He probably would have value now but for that darn contract. Since May 1st .305/.353./.476 with 23 doubles...all before tonight. Altuve looks like a bat boy lol
I knew he had been playing pretty well recently, but hadn't realized just how well he had been hitting. I can certainly see him being a decent trade chip next season for an AL team looking for a bat.
haven't really paid close attention lately, but have our relievers been on a tear recently? we trotted out 5 with sub-3 era's tonight.
Good win. Pence in a monster slide. For those who care, Berkman hit a titanic HR tonight... again: http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=17057225&partnerId=aw-8286167238125930459-996 He got all of it.
We're all kind of waiting for the wheels to fall off for the Pirates but man, shutting out that Reds offense 2 days in a row is quite a feat.
does the fact that they had the worst record in the majors last year, and are now leading the division, give us any hope for the immediate future?
They really have been. Basically demoting Fernando Abad in favor of David Carpenter has helped too. JD and Brownie discussed this past weekend about how good the bullpen has been lately, but I forget the exact stat they threw out there.
I guess anything can happen if we have good fortune but I wouldn't expect much in the immediate future, i.e., the next 2-3 years. It will be worth the wait though once things start coming together again, assuming we stick to the core philosophy of building from within, and all signs indicate that we will, regardless of who is GM. I think the Astros failures in that area could serve as a good lesson. I heard somebody on Astros radio a few weeks ago saying that we shouldn't be trying to build from within because of the fact that the Pirates went so long without even sniffing the playoffs taking that approach. I was tempted to call in and argue that down. First of all, the Pirates are an extreme example. Secondly, they have no other option. If they overpaid the Bays and McClouths and stuff, they still wouldn't have been good enough and wouldn't have had a lot of the prospects that they now have either. For a team with that kind of budget, you need to really build a fairly large core of young talent playing well over their value before going out and adding pricey free agents to make a run. I know very little about the Pirates past and present but my guess is that their problems stemmed more from not doing well enough in drafts/trades. Probably bad luck as well. Regardless, the Astros are heading in the right direction and should theoretically have a shorter turnaround than the Pirates because we have more money to work with. It's really hard to pull off what the Marlins did and what the Pirates need to do to win it all. That's the reality of the no cap world. In addition to whatever players the Marlins got through expansion, they must've drafted extremely well and been smart with their timing of things. Surely some good luck as well.
And even though the Pirates are still in the mix, I think they'll have trouble hanging on down the stretch. I think both their offense and pitching will let them down. What's for sure though is that they're improving and giving themselves the best chance to win by continually trying to build from within, no matter how much failure there's been. I think they need Alvarez to become great and another bat or two to to go with McCutchen and I think they'll find that their rotation still needs to get better. I think their pitching staff is way overachieving. The fact that they're last in the league in SO is a red flag that their pitching is overachieving. You can have individual pitchers who are successful with low SO rates but when a collective staff is last in the league, it's not a good sign. And their offense ranks near the bottom of the league in most categories as well.
Was today's game start changed to 11am instead of 1pm? I asked my wife to set the DVR to record Altuve's debut and she said that Uverse claims the game starts at 11am for some reason. I don't want to miss the game.
