Since the back to back shutouts in Milwaukee the Astros have scored at least 5 runs in 8 of 9 games averaging 5.9. Since May 14th (3 weeks): wRC+ Alvarez 174 Bregman 174 Meyers 151 Altuve 149 Tucker 136 Pena 124 McCormick 108 Maldy 90 Abreu 65 Julks 100 Dubon 126 Diaz 111
Also, pretty sure they’ve done better in games where the lineup was ridiculed vs games where the lineup was praised. will see what todays “approved” lineup brings.
To be fair, this was foresight. He posted before tonight’s game… It’s almost as it on a day to day basis the small samples make it impossible to predict performance, and given humans are not good at seeing larger samples some people (and managers) are prone to confirmation bias and use that as a way to justify suboptimal long term strategy. Or not. Who knows really? Just one of life’s mysteries.
Yes Nick, I'm sure playing Yainer Diaz and Chaz is totally the reason that the everyday players went 2-21 yesterday.
Of all the lineups Dusty has tried, not once has he gone with Diaz at catcher, Alvarez/Tucker/Meyers/McCormick in the OF/DH.
Considering the Astros are 9-4 in Diaz starts at catcher, I'm pretty sure Nick is either flat out wrong or that Dusty's playing Maldy has crushed the souls of Astros fans enough to praise lineups with Maldy.
It's certainly beat me into submission. Maldy is gonna start 80% of the time, maybe only 70% of the time in a stretch where we play a lot, I've just accepted it. Any lineup that has Diaz in it instead of Julks is one I'm happy with right now.
Even Dana is waving the white flag to Dusty at this point lol and giving up on the idea of Diaz being developed at C.
Yainer somehow has a .350 xwOBA in spite of intermittent playing time. Imagine keeping that bat on the bench most games when your team's offense has been dogshit all season. You'd have to be pretty smart to do something like that.
This. Also, Baker and Crane are also very similar in how they approach things, so they get along...... and last year just about disagreement that Click and Baker had the results break Baker's way (Maldonado/Gurriel/Brantley/Meyers)....... so Crane has a lot of confidence in Baker's opinion at this point.
