Funny Dusty so desperate he's doing something never considered possible, not only playing Diaz more, but to move him all the way to the cleanup spot. It's kind of like a fire and initially Dusty kept getting a small bucket to try to douse it out, and now he's got the hose finally attached to combat a raging inferno. Good job you damn fool.
He’s a good player. Not a star. And weak grounders and pop ups do hurt. Double play grounders and pop ups that don’t advance runners. Strikeouts aren’t any worse than that. His play since 2020 has been a pretty huge disappointment even though he has still been solid. The walks are great. The staring at meatballs down the middle is the byproduct though.
Except you're really not. Chas is a 2 WAR player, more or less. Julks is a 0 WAR player. If they bench Chas for 50 games and play Julks (basically what they are doing with Chas playing 66% of the time), it would add less than 1 win over the course of the entire season. Yes, Dusty's lineups are weird and often ridiculous. But no, changing them to the ideal lineups aren't going to make that much of a difference in the standings. They might be 5.5 games out instead of 6.5. Pretty sure everyone would be complaining just as much, given that everyone complained just as much last year when they won 106 playing Dubon and Yuli and company. The incessant complaining exists independent of what Dusty does and how the team does. He could do exactly what everyone wants and they lose, and people would still complain. He could do his own way, win 106 games, and people would still complain. Leaves starters in too long? Complain. Bullpen gives up too many runs? Complain. Start Julks and he hits a HR and they score 7 runs? Complain. Start everyone's preferred lineup and score 1 run? Complain. (Also, Chas has been playing a ton against lefties recently. Not surprisingly, he's regressing to a normal player and his OPS is now almost equal against lefties and righties - and nowhere close to 1.000.)
Because chas played last night. Dusty can't play him two nights in a row even if he has an ops over 900 the past 15 games.
It is no three nights in a row unless Tucker gets an off day or Julks gets a DH start. Chas, Meyers, and Julks are mostly on the play 2 off 1 schedule to get 3 players to play 2 positions.
Agree to disagree then Players matter Playing lesser players over better players matters, and it matters a lot Mattered less last year when our pitching just dominated people and we didn’t need the runs And yea in those 34 at bats Chas has regressed I guess anyone who thinks Chas isn’t way better against LHP, and especially way better than a guy like Julks…I mean I can see why you support Dusty so much if you think none of that matters
Also Major Chas has 34 at bats vs LHP all year So if you call that “a ton” I’m not sure what to tell ya
The point is that if Altuve/Bregman/Tucker/Yordan/Abreu aren't doing the heavy offensive lifting on a regular basis (or at least having numbers approaching their career norms)... there's not much chance this offense has being consistent, regardless of what the lineup is. Diaz is getting more and more deserved playing time so as his WAR goes up, you can maybe extrapolate more wins on all the games he sat vs. all the games Maldy played (although we knew Maldy wasn't going to sit 5 days a week based on our current pitching staff's supposed preference).
Supposed Certainly isn’t results oriented We live in 1990s baseball while teams like the Rays are getting the most out of what they have That bothers some of us, not all of us, but some
The future is not known. Last year, the Astros won a bye by 7 games with incredible injury luck. Right now, the Astros are a game out of the wild card. Considering Chas is averaging about 3.5 fWAR per 150 games, Meyers about 3 fWAR/150 games, and Diaz is on pace to being 2 fWAR/150 games despite not getting much time at catcher, Dusty's lineups as he's played them so far would easily on average cost the Astros about 2-3 wins in a season (maybe more if Diaz keeps playing great and Maldy continues his pace to set the Astros record for worst framing season under statcast by the all-star game). Unless one can predict the future perfectly, playing worse players matters as even a game could matter regarding making postseason/postseason seeding. Edit WAR numbers are averages from 2021-2023 prorated to 150 games.
