Still no urgency for Dosty, Dosty only feels urgency when the season is dragging and its vacation time.....
I agree with this as the primary reason why we were behind in the division for much of the season, but I do not agree that this is the reason the Astros are in the position they are in right now. Bottom line is despite all of that, they were leading in the division with 9 games in front of them against the two worst teams in MLB, and completely collapsed, while Dusty was still throwing out suboptimal lineups and making weird managing decisions.
Injuries hurt, not doubting that.. but most managers would've navigated this year better than Dusty. He has completely ignored obvious moves/adjustments throughout the season -- mostly for the sake of his ego. Don't forget France and Diaz's emergence helped offset the injuries. Chas made a leap forward. Neris and Abreu have been awesome, and better than last year. Maton has improved vs last season. We added Graveman. Their improvement/addition in the bullpen offsets Pressly and Montero's regression. Astros didn't need 105 wins to secure the division. This season is a abject indictment of Baker.
Dusty belongs in a different era. He makes past accomplishments and experience more important that current ability or potential. He refuses to give everyday starting jobs to players until they have X experience whether they are the best players or not. He lets veterans who are past their primes keep their positions whether it's deserved or not. He expects 6+ innings out of every starting pitcher every start regardless of the situation and leaves him out there as long as he possibly can regardless of what happens. He decides who he wants to use and not use ahead of time and does not adjust if other players out perform them or due to any other situation. He needs to go back to the winery.
Then, there are players (Julks, Singleton) who play regardless of experience. Dusty's rhyme and reason is "whatever he wants to do".
Argue to fire Dusty, complain about his lineups, whatever. If you want to say a few games are the difference and Dusty’s decision cost a few games, that’s a perfectly reasonable opinion. If you are convinced the payers decided they don’t respect Dusty and decided they didn’t want to win, if he had only played Diaz 40 more games they would be a 100 win team, or that Dusty is THE problem with the Astros, that’s silly in my book.
Dusty is ONE of THE problem with the Astros this year. A big one at that, and he definitely costed the Astros games. With how tight the Astros playoff hopes are now, those 3 or 5 games he cost the Astros will kick them out of the playoffs.
Can we through some $$ at Brent Strom. What happened. Did we just come crashing back to earth and then some. Man what happened. After that pasting we gave the Rangers. I mean PASTING. we had 9 games against the WORST teams in the league and then our division rivals going against each other for 7. Isn't that the scenario you hope for if you need the stars lining up? There is no reason we should not be 2 or 3 ahead is the loss column and be going in to AZ with a magic number of 1. Just no reason. But you drop 7 of 9 against the dregs and this is what you get. It is not over yet. But sure feels like the astros are swirling around the Kohler. What is worse. Rangers will have the last laugh. "Yea you pasted us. But enjoy watching us play from your couch"
Our pitching went downhill in the second half. We led the league in ERA for the first couple months of the season. Our defense also went south around the same time.
A significant reason for this is JV leaving and poor planning with load management. Astros were top 2-3 in MLB up until August. Dusty didn't help either with his crap lineups of inferior players that led to fewer runs and closer games.
Nobody says the players don’t want to win. They say Dusty doesn’t want to win, which is backed up by his stupid decisions. Absolutely nobody said we’d win 100 games if Diaz was the starter. We would have more wins though.
What Dusty did was take away any margin for error. This team was flawed and top heavy. It had the ability to win 105 games if everything went perfectly or 90 games it got hit with injuries, underperformance, and bad luck. The unexpected breakout of Chas, and Diaz brought that floor up to about 93-95. Dusty spit on those 3-5 games by sitting them on the bench or DHing them too often. And all the injuries, underperformance, and bad luck happened so this team is fighting for 90 wins and a WC spot when those 3-5 games should have allowed them to win the division. And underperformance is just as much to blame as injuries, but competent management would have given the team the margin for error it needed.
Arizona leading 3-0 in the 6th. Pray Miami loses tonight, because that lowers their magic number to 1. Marlins game is at 5:35 Friday, so Arizona could cinch before our first pitch of the series. We need this to happen.
