Cashner's K/BB ratio... wow. Now I understand why the Rangers pitched Gee for 4 innings yesterday and saved the rest -- there's a decent chance they'll be in the pen early again.
I LOVED seeing and hearing the Astros represent the way they did at the game. When Correa hit his home run it sounded almost like a home game. About damn time we took over other parks.
Heck yes! We were under the homerun porch in right field, braved the weather and were rewarded. I was surrounded by Orange and a chorus of "wooooooo" along with grumpy Ranger fans behind me "over cheering" the wekeast of weak sauce plays by the strangers. The correa dinger truly sounded like MMP when it went off. He was getting bamboozled by Yu all night but not on that last pitch.
It's amazing how many people here claim to only follow 1 or 2 of the Houston teams. I'd say most Houstonians follow all 3.... and like your kids, you have an up/down relationship with all of them, but you do have the ability to love them all simultaneously.
We are being accused of stealing signs. *The big news from the Ramgers side of the matchup was catcher Robinson Chirinos talking about the Astros stealing signs. Chirinos, talking to Friend of AC Levi Weaver: Knowing when we played with Carlos Beltran here last year, the guys (on the Astros) steal signs like crazy on second base. That's why I was going to the mound every pitch, switching signs, making sure those guys wouldn't relay signs to the hitter. I think when we struck out Correa, we switched the signs just before he went to hit; if you see his swing, he was late because they thought we were trying the slider. (It's because they were relaying the wrong signs from second base. We knew that when we went to play in Houston, that's just something we have to do when we're playing Houston because we know those guys are relaying signs when they have a guy on second base.
Them fighting words. I always felt like stealing signs was a part of the game. It happens in little league, up to highschool. Hopefully the pegging commences.
Shouldn't Gomez be helping the Rangers on this front? Of course that would involve his understanding the signs to begin with.
Giles has quietly done a good job this year. It just doesn't seem like he will go out and mow batters down like a prime lidge.
I think he has that ability but far too often he doesn't have a handle of both his FB and slider at the same time. But he's only 26. He can get better. At age 26, Brad Lidge went 85 innings with a 3.60 ERA (122 ERA+) and struck out 97. At age 27 (when he became closer), he threw 94.2 IP with a 1.90 ERA (228 ERA+) and struck out 157.
What I found amusing a week ago is listening to the sports radio announcers up here croon over Carlos Gomez coming back from injury sooner than expected like he was the second coming....as in just wait until we get Gomez back. Huh? Granted, he's played better for them than he ever did for us and is a defensive improvement but he still isn't very good. He's maybe won a couple of games for them with his bat but it's not like he was doing it with any consistency. He's stuck out pretty consistently...lol. I mean...if you're pinning your hopes on him, then good luck. The only thing I would pin on him is the tail on the donkey.
In defense of radio announcers, he is one of their better position players and when he's not there...they have to play even worse players.
This is something I've never understood. It seems like all of baseball is about deception - stealing bases, mixing up pitches, etc - and the other team trying to read your deception. Why stealing signs would be frowned upon makes no sense to me - the whole reason for using funky signs is to prevent that stuff, and that's fully accepted. So why is the act that you're regularly trying to prevent not accepted? EDIT: to be more clear, teams regularly use more complex signs when someone's on base. The only reason to do that is that you assume if you use simpler ones, the runner will relay them to home plate. So it seems like it's expected that people would try to steal signs and you account for it with the more complex ones... so why complain when people actually do try to steal them, when it's expected?
