Really hoping that Strom stays around next year, love what he has done with the staff (most notably McHugh and Keuchel).
Depends on your definition of candidate. They might receive some 5th place votes. McHugh doesn't have enough innings to qualify for the ERA title, so he may not receive any votes.
Interesting, 2nd time that Fields has been brought in to close the door. I actually like it. While Qualls has been pretty good most of the year, aside from a few Oakland blowups, at this point in his career we know what he is, and a great closer he is not. Fields is still young enough that he may be able to turn into a bullpen weapon. His peripherals this year are spectacular, 2.09 FIP, 11.6 K's per 9, 4 to 1 K/BB ratio. Those are numbers that would suggest a dominant reliever, but he has been killed by a .348 BABIP this year. Until about 2 weeks ago, his BABIP was up around .400, which is well into the unsustainably bad luck territory. Fields as closer sounds like it may have been one of Luhnow's "suggestions".
And BTW, 11,000 people for a team that is a 1/2 game out of the playoffs is really bad. You're better than that Seattle.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>If Collin McHugh can pitch 11 innings tonight, he will qualify for the ERA leader board.</p>— Mike Fast (@fastballs) <a href="https://twitter.com/fastballs/status/509552565151727616">September 10, 2014</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> McHugh pitched 8 innings last night.
And the Astros writer took that as a chance to take a shot at the Astros. Something along the lines of it was less than any announced crowd at MMP this year, but to his eye test, he's seen worse crowds in Houston. I can guarantee you that you'd never see a crowd that small at MMP if the Astros were 1/2 game out of the playoffs in September.
Not really. Maybe if they posted freakishly good W-L records, but the reality is, they aren't among the 5 best pitchers in the AL this season.
Which writer? The Seattle fans I follow on Twitter were killing their fellow fans last night for that showing.
Not sure if he will get the 3 starts necessary to finish with 162 innings. He needs 20 and they have 17 games left and have gone to a 6 man rotation. Hopefully, he will have a couple of good outings and they can get him a few innings in relief.
When Seattle pitcher Charlie Furbush was warming up last night, Blum said he was the reason that he (Blum) decided to get into broadcasting because it gave him a chance to say "Furbush" on live TV.
His two other September showings were less than impressive. Tonight was impressive. Inconsistency or confidence? Who knows?
Inconsistency is a definite yes. I think that inconsistency plays into his confidence though. Baseball itself is inconsistent, so you have to shake off the mistakes, but I think he let started to let them snowball.
