This team has good juju too. Dusty made an offhand remark after his 2000th win about this being the closest group he's been with. Seemed kind of like typical hyperbole and probably was, but there's also likely some truth in there. They do seem close.
I am going to be paying a lot of attention to Josh Bell this series. He is a player that might be available later that could help the Astros.
I certainly don’t count it in the sense as ending our division streak. I view that as uninterrupted dating back to 2017.
From the Chron: The Astros revealed their rotation for their upcoming series against the Nationals and, to no surprise, Verlander received his wish. The ace will make his next start on Sunday on four days of rest — normal for any starter and what Verlander called his “final step” in recovery from Tommy John surgery. Framber Valdez will start the series opener on Friday and be followed by Cristian Javier. Javier has more than earned a spot in Houston’s rotation — he’s allowed just two earned runs in 21 ⅔ innings — but whether he will keep it is a mystery. Starting Javier means the Astros are skipping Jake Odorizzi’s scheduled turn in the rotation. Manager Dusty Baker did not offer a reason for the decision on Thursday; he simply revealed the rotation.
I applaud the rotation shuffling. It looks like they've figured out how to give JV his 4 days rest and the rest of the rotation 5 days rest by delaying Odorizzi's start by 2 days and Javier's by 1 day next time. 05/14/22 @ Nationals JAVIER, Cristian 5 05/15/22 @ Nationals VERLANDER, Justin 4 05/16/22 @ Red Sox ODORIZZI, Jake 7 05/17/22 @ Red Sox URQUIDY, Jose 5 05/18/22 @ Red Sox GARCIA, Luis 5 05/19/22 Rangers VALDEZ, Framber 5 05/20/22 Rangers VERLANDER, Justin 4 05/21/22 Rangers JAVIER, Cristian 6 05/22/22 Rangers ODORIZZI, Jake 5 05/23/22 Gardians URQUIDY, Jose 5 05/24/22 Gardians GARCIA, Luis 5 05/25/22 Gardians VERLANDER, Justin 4 5/26/22 OFF Subject to change of course.
Astros slowly moving up the team OPS leaderboard, up to 11th now. We still only have a .253 BABIP. Catcher, 1B, and CF have been major dead spots. The other 6 primary hitters are well, well above current league average of .680. Hopefully Yuli can get us going at 1B, or CF when Meyers gets back, but if that doesn't happen one of the 2 will have to be addressed.
So my worry about this is that no matter how this is analyzed, the pitching results over the past 2 weeks are an outlier. So when it starts to normalize back to this teams mean, how far is that swing back? Essentially if you were to look at the top 50 examples of fewest runs in a 11 game span, did those staffs still rank in the top 5 for the season for the rest of their games?
Don't know how you'd look that up, but I do know the '65 Dodgers went 15-1 to close out the season, gave up 17 runs in those 16 games, had the best pitching staff in MLB (Koufax/Drysdale/Osteen/etc), and won the WS. Looking at their stats, baseball was certainly a bit different back then, their offensive team leaders: .284 BA, .374 OBP, .391 SLG, .758 OPS (121 OPS+), 76 BB, 92 K, 28 2b, 12 HR, 90 R, 70 RBI, 94 SB
