Thank God I fell asleep right before Garcia got pulled and didn't watch Dusty bring in Raley in a terrible spot again. What is his love affair with the guy? Click needs to get rid of him so Dusty can't use him anymore. Or at least he needs to be kept the hell away from all the postseason rosters. Huge win, though, and another big moment for Meyers. Every win that puts distance between the Astros and the As, White Sox and Yankees is big at this point.
Houston ****ing Astros Tom Brady Football!!!!!! That's a type of game I have seen us lose far too often. Terrific W, let's go get the gentlemen's sweep taken care of today
Hate not seeing the entire game due to the how late these damn west coast games are.... But love waking up to see it's a win......and that Dusty made ANOTHER questionable pitching decision.
Easy answer is you believe in Stanek as a setup man. It is stupid, but you say it rather than sounded confused (probably way past his bed time). Good to see Joe Smith finally provide some value, and to get bailed out by the guy that hit the go ahead homer to make any attempt at preventing tucker from scoring.
As expected.I went to bed early and woke up just after Seattle took a 3-2 lead. After watching the Astros scoring inning, I went back to live with a runner on second and Tucker at bat. It was a great way to watch the game. Getting up early, rather than staying up late is definitely the way to go for me.
His rationales never make any sense so if you're invested in defending him you have to invent secret motivations which more logic to them.
Chandler has some whininess to him, not as bad as Ben Dubose but still. I'm not a Dusty sympathizer by any means, but this wouldn't be the first time the concept of not sitting down a reliever after he has already gotten hot ever came up on the history of baseball, it is common. It's also not a secret that the Astros are being careful with Graveman since he is not completely accustomed to reliever schedules and routines yet. Even Seattle babied his schedule a little before he got traded. An injury to Graveman would be a disaster.
Graveman hasn’t looked his uber dominant self the last couple of outings. Seems that his stuff is down a tick. If there is any question about his health, we need to put him in bubble wrap until two weeks left in the regular season. That dude is crucial to our postseason plan.
As far as Dusty's decision to use Raley in that spot, it has been shown over and over again that Raley is best used when he starting an inning clean with left handed batters due up. That's really it. Sending him in to clean up a mess ends up in runs scored almost every time. It really makes you value how good Will Harris was for us in that fireman role. But if you really break it down, it was still the 6th inning, and Dusty was probably counting on Luis to get out of that. When he didn't, and with Graveman apparently being protected and conserved, you had Toro(S), and Marmolejos (L) due up. I can see why Dusty would go with Raley there, he turned Toro around (double play), and Marmolejos- who homered earlier, got subbed out, the Mariners countered with a righty and it paid off for them. It's not as completely haphazard and stupid and people try to make it seem, believe it or not there was a thought process there. It's an effect of not having a true fireman available in the bullpen, and Raley's ability to get left handed batters out was overcome by the Mariners countermoves and his overall poor performances when not coming into a clean inning. I do think Dusty tries to do the best he can with what he's got, and some of these questionable bullpen calls over the past few games may make more sense if we find out Graveman is dealing with some sort of ailment.
