Texas has another early lead against Philly. It must be frustrating for them to be playing so well and gaining zero ground on the Astros. It's basically exactly the same situation Houston was in last year, and it feels damn good to be on the other side of that coin.
Nah, the Rangers were some lucky asses last season with all the 1-run victories.. and getting swept in the playoffs further exposed them. Astros are capping fools this year.
Their starting pitching has had some extreme unsustainable luck. Cashner's ERA is three! runs lower than his FIP.
They've had a pretty soft schedule lately. A lot of home games against the likes of the Padres, A's, and Phillies who are among the worst teams in baseball.
If we play at our level, or even close to it nobody in this division is a match for us. We just need to handle our own business, don't worry about the chumps in the rear view.
Colby Lewis was accomplishing the same thing last year. Kind of remarkable. The Rangers are getting better production from Napoli & Lucroy, which was to be expected. The bullpen improving was expected as well. The starting pitching is the only real surprise, but I agree that won't last.
They were projected to be a .500 team so they're pretty much on-point. They'll go on hot and cold streaks but i don't seem them consistently playing well. (its kind of amazing that the astros really haven't had hot/cold streaks; they just played consistently well across the board).
The thing is, we HAVE had hot/cold streaks. It's just that when our bats are quiet, our pitching excels, and vice versa. Only on rare occasions so far this season have both facets of the game not produced over the course of a series. And also, I doubt the Rangers are getting all that frustrated this early in the season. I don't think they're even looking at the standings, and if they are, they definitely shouldn't be. The same goes for the Astros. You just keep plugging away, winning series, and nature will take its course.
Where is the homie, @Nick, to argue SOS doesn't exist in baseball? He's missed the last 10 instances. He also stated teams can't be critiqued until after 162 games. Where is the homie?
Is 25-8 a hot streak? People forget we started 4-4. The bats weren't doing well for the first couple of weeks. Since then, Stros have been surging.
As Berkman once said - "If you look at the schedule and don't see any 'cookies' on it, then you're the cookie"
You could call it normalizing to true talent level..... They were projected to be a good team, underperformed that, and since have performed well without any crazy unsustainable individual performances (cep for maybe Yuli's hitting streak).
I know. I just got tickets from my brother for tomorrows game. So glad it's not Fiers pitching... Now to decide which girl I want to take.........
