Chas McCormick finished 2-3 and hit a walk-off two-run home run for Corpus to give them a 5-4 win over Frisco in 10 innings. McCormick now has four home runs on the year and is slashing .297/.448/.438 this season.
Raised his batting average to .266/.347/.604 and a .951 OPS. Alvarez went 0-5 with 2 strikeouts. Mike Capps, the radio play-by-play announcer for the Express, shared an interesting point during Alvarez' last at-bat tonight. "The longer the Astros go without bringing this youngster to Houston, the bigger the test for him about 'Why do I belong here? What is going on?' it seems to me."
I have tried asking about it and have gotten a lot of half assed answers. Closest answer I have gotten is “he can be immature.” That is what was crossing my mind too. You have a 21 year old that came from a different country 3 years ago to be a major leaguer. He missed a whole year of playing to come here. He works his way up steadily, he went and perfected English to be here, he works extra hours, works on his glove and body... and he is 1/4 through the season with an OPS of 1.250 and is dominant by every statistical measure.... he knows White isn’t playing well... yet he isn’t on the Astros. If I were him I would be at the point where I would start to really wonder why... also don’t discount the difference in paychecks and accommodations. At some point... it becomes a major let down not being called up.
"don’t discount the difference in paychecks and accommodations." This is the most significant thing, he's making absolutely nothing and while he did get a $2M signing bonus, it still has to be frustrating. If I'm him I'm sitting there thinking nothing I do matters at this point...even if he was hitting .800 he'd probably still be down there.
Alvarez knows exactly what the situation is. The Astros will be at the luxury tax for years so they can’t afford a Super 2. One estimate is they could save up to $20M if they wait until June 3 as a conservative date, July 24 for Tucker. IMO Whitley is going through adjustments like Tucker, it’s just taking longer. Not worried yet, more annoyed they may have to trade talent to get a #3. As strange as this may sound, at least he’s consistently bad (ie tipping pitches and/or adjusting his form, like Tucker was, though maybe to avoid injury). Like Tucker, once he has a couple good games I’m guessing he’ll be set. He’s only 21 after all, pitchers seem to take longer to mature - they certainly feel more pressure. Don’t need to rush him like we did Jordan Lyles.
Yeah, there's absolutely no way this is just a slump or an adjustment to a new level. You don't dominate all the way up to the Texas league and then suddenly get blasted in the PCL. One way or the other we have to be close to a point of shutting him down for a spell.
My guess is Alvarez will replace White by 6/15 and Tucker will replace Kemp about a month later. I am surprised they haven’t had Alvarez playing 1B every night since to me that is where he fits best in Houston’s lineup.
I am too. There's already 3 everyday players in our outfield, another top outfield prospect, and a gold glove reserve. 1B is clearly the place for most AB's this season (and beyond most likely), and it's not as if sending him back to LF will be difficult.
I mean, he fits best at DH, obviously. I get that the Astros want to keep the DH spot “open” to regularly rotate players and that’s great of you can do it for a 162 game strategy, but in the playoffs when you want to go with your best 9, he’s clearly DH as his highest and best use (if his bat translates as we all hope it will) Playoff lineup pretty clearly I’d think: Springer- CF Altuve- 2b Bregman-3b Brantley-LF Correa- SS Alvarez-DH Yuli-1b Reddick-RF Chirinos-c Jake then slides into center field with springer to RF and Reddick to LF after Brantley’s last AB with a lead in the 7th or 8th of you want to go defense. Straw is the PR if you have to steal a base down 1 in the 9th. I don’t see any other reason to play anyone else absent injury or something really goofy happening But for now, yeah it would relieve pressure during the regular season if Alvarez could play 1b some to keep the DH slot open 3 or 4 times a week. Long term it’d be huge if he can play 1b next season of Tucker is ready, and you move on from Yuli and Reddick for money savings/open up a slot for Tucker (kemp and White are both obviously on borrowed time absent injuries)
Whitley man, hope he’s working on something, obviously, as the only other options are he’s hurt or broken/not as good as though. I can’t imagine the latter and as to the former- eh- TNSTAAPP, but damn, that’s be painful if he’s not at least a MOR Guy after all that tantalizing potential.
Tucker quietly has a .951 OPS despite his awful start. There's a not so small chance our best lineup in October has Alvarez and Tucker in it. I'm certainly not ready to write off Yuli yet, but he's about to be 35. Him starting to produce is most certainly not sure thing.
I'm going out on a limb, but either Alvarez or Diaz will be the starting 1B the majority of the time by July 1st. If it is Alvarez, that is very good news for Tucker. If it is Diaz, I think Tucker is going to need an injury, trade, or divine intervention to crack team. If it is still Yuli, I think it means Yuli has rebounded very well.
What a difference a week makes for Jonathan Arauz. He was hitting .175/.277/.289 after going 0-4 on May 16. He's now at .255/.352/.383 thanks to his current seven-game hitting streak, which includes a 5-6 game on Tuesday.
Obviously no one here knows what's the deal w/ Whitley, but from what I gather: - He's had detailed reports in the past by so-called injury experts that his pitching mechanics were the reason for him constantly being injured and that he was headed for a short career if he didn't change things. - IF there's any truth to that, you don't change your style of pitching (ie golf swing) and expect to be dominant in two months, or even three. - If this is injury related, I trust the Astros would have diagnosed this months ago, vs continue to let him pitch. So trusting the FO, I don't see this as injury related and don't claim to know more than they do. - A month ago a few of us were as concerned about Tucker as we are about Whitley. We're only getting concerned about Whitley now because he pitches every 6 to 7 days so we don't see him as often as we did Tucker. Tucker had 50 at bats before he got in a rhythm. Whitley's only pitched 24 innings. That's the equivalent of 3 games for Verlander. - Hinch mentioned that pitching on extended rest between games has been difficult for Whitley to get a rhythm, and if you've never pitched on a schedule like this, which may be an ill-advised experiment to limit his innings this way, is another adjustment, along w/ the new MLB ball that the entire AAA staff seems to be having difficulty with. - For a 21-year old experiencing an extremely high level of failure and frustration for the first time in his life, that's yet another adjustment. Like Tucker, he'll be better for it when he pulls through, and Hinch has stated that a player needs to go through that to hit the next level. - Re Appel comparisons, Appel struggled his entire career after staying a year extra at Stanford. It's been 6 weeks for Whitley. - Strom had James change his delivery so that he repeated it more consistently, and that went nowhere until he let him go back to what it was before. I doubt they're going to let Whitley do that just yet if that's the case. Or maybe he's not as good as everyone said, as some here fear. I'm not worried yet, not that I won't be if this continues into July.
Sometimes as fans we see someone with exceptional ability and immediate success and we forget that they are people, young people than are prone to making mistakes. Whitley had immediate and consistent success until he was busted for substance abuse. His story always seemed very questionable to me. He is on a road trip back and tired so his friend gives him pills to help him stay awake. That always seemed odd to me. If he would just take something a friend handed me, that made me think he had done it before. Regardless, he has been getting consistently worse since then. I have wondered if they would send him back to AA or extended training. In his case, I really don't know. Normally a number of people say something (a guy isn't coachable like Martes) but I have heard so little about Whitley.