For a loss, they battled all the way. I did enjoy that part. It's nice that there's always the possibility of a come-back in the works, it just didn't happen tonight.
Disappointing. Team fought back after McCullers put them in a hole (he's bad on the road man) only for Hinch with a rested pen to put Sipp in there to put it just out of reach. Sucks. Oh well on to the next.
I thought it was very reasonable bullpen usage. Other than an inning of Devo, Hinch didn't use his best relievers in a game where his team trailed the entire time. Call me crazy but that makes sense. You can't bank on comebacks every single game. Furthermore if the Astros got just one more run in 8th or 9th inning then Cleveland's pen is screwed in extra innings. They've burned their best three relievers and Houston still has Harris, Gregerson, and Giles. As for McCullers, yea he sucks on the road. But I saw a ton of growth this game. He threw like 10x the number of change-ups that he normally does because the curve was off. If he can tie together the change-up I saw tonight with the curveball and fastball then he'll be unstoppable.
As best I can tell from watching him 4 or 5 times so far: his splitter doesn't split, his slider doesn't slide, his velocity's down a tick and he can't locate for **** with his fastball. Yep, they had 3 comebacks when down 4+ in the 1st 19 games this year, we just never fell quite that far behind or it would have really been on. Ugly and frustrating but enjoyable game.
I know they been doing this for a long time but what i don't get us McCullers gave up only 5 runs and left the game after 5, the team ended up scoring 6 runs which is more than what he gave up so shouldn't Sipp be the one to take the lost instead
Stros were losing when McCullers left the game. The Astros never tied it or took the lead after he left, so McCullers gets the L.
I know but it seems like that shouldn't be the case since we ended up scoring more runs than he gave up but it's not a big deal I guess Let's win the series tomorrow
That's a 'take it up with Luhnow' thing in my opinion. Hinch HAS to throw Sipp at some point. There hasn't been and probably won't be (thankfully) a lot of games where the Astros are down big and can throw Sipp in the lowest leverage innings possible. As long as Sipp is in the pen Hinch has to throw him sometime. That's on Luhnow. I'd argue being down in a close game late to the Indians, with their bullpen, is a low leverage situation anyway. The Miller/Allen combo in particular is going to shut the opposition down most of the time regardless if we threw Gregerson or Giles in those innings.
I'm really impressed with the turnaround of hoyt and peacock. Lance was bad in the first inning but if reddick can make that spiderman catch yesterday He should have caught 1 of the 2 he missed and saved a run. You can't control that though, even then, Lance recovered nicely. He's still so young. Sipp on the other hand. Well at least he's only melted down in 3 of his 7 appearance and not in all of them.
If you're not going to use him to start the bottom 6 with LH-LH due up, when the hell are you going to use him?
Not mad about the loss at all. I'm actually really proud of how the team kept coming back to make things interesting. Last year's team probably wouldn't have made the competitive at all. Tough match-up against Kluber tomorrow but hopefully Springer and Altuve will be back by then. Really proud about our team and what they've done so far in 2017. It's time for Sipp to go though. How are you our lefty "specialist" last year and have the highest batting average against while facing lefties? I feel like the dude got paid after 15 and stopped trying to improve.
Thank God Springer's injury was only one game like management (twice) claimed. He won't be 100 when he returns. Think June-ish
When we are down 20 runs in the 9th. I'm not sure the walk is on Tony or not, since they might have told him not to throw anything to hit, but the overall sample size of him being done is getting larger by the day. He can't strike guys out. He walks a batter every time out.
He's also 33. He's lost velocity and spin on his fastball. Some pitchers lose command of their fastball as they lose velocity. Sipp appears to be one of those pitchers. On his slider from Brooks Baseball (http://www.brooksbaseball.net/landing.php?player=448609) basically saying what Buck said : His slider ...has less than expected depth and has primarily 12-6 movement. In other words, his slider only has downward movement and his slider has very little downward movement.
