This is the part that annoys me about this board. Teams go into slumps - both the Astros and their competition. It's annoying to read all the "sky is falling!" posts everytime they lose and the Angels win. At the end of the day, the Astros are 4-6 in their last 10, while the Angels are 3-7. All the teams in the division are flawed and all are going to suffer extended losing streaks. Freaking out everytime the Astros lose a game that everyone else is going to chase them down is silly. Even the "good" version of the Astros are going to lose around 40% of their games.
Its as if all that losing all these previous years didn't teach anybody anything. Its like people just went from watching this team from 1997-2005 to watching them now again, without anything in between. It makes further sense why football will always dominate the sports landscape here... the small sample size, lack of patience, "each game matters" mentality cannot be shared between sports.
Well said. But whether the team be good or bad, fans will always focus on whats going wrong and how to fix it. If we had K.C.'s record, the team in general and some players would still attract scrutiny. For myself, given how streaky this team is, its tempting to watch them when they are on a hot streak and wonder why they cant play like that all the time. No, its not fair or even realistic to expect or hope for that. But its hard not to get the impression watching this team that the flaws that appear to contribute to their cold spells are fixable.
Please, don't forget the Rangers Now we need to start playing good baseball because I don't see the Angels and Rangers both struggling at the end, probably one but not both.
They don't really need to struggle - all these teams are basically 0.500 teams. For all the talk about how bad the Astros are on the road, the Angels have the same road record. And the Rangers have a losing home record. The Rangers are having a nice month in August, but they were just as terrible in July - adding up to a 0.500 record over those months. Angels had a good July and bad August so far. Astros have been mediocre both months. Either of those teams could get hot, certainly - but so could the Astros. There is a lot of luck in baseball and hot streaks are part of that, but neither of those teams are demonstrably better than the Astros where we should fear them or whatnot. If everyone plays as they pretty much have all season, the Astros are in a good position. I do think the Astros lost some of their electricity by sending down LMc and VV, but hopefully they are back up in a week or two for the stretch run, and maybe Springer as well but there seems to be little info on him right now.
I actually think the Rangers have the best shot to win the division out of the three teams. It's not so much I'm down on the Astros. I just think the Rangers made some quality trade moves and have enough veterans on their team to perform the best through the end of the season. And, they are playing very well right now and appear to have the Astros number when they play them. What concerns me the most about the Astros offense is, aside from primarily home runs, the bats have been pretty silent for a lot of players for a while now. Rasmus alone is responsible for enough offense to get us a few of those recent wins via home runs...combined with strong starting pitching. But, everyone else outside of mainly Altuve...is just not really getting it done offensively. There's too many easy outs and predictable outs throughout the line-up for a while now. I'm left wondering if these young players aren't just wearing down here toward the end. There's no doubt they want to win every game and the effort is there. Maybe they are trying too hard? We've made a lot of opposing pitchers look damn good...better than they are in several cases. It's tough. .500 ball isn't going to get it done.
Cotra is hitting but lately they are not pitching to him. That's why I want Altuve hitting 4th to protect him plus he is one of the best on the team with RISP.
That's my point, we need to play good baseball because I don't think both of the teams behind us will struggle. Maybe one but odds are that not both. Now, beside the first month we have not been very good so is time for us to play really good. I am a bit worried because we played so bad on the road and now we follow with a series against a bad team that played even or maybe a little bit better than us and now a team that is playing much better crush us at home. We are not playing good baseball and this is going now for a long time. Hopefully we can turn it around NOW.
The Rangers pitching is terrible. There is no way that team should make a run even with the Hamels addition. If they make the playoffs, it's because we fell apart.
Astros played .500 baseball before the 10 game win streak and they've played around .500 since that win streak. A lot of us thought they'd be around .500 this year, so we've gotten what we expected most of the season.
A team that played .500 with a 10 game losing streak could be looked at similarly. But one is the playoff hunt and the other wouldn't be.
Astros cant go .500 the rest of the way, if they do they will not make the playoffs. Before the season started yes, this team was a .500 team but with the trades and Correa (yes minus springer) we should play better than that. This team is playing .500 but Castro, carter, Gomez, Gattis, are hitting much less than expected. That is almost half of your lineup. Altuve and Rasmus are hitting about their career numbers. Valbuena is starting to hit like his career numbers in the second half. Lowrie is doing maybe better, and 2 rookies that are doing fine with the bat. If we get Gattis and Gomez hitting, there is no way we lose the division. If they continue to struggle, then playoffs are in jeopardy.
So going 6-4 every 10 games is materially different from you from going 5-5 every 10 games and then getting hot here and there? That is a drastically different team to you?
Not drastically. We have a large sample size of games now now and they Astros have played .500 for most of the season. The 10 game win streak is the outlier.
Either Hinch or a local broadcast said Tucker is incapable of playing 1B. Guess he sucks that badly at fielding grounders. Regardless, Astros are still in control and with Springer's return, we have more potential upside than all other AL West teams. Our pitching continues to be very good overall. One main thing that would really help is Gomez hitting decently... not even good, just decent.
it happened. you can't take away those 10 games. If toronto surpasses NY, yankees fans can't say, "well, if you take toronto's long winning streak, they wouldn't even have been close to winning the division. everything matters.
Gomez and Gattis are the main culprits (leaving Carter and Vlbuena out as they're not even in the everyday lineup anymore). Even if just Gomez hits, and Springer provides a boost in the last 4 weeks, we have a shot. But otherwise, it'll be a struggle with the way the Rangers are playing, and how god awful we are on the road.
