9-22 Alex White, RHP vs. Henry Sosa, RHP 7:05 on FSH 9-23 Drew Pomeranz, LHP vs. Brett Myers, RHP 7:05 on My20 9-24 Jason Hammel, RHP vs. J.A. Happ, LHP 6:05 on My20 9-25 Jhoulys Chacin, RHP vs. TBA 1:05 on FSH
Last home series of the season. Almost out of our misery, though the next series we get the chance to play spoiler.
I say the Stros go on a tear and score 21 runs in this series. However, I also see them allowing 28 runs.
Carlos Lee now has 94 rbi after his 2nd consecutive 4 rbi game. Yes, he's been a huge drag financially on this club. Yes, he's been one of the worst defensive outfielders I've ever seen. But the man can hit. If it wasn't for that contract, he would have been extremely valuable to an AL team as a DH. 514 rbi in 5 seasons as an Astro. Without doing much research, I think only Bagwell and Berkman have hit that many in any 5 year stretch as Astros.
No he can't hit anymore. His raw numbers are gonna look decent right at 20 hr and 100 rbi. He has gone on a tear here late, but his numbers still aren't good When you look at the percentages at 339 OPS and .453 slg, those are subpar offensive numbers for a first baseman/Left fielder. Those are big hitter position, an .800 OPS at least. He's statistically been a better defensive player than offensive player this year. His defensive metrics have actually been great, somehow. He's a plus 19 runs. Sometimes you can have fluke seasons like this where you get a lot of easy balls hit to you to inflate your numbers, because his defensive numbers have consistently abysmal for 5 years running, hard to imagine he magically got better. This is the rare occasion where i believe my eyes and not the numbers, he's a bad fielder, although he's has been surprisingly adequate at 1st base. His WAR is 4.5, which is good, almost all-star level. Its just too hard to ignore his lead anchor salary though.
Looking more closely, Carlos as a Left fielder ranks: #4 in OPS #6 in SLG % #4 in OBP #1 in Doubles #7 in Home Runs #4 in BB #18 in SO #4 in BA http://espn.go.com/mlb/stats/batting/_/position/lf/league/nl/order/true While not staggering, these are very good numbers id say.
On another note, opening the game last night with 6 strait hits was a franchise record. http://houston.sbnation.com/houston...with-six-straight-hits-break-franchise-record
Too early to tell. He has pitched well in his short stint with the Astros. He still will need to compete for a spot in the starting rotation, next spring.