Jon's Astros sample (5 gms) is obviously too small to draw too many conclusions from it. The area of his game that is most encouraging to me is his patience at the plate which has translated into more walks (5) than strikeouts (2) to this point. I agree he needs at many appearances as possible.
I understand and you are correct. But before interleague play they would not have counted. What changed? Facing AL pitches as a member of an NL team. Most of his PA in Milwaukee were actually vs AL teams. If you count those he is 286 obp / 343 slg = 629 ops. Kessinger is 626 You can skew the stats to mean what you want them to. The bottom line is I think Singelton playing everyday is the smart move until he proves whether or not he is one of the top 13 position players on this team.
This series is giving me the previous series against the Reds vibes. Miami has just enough talent to compete/win any possible game/series, they play much better at home, and its a big OF to cover in anticipation that Baker will not be playing the best defensive OF in any of these 3 games. I don’t like JV being an every 4th day starter, regardless of his routine. More days off benefitted him last year. Granted, he had the first month of the season off so it’s probably fine regardless. BBS will be in full meltdown with a series loss, guaranteed.
Just yesterday, somebody questioned whether or not Yordan was clutch. I do think Yordan slumps around this part of the year every year.
Being in 2nd place in August is a bit concerning, but some of it would occur even if we led the division by 10 games.
The Rangers having an all-time “best year ever” is an understatement. They’re actually playing 5 games worse than their run differential suggests. The Astros being where they are with Yordan/Altuve missing that much time and the rotation without 3/5ths of their expected starters for much of the season (3.5 including tired Javier) is pretty freakin fortunate… and they can still easily win the division despite all of the above.
I just think it's the nature of baseball. Let's see what happens. This year is going to be different because the Astros are hunting instead of being hunted.
Literally every team is gunning to try and beat the Astros. They’re certainly being hunted, even if they’re not in first place.
We are also fortunate the Rangers are 9-15 in 1 run games. https://www.espn.com/mlb/standings/_/view/expanded
Astros were directly responsible for 3 of those games… so no, not “fortunate”. They earned those 1 run victories.
"MaLdY StArTs BeCAuSe ThE PiTcHErS PrEfEr HiM" I'll take something that can't be proven for $500 ,Alex
Despite the "good" recent performance, Astros are only 6-4 last 10, and have fallen TWO additional games in the division. The LOVE for a certain player is dragging the team down and it's been happening the entire season. Maybe we'll have another throw into CF on a steal attempt this series, or two.
