Yep we all look back fondly on the Killer Bs or the ‘86 team but the last 5 years have far and away been the best of the franchise’s entire history. That 2019 team may go down as the most talented team in MLB history once all those players are done and a lot of them are in Cooperstown. Even the lineup that remains today sans Springer remains league best. That’s why I want Correa back so badly. I want the core 4 and Alvarez and Tucker to retire as Astros. I want to see Altuve and Correa sitting behind home plate like Biggio and Bagwell do now. C’mon Craine!
This is my biggest concern going forward. Huge bummer we couldn't get a strong 6-7 inning outing from Framber. That's problematic going forward. I thought people indicating Junior being out for ALCS was such a huge deal was overblown, but the one thing we could have almost certainly been guaranteed was an extended outing from McCullers. That's what we may be dealing with, so much required bullpen to get through this series. I thought we could survive the Red Sox series without him, but if it ends up being the Dodgers, McCullers needs to get healthy fast.
They’ve always been doing it… but they took it up a notch with Keuchel, and now they’ve just gone full deluge given that with the Astros shifting/defense, everything hit on the ground can be an out.
LMJ wasn’t going to pitch till game 3 regardless, so today and tomorrow were going to happen just as they are. The Astros have a stable of bullpen guys who can pitch 2 days in a row with ease, and if pressed, 3 days in a row. Stanek only had to get one out tonight. Other than Javier, everybody else should be available tomorrow. If you watched the Dodgers game last night, even though it was a all hands on deck game 5, this is really going to become the norm in playoff games where starters are rarely going to go 3x through the order, if not even 2x… and managers are going to rely on solid bullpens to carry them in multiple games. With off days, there is time to recover.
Most go ahead HR in the 7th inning or later in post season history: Carlos Correa 4 Troy Glaus 3 Bernie Williams 3 That's the short must of having at least 3. Correa will probably double that by the end of his career and be known as the greatest/most clutch post season hitter of all time.
How often do you get two players of this caliber together? You pay to keep them on the same team, even if the team isn't competitive after 2025 or something. Personally, I'd keep as many of the home grown hitters as possible and let the pitchers walk, you can create good enough pitching through the farm like we've done this year, or through trades. For comparison, the Dodgers have played in about as many postseason games as the Astros since 2015, how many Dodgers do you see climbing the all time postseason leaderboards? This is a once-in-a-lifetime team, you ride them until they break.
And that's my point, not having Junior to give us 7 innings in game 3 vs ??? Urquidy/Greinke ??? possibly going only 4-5 innings is a big deal. Pray Garcia has a great outing tomorrow. On the positive side, the Red Sox bullpen was called upon from the 3rd inning on as well. At some point they may break down as this was the weakest aspect of the team in the regular season.
Lance only went 7+ innings 4 times this year… and hasn’t gone 7 inning since July. With the way playoff games are managed, highly unlikely he would ever get close to that. Seems like 5 IP is the new 7 in terms of playoff baseball. Garcia will probably go 3-4. And then we go around this carousel again. Maybe Zack will make an apperance! Get used to these sorts of games…
Been watching the Astros since I was a little boy and now to watch this team with my little boy means the world to me.
Discussed the matter of starting pitching with a friend during the game and he said that we need to get a big name pitcher and I told him we have 5 young arms that could easily be the stable of this rotation for the next 5 years: McCullers Valdez Garcia Javier (once he's put back where he belongs) Urquidy With the way the game is now played, you need to focus on hitting (ask the Giants about that). Sign Correa. He's the most clutch post season hitter in history.
