After tonight, Mets have to be firm sellers I think. They are 7.5 games out of the last wild card, but just 7 games out of last place in the entire National League. I can’t imagine they don’t start selling soon. They have 3 with the Yankees on the road, and then 4 at home against Washington before the deadline. I suppose they could continue to hold out until the deadline in the hope that they get hot.
People were freaking out about the season possibly being doomed when Yordan went down, but great franchises weather injuries. Certainly hasn't been pretty back from the break, but the team keeps pace with reinforcements almost here.
Call it a comeback, I ain't mad. I've been gone for years. I prefer to call it a COME UP, for me and MAH PEERS!
It has been a while since the Astros have had a good framing game. This looks like Diaz wasn't the worst catcher playing in that game.
Whenever the automated strike zone goes into effect, will be curious to see if there is one unified standard for the box. Re-watching the ATTSW broadcast, pitches 1 and 3 were "outside" their box so it had looked like Hudson got those calls right... but when you factor in that one of them directly led to a run, I guess that's why the + on the overall favor is so high.
Framing is definitely the one area where Diaz needs the most work, although he's probably not quite as bad as Maldy in that regard. It would be cool if Chandler or another of the beat reporters looked into what the Astros are doing to help develop Diaz as a framer.
Agreed. Looking at it more closely, that + favor is almost all on that one pitch. If it is called correctly, inning is over. As it was called, it forced in a run and still left the Astros with an opportunity that was rated at about 0.75 runs. As such, I'd expect that error rated around 1.75 runs.
Looking at their profiles, it is wild how much Maldy has fallen off defensively this year. Astros would probably have one more win (10+ more runs saved) just through improved defensive performance at C by having given Maldy's caught innings to Yainer.
Baseball Savant has Maldy as the 56th best framer and Diaz as the 57th, currently on a % basis. FanGraphs, if prorated, basically has them the same as well. I really hope the Astros are pushing for a full-time roboump next season as that would add about a WAR to Diaz's value as a catcher without improvement.
I'm hoping that Diaz is just raw and can be improved through training to be about average as a framer. I remember them having a lot of success in improving Stassi's framing when he was here.
I hope so too. If the Astros had average framing, the Astros pitchers likely have the best ERA by a good margin with LMJ, Urquidy, Garcia either out, or mostly out so far.
As someone who is ignorant of framing How much of that is on the umpires? I hate to say they are biased, but Astros hitters are frequently among the worst scores when looking at umpire scorecards. Framing is about pitches that are balls being caught in a way so umpires think they are strikes. I'm sure it's subconscious, but maybe the umpires just lean a bit toward the opponents when calling Astros pitcher's balls and strikes? Maybe the catchers have no chance on borderline pitches.
Altuve-2B Bregman - 3B Alvarez- DH Tucker - RF McCormick - LF Abreu - 1B Diaz - C Meyers - CF Pena - SS
Critical series, even up the standings or fall six games behind, or something in between. Should be a playoffs atmosphere.
