Yall are acting like traditional fielding, and hitting to all fields, is/was some sort of sorcery. It's always been around, let's get back to it.
The point of hitting to all fields is to force the defense to play you straight up. If the defense plays you straight up regardless, why hit to all fields?
I was going to look at some of his numbers and the below (numbers prior to the game tonight) surprised me:
It isn't sorcery. It is losing baseball when guys like Altuve and Bregman are selling out to pull homers, and the Astros defenders don't have to run far to make plays. Tucker and Alvarez are batting over 0.333 (Alvarez over 0.400) when teams don't shift them for their career*. I'd love to see other team go back to traditional fielding. *Small sample size because teams learned quickly that they hit the ball hard to the pull side.
Pretty remarkable to have 17Ks in 7 innings, but also give up 7 runs. They had 12 hits on 14 balls in play. That's an 0.857 BABIP. And mind you only one was an extra base hit. This just shouldn't be possible. So disappointing that we weren't in this game because it could have been another amazing feat by this pitching staff to set a new strikeout record.
I know it was pretty much a blowout loss last night but one thing that still nags me is that review on Meyers steal at 2ND base. I get that you can challenge it and on a technicality he was out, but come on man. The angels player was forcefully pushing and keeping the tag on his leg and you combine that with Meyers momentum for a split second he came off. That’s just so stupid.
Seattle winning 10 in a row is a bit irritating though. Let's crush the haters through Christ today and **** them up indirectly by winning baby.
It wasn't that long ago that Tuve would get a softee to right field. The current shift would never work against the old-Tuve.