We don't need to win the division, but playing to catch them is good because they have a great record and that helps us to get a good record to win one of the two wild card spot
Of course its possible... just last month, they were like 7-8 games back in the wild card (behind half the league), and now they're 1 back. The main issue is that despite how well the Astros have been playing... the Rangers have been even better over the same stretch. Obviously not going to make up much ground if that's the case. If somehow the Rangers regress to stop pulling out games out of their ass, and the Astros continue to win the games they're supposed to win (currently have a stretch where they play 13 consecutive against under .500 teams, majority at home), they could get this down to 5-6 games by the ASB. Would also be a very good thing to just continue to win at this pace regardless.... they'll get a comfortable WC lead while the AL East teams beat up on each other.
When your closer loads the bases, yeah that's a little bit of a buckle. Was there a little bad luck involved? Yes but also a little good. The main thing is he worked through it and got the save.
No hard hit balls and no walks... he's shown some solid composure with some of these difficult save opportunities, and hasn't blown one yet.
After having no come from behind wins, when trailing after 6, for the first 2 months of the season, the Astros have 6 this month (and none of them in the improbable Rangers-like fashion... just good AB's against either tiring starters or bullpens). They've also won 5 of their last 6 road games... by far their best stretch on the road since early last season.
For what it's worth, Harris has appeared in 33 games with 7 as a closer. He has 15 holds (a dumb stat by the way). In his 7 saves, he has gotten everyone he has faced out 3 times. 43% In his 15 holds, he has gotten everyone he has faced out 5 times. 33% In his other 11 games, he has gotten everyone he has faced out 5 times. 45% He has actually been better percentage-wise at facing the minimum as a closer than he was prior. What has been a bit out of character (given the small sample size), is that he has faced 5 batters in 3 of his 7 save situations and has an obviously higher WHIP and is striking out fewer hitters.
Nice real data. That's helpful. The lower strikeout rate has been noticeable. However, his overall K rate is still up slightly over last year, and very close to his career average. So that may just be general regression to the mean that was bound to happen regardless.
These numbers are surprising because he's seemed to have struggled more since his promotion. Maybe some of his 1-2-3 innings have featured some hard hit balls (line-outs, warning track flies) that have been caught. One thing for sure is he's given up more runs in fewer innings since closing, albeit only 2 vs 1.
Yeah, when I looked it up I was expecting to see at least one hit or walk in each save appearance. I was surprised there were 3 3 hitter innings. EDIT - just looked again. 2 of the 3 up, 3 down innings were in 3 run saves, so we probably noticed them less. The other was in his first save appearance.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Astros?src=hash">#Astros</a> Carlos Correa has his fifth go-ahead RBI in the ninth inning (or later) this season. Barry Bonds had a career-high five in 2003.</p>— Ryan M. Spaeder (@theaceofspaeder) <a href="https://twitter.com/theaceofspaeder/status/747662224248938501">June 28, 2016</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Really, it is the best I've seen Harris look in a while. First outing with 2 Ks since May 25th. The first hit was through a hole that would frequently be to 2B, and the 2nd wasn't hard hit, but was going to fall with the Astros OF playing deep. I'm tired of the Rangers luck. If they call the game (which has to be what Bannister was afraid of), they lose. If they face Chapman, they probably lose (umps probably should have delayed the game before Chapman even came on). I'm just waiting for them to hit a HR off the top of someone's head.
All things considering rangers are playing very well considering they missing 3 starters,and thier best bullpen arm. They could be less lucky. However if astros just keep doing what they are doing and things will work out.
F***ing Rangers man, never seen a team fluke this many games. Last night was just another example of amazing luck.
didn't know where to put this, but it irritates the hell out of me. God-awful ESPN writeup. The headline is "George Springer leads revival", but they never talk about what he's actually done. They talk about him moving to the leadoff spot and the team's struggles to get runners on base, and then talk about an increase in multi-HR games by the team...as if that's related to the sentence that came before it. Source
ESPN has basically put all its baseball eggs with the Cubs... much like they did with the Warriors. Honestly, fans in Dallas, San Fran, and Baltimore, and DC should all be rightly pissed as there's been paltry coverage of all those teams who are at or about to surpass the Cubs win total. ESPN literally was saying "it may surprise you that the Giants are now tied with the CUBS in wins!" type headlines this week, when the only reason it may have been surprising was that they were basically ignoring all the other teams involved.
That sucks as well. My issue is really more with the quality of writing than the fact that it's about Houston. They're writing sentences that have little-to-nothing to do with the headline, they're writing paragraphs that don't relate to each other, and they're vaguely confusing correlation and causation (at least in my interpretation of the sentences I quoted above), which is silly from the Stats department of all places.
It's awful. The more they give attention to talking heads and the more writers focus on their hot Twitter takes, the less they're able to actually write a well informed article.
