A couple of weak hits for ARZ that allowed them to tie and take a late lead but better teams find a way. It was odd an finish but I will take it.
Just in...Chas McCormick has died! He is dead! Collapsed on way to locker room. But, at least he died winning a ball game! So long!
This is super concerning, he is a shadow of the guy we got at the trade deadline. He's gone from swing and miss to praying for ground ball double plays.
Since August, Stanek has oddly transformed into a right handed Brooks Raley. Since 8/1 he has a .178/.469 xwOBA RHB/LHB platoon split. Prior to 8/1 he had a .317/.326 RHB/LHB platoon split. He's gone from being mediocre to being a ROOGY. He seems to be leaning on his fastball more and more against LHB and it just hasn't been very effective - few whiffs and a lot of balls hit in the air, as we saw last night with a 410 ft flyout that with even luck would have been a two run homer. We're going to need him in the postseason but I hope they try to avoid using him against good LHB whenever possible.
Another thing that's caught my eye recently is that the Astros have ramped up sinker usage on both Bielak this season and Yimi since he was acquired. Bielak gave up horrendously hard contact on his fastball last season against RHB, but that problem has been tamed this year and I think the sinker usage might be somewhat responsible for that. Yimi's gyroish fastball gets a good amount of whiffs, but when it gets hit it tends to get walloped. Wonder if the Astros are intentionally bringing up sinker usage to try to tame loud contact against 4S fastball for pitchers where that is a problem.
