Given how much they gave up for a seemingly mediocre rental the front office had to strongly believe there was more they could get out if him. Time will tell, but outstanding game one results.
Even in the first with the 2run shot i was thinking to myself his off-speed pitches looked very good. Great performance tonight.
Will be interesting to see how he pitches guys going forward, teams will be onto the changeup now. If he keeps throwing good ones, how much will it matter? Took all of 2 days and 1 start to remake his repertoire.
The good thing is he's never had trouble missing bats with his stuff, he has had trouble giving up loud contact. Even if he can't keep these K numbers, if the change up (or threat of it)can f**k up timing it would be massive.
The Astros have had success before with improving pitchers by having them ditch their worst pitch. With JV it was the change up, Yusei looks light years better without the curveball, but time will tell if hitters can adjust. JV showed you can win a cy young with only 3 pitches if they're good enough.
I think batters will try to adjust, but want to point out that his change up and slider are almost as fast as Keuchel's fastball was. I'm more concerned with Kikuchi throwing them for strikes (not down Kirby) than batters adjusting to them and hitting them hard. If he can keep the walks under control while not giving two hittable fastballs each at bat, I'll take whatever batters can do with putting sliders and changeups into play.
Yeah; it wasn’t really an outlier of a performance. He’s not going to strike out 2/inning, obviously. But his K numbers have always been good.
The Astros needed inning eaters. Especially with McCullers setback, Urquidy and Javier out with Tommy John surgery, Verlander sidelined, Arrageti up and down with 1st year jitters, Garcia still trying to work his way back into the rotation. The guys shipped out were good talents and may develop into some good players, but the Astros have a very near window of opportunity to get this team still with their mojo to get just one more World Series championships ring. Bloss may be like Musgrove, a guy that becomes a legit good pitcher eventually. But not many people are lamenting that Musgrove was traded away because the Astros were able to acquire a guy that was instrumental in them making another World Series.
