When have they intentionally limited themselves to 5-6 impact bats and left 2-3 on the bench??? None of you seem to be tethered to reality. Among the elite bats I mentioned: Altuve has missed ~70 games; Alvarez ~45; Brantley ~130 + Abreu and Pena have, for 4/5 of the season, been sub-average hitters. I mean... you're aware of this, right? That until very recently, they've had to patch together a line-up around injuries/poor performance?
If Dusty had started Chas/Diaz regularly from the begining of the season the lineup would've been 6-7 deep even with injuries.
Dunno, don't care, but he went from "hey, this guy hits the ball hard and makes things happen" to "this guy is totally unplayable" about a month an a half ago, and thus he serves no purpose. A LF/DH who can't hit is even worse than a 1B/DH who can't. I know he's a Coog and you want to loooove him...but no
This is a simple "yes or no" question. But you won't get that answer. Prepare for a long-winded deflection.
FFS, this isn’t that complicated. Diaz should have started and still should be starting the majority of the games at catcher. Based on WAR alone that is a 5 game swing. Forget everything else that Dusty has done wrong … that’s the division at the moment. I noticed the one part of my response you didn’t quote was the one explaining why Diaz starting 70% of games since July 1 is - while it is a fact as you say - it is actually a fact that makes my point and not yours. (And it sure as hell isn’t a strawman - I have no idea what he will do now, but he’s factually ****ed it up to date.) Deflecting to injuries, playing the wise sage who repeats its a long season, whining that “you’re spoiled” or “they will make the playoffs anyway”, talking about what Maldy did last year, justifying Julks, etc. is just deflecting. He has NOT maximized the talent he had. If he had, they would be in a more comfortable position to win the division vs having a coin flip 3-game series. That’s the point. Everything else you keep rambling about is just noise.
Bregs Tuck Chaz Diaz Pena Have been healthy and should've been playing everyday from the jump. Add in Alvarez/Altuve for 100-110 games and you should win 95-100 games with the way they pitched in the 1st half. Since Dusty chose not to do this he had to overwork the pitching staff and bullpen in particular to get the wins the team currently has gotten.
Plus... this isn't 2019... securing homefield advantage may matter in playoff results... which I don't see as realistic this season at all...
Almost every word of this is such utter bullshit if, I'm correct in assuming, you're refencing the 8/20 game they lost to Seattle, 7-6? Let's start here: it cost them *one* game in the standings; not 2 (the Ms had clinched the tiebreaker the night before, if that's where you were going with 2 instead of one). And it's mighty convenient to pick *this* game and just ignore the two games prior. How did those go? In game 1, the Julk-less lineup generated 4 hits and zero runs. In game 2, our ace gave up six runs in five innings and the Julk-less line-up went 0-9 with RISP. BTW, Yainer Diaz started both of those games, as well as game 3. Everyone screaming about Dusty not playing Diaz enough - and yet, huge, pivotal series, and Diaz started all 3 games. If Kyle Tucker is the "best/hottest hitter" you refenced - he didn't play (until a late PH in the last game) in *any* of those games because he was sick. They didn't bench him, for ****ssake. Good lord. Chas played RF in games 1 & 2, btw, and went 0-7. The Astros aren't ****ing scratching and clawing their way into the playoffs. Per FanGraphs, their odds of making the postseason is 95%. Second of all, that the division wasn't wrapped up in August as it's been every year since 2017 is due to a combination of factors that, if we were to start to list, it would take a long time to get to Dusty Baker didn't play my preferred line-up.
Right. He made the team and played early, and then, when his performance declined, he played less until injuries forced him back into the line-up. This is no longer a team built to sustain long absences from their studs the same way they have in years past. I.... don't care where he went to college, and less so that he went to UH.
Chas missed about of a month of the season and then posted a sub .600 OPS for the month of May after his return. So, your statement is categorically not based on what actually happened. As for Diaz... I mean, I'm not advocating for Maldonado - but it is clear - whatever the internal conversation is - that they are going to play him to placate various members of the pitching staff. We can scream and yell all we want about it - but we'd get better results screaming at a wall. Hopefully, this is Maldonado's last year here, and this won't be an issue moving forward.
Abreu was supposed to be a dude and he was horrible. 3 of our other starters were just hurt a lot. I don’t see much overperform a xe in the starting 9. Chas and Diaz were excellent when I’d have projected them merely as very good. That’s more than offset by Abreu falling off a cliff and maldy being unplayable (yet playing every day!).
His performance being below average suggests better players in those same situations would have helped the Astros win even more than 48 of those games. Granted, I have this crazy idea that I believe pitchers are the one's that affect runs against the most and the pitchers and/or catchers are responsible for the low scoring by the other team while Julks played. Almost all non-catchers have a less than 0.1 runs against/game affect. Considering HeyNow! is harping on the record while Julks played in which the Astros scored less, but gave up less runs, I am forced to conclude HeyNow either thinks Julks is an amazing defender in LF that is responsible for the Astros great run prevention and is better than Alvarez because Alvarez can't beat that winning percentage... or he's being a troll. I for one think any argument that suggests Julks is better than Alvarez likely has a logic fallacy (in this case, correlation does not equal causation). I will admit, I have used similar arguments against Maldy to refute that Maldy has a special power that causes an extreme drop in runs scored (i.e., something that should be notieceable in runs scored against considering Diaz is a significantly better hitter). I would not have used this argument if some people didn't think Maldy deserved to start as it takes a large sample and a great difference for this type of methodology to have merit.
Any sports fan knows head-2-head matchups equal a 2-game swing Current records SEA -- 76-57 HOU -- 77-58 Winning on 8/20 vs SEA HOU -- 78-57 SEA -- 75-56 TWO-game swing Tucker was available on 8/20. But instead of starting him, the manager chose to bench him for his homie, a AAA player. Astros lost that game by one run. The wild card (a consideration made by FanGraphs) is acceptable but not ideal, not at all -- especially with the Astros' current state of the pitching staff. A state that Dusty helped deteriorate with his misuse of available players. Astros are no doubt scratching and clawing for the division.
You fear Baker will sit Diaz half the games, despite him starting 70% of them the past two months - and you think that makes *your* point?... As for Maldonado/Diaz - I have no idea at what point Diaz > Maldonado in a knowable way. But, honestly, it's mostly irrelevant because however deep it runs within the organization (Crane? Brown? Baker? Miller? Verlander? Other SPs?), it is clear they have bought into the idea that Maldonado needs to be behind the plate. I obviously don't think it's *as* big a deal as you (others) - but, for me, you work from that premise because it's clearly not changing. That's why I go back to July 1 (and it's actually earlier than that - July 1 is just an easy starting point - but the 70% dates to around mid-June) - at whatever point the organization recognized Diaz was more legit than fluke, he's been playing regularly. I don't see any reason why that would change - though, obviously, Abreu & Brantley being back and healthy might complicate things. But, again, if healthy... Diaz's bat becomes a little less relevant with Abreu and Brantley in the line-up because they would be back to being a solid 7, 8 deep and games just aren't going to be decided by whoever is hitting 9th. [QUOTE="cmlmel77, post: 14796990, member: 19487"Deflecting to injuries, playing the wise sage who repeats its a long season, whining that “you’re spoiled” or “they will make the playoffs anyway”, talking about what Maldy did last year, justifying Julks, etc. is just deflecting. He has NOT maximized the talent he had. If he had, they would be in a more comfortable position to win the division vs having a coin flip 3-game series. That’s the point. Everything else you keep rambling about is just noise.[/QUOTE] If he had maximized his talent........ they'd still be a in 3-way race because you can't just unilaterally assume they'd have however many wins fits your narrative. Nitpicking individual games - See?!! I found ONE GAME and that's the difference!! - isn't how baseball works. You point out its a long season because... it's a long season. And a game here they could've won is balanced by a game there they could've lost. Their Pythagorean is 78 wins; they sit at 77. They are pretty much right where they should be given the injuries/performance issues.
We aren't tethered to reality? How can you be this obtuse? Maldy, Abreu, and Julks are the 3 weakest, statistically, hitters who have had at least 100 PA this year. Every time those 3 all started the same game, then the 3 weakest bats on the team were in the same lineup. Now that's simplistic. Abreu has a history and should be better than he has been, and has had some hot streaks butbto say we aren't "tethered in reality" is flat untrue and insulting. example: August 13: Dusty started 4 players w/ OPS under .660 w/ Diaz, Pena, and Meyers on the bench. They lose 2-1. example: June 11: Dusty starts Dubon leading off and Julks 2nd. Kessinger hits 8th and Salazar hits 9th. Altuve, McCormick and Pena are on the bench and they lose 5-0 example: JVs return 8/5 vs Yankees. Dusty hits Dubon, Kessinger, and Maldy 7-9. They have 4 hitters at .666 or worse OPS in the lineup and lose 3-1. This one is questionable because Julks, Abreu, and Meyers were only marginally better at the time but clearly offense wasn't Dusty's priority.
Find the post where I said that. What I've said, repeatedly, is that Julks started well and, consequently, played. Then Chas got hurt and he played (poorly) during that stretch. Then Alvarez got hurt at a time when both Julks and Chas were mightily struggling, and he played some more. I've never advocated for it - I'm just restating what actually happened. I do think he was too slow on pulling the Chas > Julks trigger (but not egregiously - Chas was NOT good in May); 2) I can't explain why Meyers wasn't more in the mix - though Meyers, offensively, wasn't a significant upgrade over Julks.
I think you are operating on very different definitions relative to some of the other posters in this thread on what constitutes playing well versus playing poorly and the meaningfulness of that information in view of all prior information related to the given player (e.g., how much does this recent performance move the needle of our future expectations?).
Interesting interview with Hunter Brown who has been tweaking his mechanics. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/houstons-hunter-brown-debuted-a-new-delivery-in-his-last-start/
