Dont look ahead, we need to win vs Oakland and L.A. if we don't we are going to be in second place when we face the Rangers, and winning a 4 game series is very difficult, especially for us when it is on the road.
The way we play on the road, a 5 and 10 or 6 and 9 is likely to happen. The 9 games at home, we could go 6 and 3. So i likely scenario is 86 and 76 Texas need to go 16 and 11 L.A. 18 and 8 Twins 17 and 9 So yes, you are right, at home we MUST win the 3 series left
One positive from this game: these guys never stop competing. Fiers was having an off day but even so he pitched well enough to keep us within striking distance. Bullpen + Defense cost us the game. Damn!
If Carter's batting average cracks the .170s will he finally be put out of his misery or are they going to keep pretending that he belongs?
Yeah good job saving that 40 man roster spot so we can protect Grossman or Peacock or Staily, Reed or White wouldn't have made a difference... No way they could hit over .170.
Out pitching was dominating, but we couldn't score. Now that our offense is starting to produce, our pitchers (the pen in particular) is starting to scuffle. Hopefully we can get the 2 to align before the year ends.
Two of the last four games have featured wins of 8-0 and 8-3 with dominant starting pitching in both (yes, I'm excluding those last two runs that Qualls gave up in a blowout game). I'd say that's pretty good alignment! Stay positive man! :grin:
There is a very real chance we could lose the division thanks to the team keeping Chris Carter. There is no excuse for it. If only we could have pulled off a deal for Donaldson in the offseason instead of Gattis. It would have cost more of course, but man this team would be incredible with him.
I wanted Donaldson bad. I'm sure Luhnow did his due diligence, but I still have trouble believing we couldn't put together a much better package. I'm sure we would have had to overpay to get him traded within the division, but it would have been worth it. This team would look insanely good.
More thank keeping him, i have to blame Hinch for using him. There is no excuse for playing him yesterday. I agree you have to give a day off to Lowrie, but why yesterday? He is hitting .325 against lefties, you "have" to use Carter at 1b, nothing good can happen doing those things. Now, if you want to sit him tonight, vs righty, then you can use Marwin at 3b and Valbuena at 1b. Hinch has been doing these kind of mistakes with lineups for the whole year, IF the Rangers catches us in the division, my first blame goes to Hinch. Also, you talk about Gattis, i like him a lot, he is a great guy, but he is not hitting much this year, so why use him all the time? I want Tucker as DH at least once in series, of course vs right handed pitcher.
Despite the advanced-metric-nerd-cutting edge features of this front office... they likely still have soft spots and play favorites just like every other GM/front office does at some point (Luhnow said on several occasions in the off-season that he wouldn't be surprised if Carter was in the running for an MVP-type season). Chris Carter should not have survived after the first half. I understand giving him a chance to build on his 2014 (of which, we've gone over the 2 month outlier boost ad-nauseum), but he's not looked "right" all season. The seeing more pitches/improved OBP version of him has somehow made him less effective overall. Once it was clear this team was going to contend, and they got serious about contending by taking on more payroll and acquiring legit MLB players via trade, they should have been more pro-active about dealing with him and upgrading the 1B position (even if they didn't get somebody via trade, explore in-house candidates... and use his roster spot for somebody else). Just gotta hope that this sort of blind-judgement/wishful thinking doesn't extend itself to other struggling players in the future. Luhnow needs to be all-in on the big league roster side of things (for the first time in his GM career). Experimentation and service-time/40-man/rule 5 shenanigans take a back seat (still important... not selling the farm... just don't miss a chance to make the actual MLB team better in favor of "these" things). Can't waste golden opportunities to make real noise.
I fully expected Carter to be gone at the deadline. I figured somebody would be willing to take a flier on a guy who has flashed his production. I wanted him gone and Duffy or White called up. He's basically been a dead roster spot for 2 months. He wasn't setting the world on fire before that, but with reduced playing time he's managed to get even worse. And as a player he has zero value aside from hitting. Luhnow has a much better grasp on the market than we do. At this point I understand keeping him, although he should never play, he's not blocking anybody. But we kept him for a month prior when he was killing us, it really is perplexing because I have trouble believing Luhnow kept him on a contending roster just to get a PTBL this fall. But I also have trouble thinking Luhnow expects him to help us at this point. Best I can figure, Luhnow's metrics suggest Carter should be much better, and he's being stubborn.
I think that Donaldson would be in Houston if Luhnow had expected the Astros to be at the top of the division. You had to look at it from the perspective of the Astros being a 75-80 win team this season. So the Astros were looking at trading real assets for a player that would be even closer to free agency by the time the Astros were good and would be stuck with having to pay him.
Overly optimistic/wishful thinking/biased/playing favorites/trying to get his money's worth. All GM's do it at some point or another... luckily in Luhnow's case, he's had far more success stories than mistakes, and with more of "his" guys coming up through the system, we can only hope for less players with major flaws.
Cleverly disguised intervention for luhnow and his addiction to Cartotics. Quitting carter can't be done cold turkey. hoping for the best outcome.
