren't good either. If it were just him and the rest of the rotation were question-mark free, I'd say roll with it. But the combo of him and Fiers on the backend is really hurting the team.
For every pitcher? I don't remember mentioning anyone else other than Joe Musgrove, but ok, I guess you got me. Was merely pointing out that not all pitchers stormed out of the gate. The stakes are high, of course, but I'm still going to be as patient as possible. Musgrove's still going to play a role for this team in the future. Like I said... I think he'll figure it out. Preferably sooner, of course.
Just when the Astros were on this incredible roll, and then the injury bug hits. This is so Houston sports.
Bigger concern for the Astros is the starting rotation and what the repercussions might be down the road. They've got 2 pitchers in Fiers and Musgrove that are wildly inconsistent and may have lots of short outings. They've got another in Morton who's pretty good, but can only go 5 or 6 innings. We really have no idea if McCullers' arm can hold up a whole season or if he's going to need some downtime here and there. All of that is going to put a toll on an outstanding bullpen - we saw what that did down the stretch in 2015.
Pretty much what was said prior to the season... except you can add Morton's injury prone history and the question of whether or not Kuechel would both bounce back and stay healthy. While Kuechel has certainly bounced back, lets hope this nerve issue is not anything more than just that. McHugh will hopefully supplant one of the inconsistent guys... and I see no reason why they wouldn't still be working hard on acquiring more quality starting pitching.
The combination of McHugh and Paulino's injuries with Martes, Fiers and Musgroves poor years have made pitching an even bigger issue than I feared it would be. I figured the Astros would probably spend most of the year with 3 or 4 pretty reliable pitchers, and a prospect at the back end. Fiers being the injury replacement (being a competent if unspectacular starter). We have had 3 reliable pitchers, but one of them is only good for 5 innings. Peacock will get a chance now, but I'm still not thrilled about his prospects. We couldn't provide good replacements for Fiers and Musgrove now if we wanted to. The team results have actually been pretty good for Fiers despite his poor outings . Hopefully his HR rate will start to regularize and he can start giving us more competitive starts. Musgrove has actually been OK (3.86 ERA in his previous 5 starts) I actually don't think the rotation is a major problem at this this exact moment, but given we have 2 guys who have been generously mediocre and 2 guys with historically frail arms, it's not hard to see this quickly becoming a major issue because the depth I thought we had hasn't materialized.
Playing and being swept by a top team in your own house does not bode well for the future but it happened at a good time. Team hierarchy now knows it must pull out a big time deal to get one more arm in here if it wants this team to be the team to beat and instill fear in other teams come October/November.
Everybody complaining about the pitching it was the offense that lost the series. Scored 3 runs total in first 2 games.
True, but there's really no reason to think this offense isn't gonna be at least really good for the rest of the season. Even when we were struggling early, most of us knew this team was gonna score runs so we weren't concerned. This rotation on the other hand feels like it's built on a house of cards despite overall great results so far.
