Brothers and sisters, let us crush the haters through Christ today. We got JV going and hopefully we bounce back today. Series is still very much winnable.
Yordan is at risk of getting snubbed from being an All-Star starter. It’s at 50% between him and Ohtani now. Vote for Yordan people!
I want to maximize the number of at bats for a player like that.... that means placing him in a part of the order that sees the most at bats so 2 or 3.
When you place your worst batter in a position that gets the most at bats... is straight up conceding.
Early start before a road trip to Oakland and LA. Season is half over for the Stros. Double current count stats for an easy season projection. Of course that rarely happens, I hope Bregman and Gurriel do better and Pena maintains. Bench in general needs to hit better, but McCormick and Matijovec will do better when used properly. Diaz appears to finally be returning to expectations, but that was a half season slump. May we start off the second half of the season the way we started off. With a WIN.
1. Highest OPS+ bats 3 2. Next highest OPS+ bats 4 3. Highest OBP bats 1 4. Next highest OBP bats 2 5. Highest SLG bats 5 6. Next highest SLG bats 6 7-9. Highest OPS 7, next 8, next 9 (usually Maldonado.) Because his OPS+ is high, but not as high as Yordan, I'd go with 4th which is where he batted when he was hitting into too many IF pop flies and DPs. THEN he should have been 1 or 2 because of his OBP. Brantley and McCormich should be platooning with both having extremely different success depending on the L/R thing. Keep an eye on Tucker. He has started to fade against lefties.
Combination of both Players didn’t perform well, especially Javier and Neris But Dusty’s idiotic lineup construction doesn’t help either Please make the case for Dubon leading off? How is that a good baseball decision?
Batting Dubon leadoff was not a good choice but it didn't concede the game or be the main reason why they lost. Dubon would have still been batting back to back with Maldy in our preferred lineup (8th). So he got one extra at bat by batting leadoff and Dusty said had it still been a one run game Altuve would have batted in the 9th so Dubon would not have gotten that one extra at bat. Although I still think he should have pinch hit for Dubon in the 9th when JJ got on. The Astros pitchers would love the last few pages of this thread where all the blame in a game where they gave up 7 runs is on lineup construction. I'm old enough to remember that when the Astros scored 4 runs in a game this year that was pretty much a guaranteed win.
Preferred line up against lefties: L/R/S POS PLAYER OBP SLG OPS+ R 1B DIAZ, Aledmys 395 291 801 L DH ALVAREZ, Yordan 377 458 834 R 2B ALTUVE, Jose 365 707 1072 R CF McCORMICK, Chas 377 563 940 R SS PEÑA, Jeremy 344 567 911 L RF TUCKER, Kyle 340 529 869 L LF BRANTLEY, Michael 360 372 732 R 3B BREGMAN, Alex 302 278 580 R C MALDONADO, Martin 224 358 582 For today, slide Bregman up and slip in Meyers in the 8 hole at CF amd move McCormick to LF or play Yordan LF and McCormick at DH. I don't know when they activate Brantley, but it could be any day.
But not his decisions. I laugh at the "look at the record" one note wonders. I keep thinking about the commercial where Barkley's the first pick in a kid's pick-up game. We're giving you Barkley, it's hard to screw it up no matter how hard you try.
Wish the teams we were playing gave multiple days off on the same day to their best playas Give Benintendi and Merrifield a rest day, cowards!
