That is definitely a plus. Hopefully they do something with his fastball to make it less hittable. It has plenty of velocity.
1000%. If they just go 4-4 instead of that 0-8 stretch, they are in a fairly commanding lead in the West, way out in front of the wild card, probably like 75% chance to make the playoffs, and are viewed as in a class with the Yankees and Rays who are set to pull away from the rest of the AL. The cause of those losses: McCullers/Blubaugh serving the A’s Weiss melting down against the Rockies Top 5 in the lineup going 2-18 against the Rockies Javier/Blubaugh 2ip 6er; 0xbh by the lineup against the Rockies Imai 0.1ip against the Mariners McCullers 4ip 6er against the Mariners Bullpen game not working, offense 5-29 against the Mariners Burrows 6er 6ip, offense 0 xbh against the Mariners That Mariners series was absolutely huge. Not much to take away from that because they played bad across all facets of the game, but maybe if Lambert and Teng were in the mix instead of McCullers and Weiss or if Imai didn’t take so long to adapt, the season would have gone much differently so far.
All true ... and the good news is that despite that we still are in the race. If you really believe it was mainly back luck or bad management with some lessons learned, we should show that over the remaining half and cruise into the playoffs.
Yup -- without that two week swoon, the Astros are 41-33 and the discussion is different...... even a 6-6 of that two weeks gets the Astros to 47-39 right now. We need to be aware that without a couple of aces at the top of the rotation and unpredictability from the rest of the rotation - the Astros are capable of having another swoon like that. With the pen becoming very good, it isn't likely - but possible. Everyone has gotten sick of me talking about Ullola's fastball for 3 years -- but when you sit behind home plate and watch it, you will get it. It is just one pitch, but so far no one has ever successfully hit it beyond swinging and hoping for contact.
Yordan's index is clipping through the bat. Say no to Ai art. I rather look at paint art than AI art.
Avoiding sweeps is huge in baseball, just mathematically. 1-2 vs 0-3 is a 2-game difference in 500. During the 2-12 stretch, Astros were swept in 3 of 4 series. If they avoided just TWO of those sweeps, it equals 6 games under instead of 10. Imagine the last 45 days being an extra 4 games over 500 the entire time. Seattle is living off a sweep and a gentleman's sweep vs HOU -- their 500 and run-diff. Avoid sweeps. Avoid losing streaks.
I feel like that 2-12 stretch really boiled down to not having a stable rotation. Especially with a 6 man rotation (meaning only 7 RP) you can’t have multiple guys regularly giving you less than 5 innings. In that 8 game losing streak, Houston went 7 straight games without having a SP complete 5 innings. After even 2 of those games the bullpen is wrecked and you either have guys throwing tired or have called up crummy pitchers to fill innings. So even the games that look like the bullpen’s fault were really because of the starters. It’s also plausible the bats started pressing because they felt like they didn’t have a chance of winning without scoring 10+ runs, and that may have caused a few games where the offense sucked. Everything went wrong in that stretch in terms of SP. In the course of that 7 games from April 8-13, Brown got hurt, Imai broke, Javier got hurt, and McCullers posted two 4 inning starts.
I understand the cost may just end up being too high but this is why I want to add someone like Robbie Ray. Split him up from Hunter so they aren’t pitching back to back games and the chances of this happening are slim. If the other guys like Imai, Lambert, Javier, etc. get hot, you can go on legit winning streaks as well. I truly think this team can win the AL if you add someone like Ray and a solid OF bat. After that, who knows. The Dodgers were a far superior team to the Jays last year on paper and yet it took a miracle HR by Miguel Rojas to deny them a ring.
