Sure glad HInch took out Hoyt who was pitching fine to experiment with a rookie against the top of their lineup in a game that's in no way beyond reach for the Mariners. Is Hinch drunk this series? He's made some bizarre and stupid decisions. Thank you, Luke.
Low leverage. He was REALLY needed last night. Glad he didn't suck again though.. don't get me wrong.
Last night was the only run he's given up in over a month. Gregerson has an ERA in the 1's since the beginning of June.
I hope we don't trade for another starter outside of maybe Gray. Once we get everyone healthy either Peacock or Fiers are out of the rotation, if we trade for someone they're both out. I don't want that to happen. I'm hoping they get another strong middle reliever (I think Hinch sticks with Giles as closer) to add with Devo/Harris/Gregerson and one of Hoyt/Feliz and whichever starter gets taken out of rotation. If we can swing someone real strong if we have a lead after 5 innings in the playoffs we'll have them on the ropes. I think Musgrove should be done for the Astros this year, he just doesn't have it right now.
Another bullet dodged. They also probably dodged one on the sac fly that ended up turning into a double play... that wasn't the most graceful pop-up from a slide by Reddick and it looked like he grabbed his lower back for a split second.
Ok, so I went to the game today. I bought the Early Bird Tour passes, also. I go up to the entrance at Union Station to have the passes and game tickets scanned. When he's scanning, it doesn't work. He looks at the tickets and says, "Sir, this is for last night's game." I look down, and sure enough, it says "Monday, July 17." And the tour is about to start in 5 minutes, and you can't do it w/o tickets for that game. So I run to the ticket office around the corner and buy 4 tickets (I had 3 people with me). Overall, this cost me close to $500. To see one game (well, the others reimbursed me for the one set of tickets, but not both- that was on me due to my ****-up). And the tickets for Monday's game were Row 6, Section 128. And the tickets for Tuesday's game were Row 38, Section 116. So we had worse seats. But we went to the game in which they won. So, overall, thumbs up experience. Along with the Dumbass of the Year Award for yours truly. Good night.
Springer? Don't know if he'll be in the lineup today but certainly won't miss any significant time. Correa early September? Our hope would be is minor league games in early September, rehab, & activated mid-September. Would love 2 weeks of Major League games before the season ends. How is Keuchel health wise? Very Good. He feels good. I really believe it's just a matter of building him up. Another rehab start & we'll talk after that. I suspect he'll be in a Major League game by the end of the month.
Yeah, about the team reeling............ It's been fascinating watching Houston sports fans adjust to being the team with the largest male part, which the city has never really been before. You can still see the cracks as they keep waiting for the rug to be yanked. It may yet be pulled... you run into a buzzsaw like Cleveland's rotation in the postseason and........ But the Astros are going to absolutely cruise to a comfortable division title and very likely triple-digit wins (unless they clinch the division so early, they take their foot off the gas) and fans should relax and enjoy it. October is a different animal and April-September won't mean jack **** by then. But this seemingly desperate search for doom-and-gloom because you just know it's coming so you better prepare yourself...... yeah, you can pack that safely away for now.
Chill out with the "I told you so"s. I was thrilled to see our guys step up yesterday, and I already admitted earlier in the thread that there was convincing evidence posted after my comment that our guys had a good history of bouncing back. This extra-inning loss WAS a tough thing to swallow for a competitive young team, and it WOULD shake a lot of teams or at least certain players on the team. But this team really is something I've never seen before. Altuve, of course, did his thing like the wonderful, adorable freak he is, but Gattis was also a hero this game, and Aoki showed up with a great double after a frustrating clutch failure at bat the night before. Peacock can't be praised enough, and the team fed off of him, and he fed off the team. I'd praise Marwin for stepping up to fill Correa's shoes, but "stepping up" would be the wrong term. He just went out and Marwined. Awesome guy. It's wonderful to see these guys pick each other up, and anyone's capable of doing it. I love it. This was the gut check game of the season for the Astros, and they checked out. Couldn't be happier.
So today we get our third shot of the year against Paxton. Haven't scored a single run off the guy in 13 earnings. Only got 6 hits and 3 walks off him in that time. Paxton was real shaky for about 5 starts after he came off the DL at the end of May, but he's had his stuff since late June. Was hitting 97 on the fastball last week, which is a little high for him and certainly didn't suggest his injury from May is still bothering him much. One of his few weaknesses last start was a tendency to get into pitch count trouble, so with luck we can get some extended AB's early as Paxton does tend to get a lot more hittable once he's thrown 80 pitches or so. Righties are generally more successful against Paxton than lefties. so it would be great to see Springer in the lineup today. It's probably unavoidable to have one of either Reddick or Aoki in the starting lineup, but hopefully we won't have both. While it would be nice to see Moran gets some PA's, probably best to hold him back till the late innings or even wait till the Baltimore series.
Mlb is different. you lose and there is a game or a new series waiting the following day. extra innings losses happen. There will be more.
No, it wouldn't. These guys have been grinding since they were pre-teens; do you honestly think Monday night was their first taste of adversity? That a random, meaningless loss in July was going to suddenly cause the team to collectively forget how to play baseball? Players do not live or die with every win/loss the way (some) fans do. I would be willing to bet that within half an hour, if not sooner, they were joking and laughing and had already moved on. A gut check game.... you think the runaway best team in baseball who holds a 16.5-game division lead had a gut check game in the middle of July?.... The gut checks will start in about 11 weeks. Until then, just relax and enjoy it and stop searching for reasons to be concerned.
