For me, the bottom line is avoid the strikeout. Put the ball in play and give yourself a chance. Chas is having a great, breakout season and I'm sure if Dusty had put Brantley in there and he didn't come through everyone is screaming about him PH for Chas. But a K there is the worst possible outcome and of the 12 Astros w/ 100+ PAs only Maldy strikes out more than Chas' 26.1% Brantley doesn't have the 100 PA but has K'd in less than 5%, and even playing part of the season with a bad shoulder only had 10.8% last year (10.0 vs RHP)
The opportunity to get that run home was on Tucker and unfortunately he didn't come through. At the end of the day this loss is on Montero and Pressly.
C'mon, Cintron!! Pay attention when they're in the field. Anyone have the thread they can share here?
Press might have been slightly tipping but he was also hanging meatball after meatball begging to be crushed. He’s done that a ton this season.
No doubt, but read something interesting this morning, So yeah, he hung his pitches, but they were spitting at his fastball. By taking that out if the equation, there was no chance he could get away with mistakes.
So it’s Hunter brown day. That means we might see the death lineup for the second time this year. reminder- we’ve played these 9 exactly once all year: diaz, Abreu, Altuve, Peña, Bregman, Alvarez, Chas, Tucker, Brantley. We scored 12 runs. We haven’t seen fit to play that lineup again. Even though literally everyone with two firing synapses knows that’s our best lineup (and maybe the best lineup in baseball). One can dream.
The good thing is there is no urgency tonight, we are pretty much done for the season anyways.... Hopefully Dusty is replaced with anyone this offseason, I'll even take Silas over him...
Joe Espada hopefully, I think some of the Pitchers coming back from Tommy John Garcia, McCullers or Weight Issues (Javier), The Starter Depth is 9 Justin Verlander Framber Valdez Lance McCullers Luis Garcia Hunter Brown Cristian Javier Jose Urquidy JP France Spencer Arrighetti
Is it really 8 deep thou? I can't remember the last time we had McCullers pitch an entire season, same with Urquidi... Luis Garcia was never a 1-3 guy and our best pitcher is close to retirement. The sad thing is The Astros are still insanely talented, they could easily be the top team in baseball next year with some good pitching and a decent manager...
For me, the bottom line is I prefer hits to outs. Preferring a groundout or fly ball out to a hit with a man on third and 2 outs is not wise (i.e., preferring a lower BA because the batter has a lower K%). How is a K worse than a ground out or a fly out? There were 2 outs. With less than 0 outs and a man on second, that is the time a fly ball or ground out may be more beneficial to a K as it can move the runner up such that a sac fly would help. 2 outs....the batter being out is an out. On giving yourself a chance, fielders make more errors against Chas than Brantley even though he puts it into play less as hard hit balls are more likely going to cause an error. Also, Cano is a pitcher that throws a lot of high velocity sinkers. Brantley's batting average against high velocity sinkers from RHPs over the past 3 years is 0.069.
My only hope is that this is a veteran team bored by the ridiculous 162-game regular season schedule that will bring it once the playoffs start. Otherwise, this feels like an ALCS team at-best
I've been using Megadeath lineup (I think Buck was the one that coined it) for that one to differentiate it from the Death Lineup (Diaz at catcher, Alvarez, Tucker, Chas, Meyers, Pena, Bregman, Altuve) before Brantley was back. MegaDeath Lineup 1-0 Death Lineup 5-0 Really though, there are a lot lineup combinations with Diaz at catcher that perform great offensively. Diaz catching is essentially adding two great hitters to the lineup (one for DIaz's bat, and one for the great bat Maldy cancels out).
