The Astros have a certain swagger, regardless of the situation. Doesn’t mean they are invisible, but it’s awesome that they feel they have the talent and mental makeup to face any challenge.
Hinch said in his clubhouse speech on Sunday something to the effect of "everybody knows we're the best team in the majors and they're right, we're the best team in the majors." And no one really reacted to it. It was just very matter-of-fact. This truly is the golden age of Astros baseball. If we have the 2 H's (health and homefield), I can't see how we're not the favorite against anyone we play.
Rays. I'll be nervous about anybody we play in a short series, so go get homefield for any potential ALCS
Curious to see how many people show up tonight. They had less than 9,000 last night against the Red Sox. The main thing is it gives me an excuse to go here (right across the street from the park). https://drbbqs.com/
Yeah, that's where I am. It's almost like when you take only the top 5 times in the league, you get a bunch of very good teams or something. I'm starting to fear the short ALDS series in general more than I fear the subsequent series in the MLB playoffs. Might as well accept it for what it is and go for home field down the road.
His moves in game and how he has rested players is consistent with the belief he has in this team. There is a real strong since of confidence and trust Hinch has with these guys. He has never pressed, even when possibly home field was on the line. He will not win manager of the year but this is the best year he has had IMO. He is very confident and most of his player skill evaluation has been on point. He has managed without any fighting, even with players entering free agency.
While Hinch has been great lately, first couple of months he rode Osuna, Pressly, and James hard. Hinch seems to have gained more confidence in Harris, has found more innings for Rondon and Devo (not always to the best results), and Smith added a punch taking some of the average leverage innings workload. Granted, bullpen rest could just be a product of Yordan being called up, Gurriel and Bregman going nuclear, Springer, Altuve, and Brantley being fantastic, and Chirinos/MM being a nice offensive force lately at catcher.
You've been saying this for a while now, as well as showing real fear for the Rays and the A's. I'm not saying those teams are slouches....they've deserved every bit of praise they're getting. But I've gotta ask.....you realize in a short series, we will be running out JV - Cole - Greinke, right?? Any team we face is going to be downright TERRIFIED of going down 2-0 in the blink of an eye.
Any team facing Astros should know they don't have great odds. Though, the shorter the series, the easier it is for an upset. These aren't mutually exclusive concepts.
this is the 3rd year in a row this group will be facing this. I think it's pretty safe to say they understand the need to take care of business and as quickly as possible, as evident by their sweep last year and 4 game series 2 years ago
Correct, and I'm just trying to draw attention to the fact that while we might be nervous of a 5 game set, the other teams should be downright TERRIFIED of facing us.
Yeah, that's better than I put it. I acknowledged in some other post that I feel good about have JV, Cole, and Greinke starting us off. I just know that baseball has the highest chance of an upset in any sport. I forget where I read that but it was around the time that the second wild card slot came into play. It's not hard to infer when it's incredibly hard to simply win 5 out of every 8 games in a season. My main concern has always been the low number of runs the Astros often score in JV and Cole outings, and I just hope that isn't a problem in these playoffs, especially with Starter #4 being a real question mark right now. We have to win the games our aces give us a chance to win.
has that been verified with the actual numbers? or is that just a general assumption people make when it happened a few times here and there? I mean both guys are going to have 20 wins which is probably hard to do if the astros are scoring pretty low every time.
If you look at the RS stat on this page, you can look run support for full season and splits post-AS and September Basically, all season Cole and Miley have had great run support. Greinke has as well since he has been here. Verlander's run support is still above average compared to most pitchers around the league but has dropped in September slightly. When you compared his RS to pitchers of likely playoff opponents (NYY, Min, Oak, etc), he has been at a disadvantage. Though, you would also expect those teams pitchers to have their run support drop as well in a playoff game against JV.
Not that I've seen. Cole and Verlander both get 5 runs or more of support per game on average. When I look at games when the Top 6 pitchers have given up 2 or fewer runs, Verlander has the best winning percentage. Cole is second. Pitchers that pitch great often are more likely to have games that they pitch great with little run support. Even an offense as good as the Astros has a dud about a third of the time. As far as I can tell, the JV doesn't get any run support narrative went crazy after he had two games with little run support in back to back games a little over a month ago, and then was cemented as "truth" on "Where the F$%^ is Toro" night.
Forgot about getting caught up in Run Support numbers. As long as the Astros have more runs then their opponents regardless who is pitching after the final out, that is what matters lol.
This. Anything can happen in a 5 or 7 game series. However how does a team prepare for Verlander/Cole/Greinke? The top of the pen is very solid as well. The line up? Yeah.... good luck with that because the Astros line up doesn’t strikeout, it walks, hits for average and power... it just wears down teams and then goes for the jugular.
