I think the pitching records say a lof: Blanco, Javier, JV: 5-0 Arrighetti, Brown, France, Henley: 0-10 Hader, Pressly, Abreu: 1-4 Suero, Scott, Martinez: 1-4
Disagree. Brown inherited Click's FO who inherited Luhnow's FO. In particular, the Nerd Cave and player development persists. If one takes a hard look at Luhnow's trades and FA signings, prepared to be underwhelmed. I am not making the argument that Luhnow deserves no credit. Luhnow built the Nerd Cave from the ground up and also built the minor league development team ... both of which have done a great job.
Singleton's OPS is .633... OPS+ at 88... with Abreu at -32... the gap between him and Abreu is essentially a bigger gap than Altuve and Jake Meyers
I'm going to say the Astros would have had better odds to have won more than just two World Series by now. I'm not sure Luhnow would have been as patient with player development and/or trades with great teams such that we would still have all of Chas, Meyers, Framber, Javier, Urquidy, Garcia, Diaz, and Brown.
He's not officially banned from MLB, is he? I saw that new documentary last year where he gave a lengthy interview on camera, and IMO he had a bit of arrogant attitude & tone. And he still pushed off almost all the blame to others. He was the opposite of contrite.
What does he have to be contrite about? Any apology or anything would be completely fake, it’s not like he isn’t aware that other teams were doing the exact same thing.
4 Astros most to blame for disappointing start to 2024 season José Abreu Alex Bregman Hunter Brown Josh Hader https://clutchpoints.com/4-astros-most-to-blame-for-disappointing-start-to-2024-season
Right. There was no way around an early season test of unproven pitching because Garcia/McCullers were already out and the inevitable nature of pitching injuries. Throwing guys like Arrighetti and Henley out there and losing a few games because of it was to be expected; unless they were gonna gut the lower levels of their farm to acquire MLB ready top pitching prospects, it was a gamble they had to take. So best realistic case, Houston was expected to finish April maybe a few games above .500. Terrible luck with Hader and Pressly cost them 3 games, so drop the expectation down to .500. Add in that they went all in on Hader and didn’t spend money to ensure they didn’t have to rely on guys like Scott and Suero in middle relief, and that drops to ~3 games below .500. Finally, B Abreu starting off cold, while not expected, is understandable given he was suspended the first 2 games of the season; not really a full excuse, but not really something to lay at the coaches or front offices feet. But nobody could’ve expected Hunter Brown and JP France to wipe doo doo all over the bed like they have, going 0-7 in decisions with both having eras over 7.60. Those 2 guys were KEY considering every single SP rated above them has been on the IL. And their performance is the narrative difference between “this team sucks, the season is lost, fire the manager” and “meh we’ve had some tough luck but are still totally in this thing”
Alex Bregman’s rough 2024 is costing the Astros wins and him a whole lot of money https://climbingtalshill.com/posts/...ins-and-him-a-whole-lot-of-money-01hw897vqmpk
If I'm assigning a blame pie to this season: Pitching injuries that were unknown heading into the season (JV/Framber/Urquidy/Javier) causing us to have to pitch guys clearly not ready- 2 slices Front office sitting on their ass and not getting more starting pitching- 1 slice Back end of the bullpen being shockingly awful- 1 slice First base- 1.5 slices Bregman- 0.5 slices Bad luck- 1.5 slices Bad managing- 0.5 slices. There's your normal pie that's been cut 3 times into 8 slices. Bam.
That’s too much on 1B. And the backend of the bullpen sucking is the same as bad luck. Here’s mine: Bad luck/poor management (fluke BP meltdowns, hits getting caught, untimely errors, etc.): 2 slices AAAA SP (bad farm/pitching injuries): 2 slices Hunter Brown sucking: 1.5 slices AAAA MR (front office failed to address middle relief): 1 slice JP France sucking: 1 slice Breggy/Abreu slump: 0.5 slice
What other teams doing the exact same thing? By "exact" you mean the trashcan method? And even if you're only talking about the video stealing signs part, I'm pretty sure that not literally all 30 teams stole signs using live video feed from the outfield. So given the obvious fact that not all 30 teams used the live video method to do that, then why couldn't the Astros have been one of the teams that did not do it? (obviously I know a baserunner manually stealing signs from 2nd base happens on all teams, but that's not illegal)
