Should of challenged Tuve in the 9th. Refs and umps make bad call night in and night out. If not for last nights HR, the Fire Espada would of been very active.
I don't understand why they didn't challenge that? What did we have to lose? Someone explain the advantage of not even bothering to challenge that play at that point of the game? Then we top off that head scratcher with the weirdest ending yet.
Ya I didn’t get that either. He was probably out but the one and only replay they showed looked damn close to a 50/50 call which means you had a chance. You know we have a short bullpen and you also know that neither Bregman nor Alvarez have been particularly good of late. Nevermind it’s the bottom of the 8th in a tie game. That seemed like a no brainer call. Same w not immediately challenging the phony HBP last night.
yordan and bregman combined 0 for 8. your top hitters cannot go 0fer and expect to win. hell, bregman can't even hit a sac fly when runner was on 3rd............
Openers aren't used to paper over terrible pitchers. They are used to get an elite reliever to face the 1-2-3 of an opposing lineup. Who is the elite reliever you'd like to use as an opener for the Astros? And how does that help Brown or whomever avoid giving up runs in the 2nd? His problems aren't limited to facing the tops of opposing lineups.
Tampa Bay is the team that was most known for using openers and they often used to run guys out there with ERAs in the 2's. Not elite in the sense of the back end of our bullpen, but elite in the sense of "we trust this guy's stuf against the best of the opponent's lineup but have other guys to close out the game". But regardless, the opener fad kind of died when people realized how silly it was. (also worth noting Tampa Bay was built around having a ton of good relievers with top-tier stuff so they had that flexibility to do that and all sorts of other goofy things).
losing is contagious. winning cures all but right now this team needs to figure out the terrible batting with RiSP.
