Firing your GM so you could play GM for an off-season was dumb. Signing a very aged, obviously regressing 1B to a big long deal was moronic. Jumping the gun on a washed up reliever with 1 solid year was dumb. Continuing to bat Abreu cleanup hysterically stupid. Giving your best or 2nd best hitter the 5th most at bats is dumb. Not addressing pitching while losing your ace and knowing you can't count on a year of Lance is buffoonery. Keeping Maldy as your 75 percent starter despite his historically awful hitting metrics and poor defensive metrics is baffling. Sitting way under the Threshold....hell with it. Winning got to Cranes and Dustys heads.
With all the crying about Bagwell and Montero and Abreu The biggest problem right now is back to back poor outings by Brown. With Garcia and Urquidy gone we can’t afford him to not be able to get through 5 innings. It’s tough to make significant trades at this point in the season, but Dana Brown needs to be trying hard to find a solid starter to add right now
Astros might be an average team this year. Brown, France, Bielak is a little different then Verlander, Garcia, McCullers.
The Astros team ERA is 3.44. Maybe pitching becomes a problem as well, but so far the biggest problem has been scoring runs.
The offense sucks. Trotting a guy hitting less than 150 as DH is crazy. Bregman is also killing us with his slow start in the 2 slot.
Sure love seeing all the “the sky is falling” posts. It’s just under a quarter of the season still. Despite their struggles they’re only like 5 games out of 1st in the division. They’ve played one of the 5 toughest schedules in baseball whereas the Rangers have played one of the 5 easiest. We’ve managed to play roughly .500 ball without Chas, Altuve, Brantley and LMJ. This probably won’t end up being a 100-win team like we’ve grown accustomed to, but they still have just as good of a chance as any to win the AL West and be a top-2 seed in the AL. And I’d be shocked if Brown doesn’t address the rotation/bullpen at the deadline in a significant way. Yes, they start to the season has been frustrating, but at this point I still don’t see a legitimate reason to think this team won’t/can’t win the West and make another deep playoff run.
Having as good a shot as any at winning the AL West is a vastly lowered expectation to likely winning a bye in the postseason. Astros can still win a bye, but they are likely going to need to start playing better soon like they did in 2021 or just have a massive winning streak at some point.
Seriously, this team has nothing to prove in the regular season anymore and the game results are near meaningless. The extra playoff spot has really disincentivized front running in general. The Phillies just came within 2 games of a title as the worst playoff team last year. The Astros need to keep playing these struggling starters and bullpen to get them right for the playoffs. If this team still looks like this in August, then start to worry. Regression to the mean goes both ways.
Agree completely. First step is the West then a bye. Still think a bye is plenty attainable given the fact that Baltimore, Tampa and Texas are all in the top 5 for easiest schedules played so far and have major question marks of their own.
