But he is stellar. You could easily argue he's the greatest post season pitcher ever up though the LCS. I dare you to find better than 15-5 3.04 ERA.
Butbhe's stellar in the regular season. The playoffs are not promised Can't get cocky. Gotta win to get there I still want Verlander back
There’s 6 teams a year now that make the playoffs in a 15 team league, where 162 games are played meaning the true talent of a team is pretty well established, in the most predictable sport around. Postseason might not be promised to everyone, but it’s becoming really really really easy to write at least 2 or 3 teams name in pen before the season starts in each league. The Astros are one of those teams barring absurdly catastrophic events piled one on top of another as far as the eye can see.
To me Benintendi's ability to hit and get on base not SO alot and hit for a very good average. Is key. His DEF is awesome aswell. Our later half of the lineup is the bad part. You add Contreras for the future at C. He DHs when Maldy Catches. Get Bell to play 1B. Win-win. Rotating Yordan to LF and Benintendi to DH or RF with Tucker DHing. Or Contreras Catching and Everyone plays makes this lineup a juiced lineup.
Typical is slow until the Winter Meetings and then a gradual increase in trades. We're essentially in GM pre-season. We seem to forget that every year.
Astros need Verlander or DeGrom to go with Framber. Can never have too much pitching. 1. McCullers is a concern. He gets hurt almost every year and can be inconsistent. 2. We have no idea what do expect from Hunter Brown. 3. Can Javier be an elite starter with only two pitches? 4. Does the banning of the shift hurt Framber this year?
If you have a perfect team on paper going into the season, you won't by the end of the season. It's baseball.
Curt Schilling and Madison Bumgarner are probably the two greatest postseason pitchers ever. Both clearly above Verlander.
It was weird that we had one of the best offenses in baseball and the question marks were around pitching last season and literally went a full 180 this season with the pretty much the same players except for JV. Yuli went for batting champion to negative WAR guy over the same period only to flip it back again during the playoffs. Baseball is so crazy. Baseball is a lot like playing poker. You feel real good about your pocket aces until a pair of queens come out on the flop.
This is just another case of the media despising the Stros and trying to create discord within the org. It's not going to happen, Crane was always going to negotiate JV's contract and JV's decision will tell Crane where to go from there. Everything is going to be fine. BTW, is Petula still in the Stros org?