I'm thankful for Crane, he gave me a pretty good decade of championship level Baseball. They aren't as bad as they seem once their gets healthy. But you still have the Espada issue. Espada doesn't have a clue how to run a bullpen. Teng gives this idiot 3 scoreless innings and Espada leaves Teng in for a fourth inning. Hey Joe, how many times has Teng pitched 3 innings, much less trying to get a 4th inning makes me just SMH, sad part he does this stuff a lot.
Astros had to throw a bullpen game today for 2 reasons: Imai requires a 6 man rotation, currently the Astros clearly only have 5 guys they are willing to run out as starters. Dana Brown let Espada run Teng out there instead of calling up Gordon or another pitcher from AAA who was stretched out. Poor roster management compounded by poor game management.
This is getting to be extraordinarily stupid and weird. It makes everything you else you comment about way less credible.
OK, but that doesn't change the fact that you Imai posts are complete nonsense. Just making things up that are demonstrably false and repeating them endlessly doesn't really give anyone much reason to believe much you say.
As horrible as the Astros have been so far, the only thing that is preventing me from completely giving up on them this season is that nearly the ENTIRE AL is also mediocre to bad. Only the Yankees and Rays have been good so far.
It’s fine to disagree but you are nothing more than an illiterate moron who disagrees by saying **** like “you know you’re stupid” or better yet “everything you else” and “you Imai posts”. Zero logic for why you disagree and zero actual attempt to make a cohesive argument. Just a zoo animal slinging feces.
I've already told you why you're stupid - if you can't read, that's a you problem. 1. They didn't run a 6-man rotation when Imai was healthy. 2. What they run when he's not healthy would have nothing to do with him requiring it, especially not weeks after he was injured. To make it worse, you now claim they needed to run a bullpen guy out there today because Imai requires a 6 man rotation but ALSO that they only have 5 starting pitchers. If they designed the team for Imai to be in a 6 man rotation, that means the Astros would have one MORE starter in their rotation than they would have planned for otherwise, which would be the opposite of then needing a bullpen guy as a starter because of him. You're just making up nonsense and then repeatedly verbal diarrhea-ing it all of the forum as though its true. It's just weird and disturbing that you've convinced yourself of this despite it being repeatedly shown to be untrue.
I think this is simply a heated misunderstanding. Yes, the Astros used a 5 man rotation until after Imai went on the I.L. so technically they can use a 5 man rotation wirh him. However he was on 5 days rest every start which mimics the routine of a 6 man rotation. Its reasonable to predict that the Astros would keep him on 5 days rest, like in Japan but we do not know for sure and won't until it is communicated or he pitches on 4 days rest.
Except the problem is he continues to blame the actual Astros' struggles - even while Imai has been injured - on the requirements of a 6 man rotation. At NO POINT this season has Imai required them to use a 6 man rotation. But apparently, the Astros' pitching is his fault. It's not a misunderstanding - it's just stupidity. A refresher: None of these are theoretical - they are all claims that bad things happened because of a 6 man rotation that didn't actually exist. The entire time that Imai has been healthy, they had 5 starters. Since he and others have been not-healthy, they've had even fewer which is why they keep running out TBD's every few days. They don't even have 5 starters, let alone 6. Give it a few days and he'll repeat the claim again as though its true.
Your entire argument is based on the semantics of “6 man rotation” vs “requiring Imai to always be on 5 days rest”. I’m not going to go dig up the countless articles and quotes since March (not to mention the reality of how the Astros have deployed their starting pitchers this season) that provide a mountain of evidence that Houston has held to the idea that Imai requires 5 days rest (which when off days don’t assist, requires a 6 man rotation). But, you ****ing moron, here are the days Mike Burrows has started this season: April 1 April 7 April 13 April 19 April 25 May 1 May 8 So, if I’m so clearly wrong, tell me why the only healthy SP they’ve had has pitched exactly every 6 days (5 days rest, aligned with a 6 man rotation) every turn since the season began (except last turn, when he went on 6 days rest, even longer)? https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2026/01/astros-could-open-season-with-six-man-rotation.html I’ve had you on ignore for years, I usually only see your moronic drivel when you reply to me. I’d suggest you put me on ignore if my comments bother you that much.
He hasn’t been mentally stable enough to handle pitching here every 5th day, hard to imagine him being changed to every 4th As I mentioned before, we only got this dude because none of the bigger markets had any interest in him
The Astros only used a 5 man rotation early in the season when they had off days stacked up that allowed them to keep everyone on 5 days rest (aligned with a 6 man rotation schedule). This was widely discussed when Arrighetti got sent down. It was also widely discussed that Imai was the reason for that schedule. Imai isn’t/wasn’t physically injured. He had a mental break because he couldn’t handle his situation and the adversity he was facing. Because he wasn’t actually hurt the front office knew he’d be back shortly and wanted to keep the 6 man (5 days rest) rotation in place for him; that got derailed a week because he unexpectedly sucked so bad in his first rehab start. For one thing, by this point the other SP had gotten into that routine. With as dire as the SP situation has been, there is absolutely zero reason the Astros would have been keeping their one healthy/consistent guy (Burrows) on 5 days rest every time (throwing multiple bullpen games thru more than one turn) unless they were strict on keeping a 6 man (5 days rest) rotation. Imai is the only reason for that; every other SP has a track record of throwing on 4 days rest.
I am pretty dam spoiled by the last decade and we have players coming back and I am cool with that, plus our division is not good right now. I don't hate Espada, I just think he doesn't know how to run a pitching staff, when he pitched Hunter on day one and let him throw that many pitches that was a glaring NO NO and couple that with the fact he can't seem to know when to use the "bull pen" guys is just not doable. Something is fundamentally flawed with the Astros "developing" pitchers the past few years, the injuries are to a point where you have to look at everything, they have done a great job in the past, but the continuous injuries are more than just bad luck IMO. Man, it just sucks watching knowing we don't have the arms to really do anything right now and our offense is great, but your going to have slumps any good hitting team does
I can agree we've been on a 6-man rotation , but I think there can be a bevy of reasons to go to a 6-man and Imai being historicall used to a 6-man shouldnt be the only reason. Given how horrible our injuries have been maybe we think keeping our one healthy pitcher a little extra rested will pay off. Maybe we planned to do 5 days of rest for brown as well given his workload and trying to keep him healthy for the playoffs. Spencer is also building back up . Same with javier ( when he was pitching , and lance ) A 6 man rotation makes more sense for our injured and guys that are building back up. Our pitching just sucks. I think the 6 man is the right strategy , and I dont think we can say Imai is the only reason. Weve done 6 man in the past years for periods of time. I remember we were doing 6 man and then switched to 5 man to help verlander. And if by "widely discussed " you mean that Dana brown said so i would remind you not to beleive a word that comes out of that dudes mouth. I actually kinda like him as a GM , but hes the biggest bullshitter weve had in the front office in a long time
Having increased risk in your rotation works against the idea of a 6 man rotation, not for it. That’s been one of my major points. Catering to a 6 man rotation leaves the bullpen with 7 relievers instead of 8. So when a pitcher gets hurt or knocked out early, the bullpen is already shallow and gets burned up, which not only causes losses but increases injury risk to RP from overuse. When you have 6 SP and only 7 RP, it puts more pressure on the SP to go deeper into games to preserve the shallow pen, which also increases injury risk to the SP. Imai is the primary reason they have managed their staff the way they have. If we were deeper into the season like late July, I’d be more open to the thought that they are deploying a 6 man rotation to manage inning limits, but that’s not a viable reason to do it in April, especially when your rotation is so shallow and the losses are piling up.
You're not wrong about your first point but I disagree adding Imai is the primary reason they have managed the staff this way. As it's been pointed out, he requires 5 days rest, which doesn't necessarily mean a permanent 6 man rotation. The Astros have consistenly ran out a 6 man rotation during any stretch where they have a prolonged schedule of games with no days off. Last year they ran a 6 man rotation with Gusto, Gordon, and McCullers all in the rotation - it's not like they are only doing this when they have a plethora of great options like in 2022. The Astros were managing the staff this way prior to Imai being signed. Last year Hunter Brown pitched on 5+ days rest in 26 of his 31 starts. Framber was on 5+ days rest in 25 of his 31 starts. We allowed a ton of scrubs to start games last year when they could have theoretically pushed Hunter and/or Framber up to avoid that. You could certainly make the argument we didn't make the playoffs because of this strategy. Take Max Fried for example - he had 13 starts last year on 4 days rest. Also, aside from Imai, the rotation to start this season included Javier and McCullers, who were major injury risks, and therefore the team was certainly going to limit their innings regardless of whether they signed Imai. The primary issue is they don't seem to have a plan. There have been several games where there clearly should have been someone called up from AAA to eat innings in games that were predictably going to need that to be done. Having Teng and Weiss start games instead of going with someone like Gordon is just stupid as well. At least Gordon is going to likely give you 5+ innings.
The 6 man rotation reduces the bullpen by 1 pitcher. Therefore, the only way it works is if those 6 go deep into games regularly. Having bullpen games is counter productive to that. Choose 1 or the other - 5 starters and 8 relievers or 6 starters and 7 relievers. Using openers to give the starters 5 days rest kills the entire staff. There is 1 extra day the starters are not available but that day is put squarely on an already taxed bullpen instead of a 6th starter. In any 6 games you want starters to go 30+ innings and bullpen 24- If only 5 of them are made by starters, they need to average 6 innings instead of 5 to keep that ratio. Otherwise the bullpen is exhausted and can't perform no matter how good they should be. This is both Dana and Joe's fault.
