Agree with this (seeing their guys more often and becoming more familiar recognizing pitches) however they'll have the same thing with Stanek, Maton, Graveman and Pressly etc. Just comes down to execution.
I hear a lot of talk about starters coming back on short rest. You cannot use this in the same context as is typical in previous years. With starters rarely even hitting 50-70 pitches, coming back on short rest is not the same as years past, when you had starters going over 100, then coming back on 3 days rest. Garcia should be good to go, we just hope we get LuAce tomorrow
LOL I still love Luhnow even though he seems like a shady character. Screw all the haters. Best GM ever at evaluating and bringing in talent.
On the flip-side, ATL won a coin flip game 3 where neither team could really hit well in those weather conditions... and they won a game 4 that they were lucky to only be down 2-0 when they scrapped together 3 runs (their bullpen and clutch hitting deserve credit). They convincingly won game 1, while they convincingly lost games 2 and 5.
Well, based on how Stanek, Maton, and Graveman looked against them last night... I'd say the Braves are much further away from developing a "strategy" than the Astros are vs. their top guys. Its also something that Astros hitters were notoriously developing a track record for.. before every analyst hopped aboard the "sign stealing" scandal and basically tried to equate all success' this lineup has shown over the last 4 years to something that happened mainly in 2017. The baseball acumen of guys like Correa/Yuli/Bregman/Maldanado cannot be understated. They pick up on tells. They pick up on tendencies. What they did to Glasnow in 2019 was well known. What Maldy did to the A's opening series this year (developed a book on every pitcher/hitter) was also recently revealed. They're baseball junkies. Then you have freaks of nature like Altuve who can hit any ball anywhere or Brantley who will almost always execute the game plan.
Losing coin flip games like those kill seasons. If we lose this series, game 4 will haunt us for years. At this point, it’s still Atlanta’s series to lose. Fried and Anderson on full rest vs Garcia and Urquidy on short rest. Can the Astros win both games? Of course. Pulling out this series required a miracle after the bottom on the first in game 5, we’re a third of the way there. Coming back is so hard because we can’t afford to have another game 1 where we just get beat, or lose another coin flip game. Can’t have bad luck bite us in the ass. We have to be perfect. Stros in 7.
He wasn't shady he was just ruthless when it came to doing everything possible to give his team its best chance to win. The Al Davis .motto of just win baby. He didn't care about anything but winning. Character issues or firing long time scouts didn't matter. He was changing the way baseball does business and didn't care what MLB or the media thought about it. For this attitude he got banned from the game. BTW, he made Crane an estimated 200 million dollars in the process and then Crane tried to stiff Luhnow out of 22 million.
If they got 3 good innings each from Urquidy and Garcia... added to Pressly, Graveman, and Javier, that really shortens things up. If Greinke and Framber can going an inning or two, you've got a good path to getting through these next couple of games. The issue becomes if one of those guys implodes early. Odorizzi is an interesting one. He was actually quite good in game 1, but he's obviously outside the circle of trust. If they can build a solid lead and let Odorizzi eat a couple of innings in game 6, that would be a game changer.
I will never understand why Dusty went to Raley before Matin in game 4. I said as much at the time. Hope this doesn't cost them the WS. Of course there's a reason Dusty has never won a WS after all of these years. BTW, I would go with Urquidy in game 6.
Omg we're still blaming Dusty for everything? He has managed his ass off. If the Astros lose this series it will be because they got one-hit in Game 3, and were like 0 for 137 with RISP in Game 4.
i hope not, unless you want to continue the trend of the astros losing in the WS when its closed. not much to say it should be closed tbh, especially on a nice day
Pitching Garcia on 3 days rest isn't smart. I'm hoping Garcia gives them 3-4 in game 6 Followed by Yimi1 Maton 2 Stanek 1 Graveman 1-2 Pressly 1-2 Same thing with Urquidy if he starts game 7. Win or lose with your best. No more Raley/Taylor/Odorizzi/Javier etc... 2 games left and there's enough bullpen depth left to win a WS if they can get 6-7 innings in two starts from Garcia/Urquidy. I think they can do this. Stros in 7.
