Increases perspective/reverence on Biggio's "zero GIDP entire season" feat. Wonder who else achieved <5x.
You are thinking too much into it. The As are a really young good team. We are spoiled with 100 win seasons. Any team that can win back to back 90 win seasons is an elite team. We just have 3 super teams right now that take away the limelight from other elite teams like the As and Braves. Remember when the Astros face them in a postseason series, they are going to face Verlander, Cole and Greinke in a row instead being shut out by Grienke, knocking around a struggling Miley and than facing Urquiddy who was good but only could go up to 5 innings. Also, Correa and Yuli will hopefully be healthy along with Pressely and Peacock.
It's a heck of a fastball though. When he's missing bats, he flat overpowers hitters. Few others in the Astros pen you can say that about. When he's missing the zone instead...it can be ugly.
I've wanted James in the rotation all year long. We have the latitude to ride out some highs and lows from our 5th starter. The highs and lows are a little more painful when he comes into close games late. As dominant as his K rate is, his results have been consistently inconsistent. The bullpen really needs Pressly ready for the postseason in a bad way.
I wanted James in the rotation as well. Not as down as James as a reliever going forward. He seems close to greatness to me. Seems like he needs to work on conditioning/mechanics. He's great in about 5 out of 6 outings. It is that 6th outing that he's out of control/something isn't working, and he's just toggled to suck. If Astros can figure out a way to mitigate his bad games, he's going to be great.
It's pretty wild when you look at the game logs since May 1: 23 appearances (30.2 IP) where he gave up 0 runs 3 appearances (3.2 IP) where he gave up 1 run 3 appearances (2.2 IP) where he gave up 2 runs 1 appearance (2.1 IP) where he gave up 3 runs 2 appearances (1.1 IP) where he gave up 4 runs The VAST majority of the time, he's lights out. But when he loses it, he really loses it.
Feels like we are right back before the trade deadline where spots four and five in the rotation are losses. I expected Miley to maybe flatten a little or have a bad game here or there, but I didn't expect him to be the second coming of Framber Valdez. Spot 5 is a train wreck. Fortunately we don't use spot 5 in the playoffs. But spot 4 is iffy. If we are down 2-1 in the LDS I think you have no choice but to bring back JV on short rest. You don't go pitch Miley in an elimination game. In the LCS if we are up 3-0 or even 2-1 with home field I think you go Miley. If we are down 2-1 with home field MAYBE you pitch Miley so you have JV and Cole on full rest. If you are down 3-0 JV it is on short rest along with Cole.
JV's not going to fold tonight. Maybe the bats can give him some run support for once. Let's split this series and move the hell on.
Yeah but I like it when we score lots of runs, he still pitches well, but gets the red ass and gets ejected by the umpire after the 5th inning. That's my favorite JV scenario.