The offense has actually been fine. At times, produced more than the lineup with Yordan produced. Obviously, he is essential… but having guys like Diaz and Dubon just step in and be able to sub multiple positions is MF’ing depth that other teams covet, you get?
From the beginning of the season until Yordan's last game the Astros were 21st in OPS and 14th in Runs Per Game Since their first game without Yordan the Astros rank 9th in OPS and 10th in RPG So yeah, the Astros offense has been solid since Yordan got hurt. If none of these guys find their way back into the toilet once he gets back this should be a really good offense.
10 games in June 2 runs or fewer, 6 games 9+ (that can skew the stats a bit) 0-11 in June when scoring 3 or fewer runs Long story short: when the Stros score 4+ runs, they win. A lot. They just don't do that enough.
I’d love to see records of the entire major leagues sorted out like that. Really granularity focused on, when a team scores exactly X runs they are 5-1, etc. I know you know this hit the reason we have such a great record when scoring 4+ is the + portion of it- all the games we win when we score 8 or 10 or 7 or the like. 4 just acts as the tipping point but I suspect if we scored exactly 4 runs every game we’d be something like 78-84 or something.
On the flip side, since Yordan went down we've only lost one game in which our pitching allowed 3 runs or fewer. By any objective measure our offense hasn't been bad since he got hurt in fact its gotten better. Certainly not up to our recent years standards, but not bad. Expert analysis, but I've identified a trend where if we score runs we win, and if our pitcher don't allow runs we win.
Alvarez's injury was the about the time Altuve came back, Abreu learned how to swing a bat like a major league player, Bregman waking up from his annual early season slump, and Diaz getting to play more regularly. Now if Dusty would just sit Maldy when Alvarez comes back, we will be cooking with gasoline. We would be replacing a historically bad offensive player with a historically great offensive player. Altuve Bregman Alvarez Abreu Tucker Diaz McCormick Pena Meyers Meyers as your worst hitter is a pretty good lineup. If Brantley comes back, they you can replace Meyers, and Pena becomes your worst hitter. Now that is a scary lineup.
I googled and looked for about 5 whole minutes this morning at 5:15 AM and couldn't find it. Exactly 4.0 runs a game this year would have you in 26th place so my instinct of us going 78-84 or something like that is probably correct. The Marlins are the closest to 4.0 runs a game and through black magic they are somehow the #1 WC in the NL right now. The next closest team is the Tigers and then the Royals, so, yeah, scoring exactly 4.0 a game would be really bad news.
I watched it and it was good. There is a YouTube video I watched earlier today. It was about how crazy it was that The Big Puma fell off the Hall of Fame ballot so quickly How he matched up and matched up well with other players from that time. And some of them are Hall of Famers. That really pissed me Even if you dont believe hes a Hall of Famer the fact he came off so quick is just ridiculous
With the break coming up they need to shut Javier down for a few weeks, then ramp him back up. Can't say with any confidence that would solve the problem, but something has to change. I get why they've tried to ride this out, our pitching depth....isn't great right now LOL. But he's too important, and isn't doing anything one of our AAA guys couldn't do.
As long as there's been pitching... there's been guys who suffered form dead arm and needed rest. He may be minimizing his fatigue as a way of trying to justify his contract... but somebody out there has to be tracking his spin numbers to indicate there's a difference (regardless of his dwindling swing/misses and spotty control).
