I think Vasquez calls a much better game than Diaz, and the team's pitching has responded, outside of today's outlier with Alexander..... Maybe we put Diaz on the bench as backup when he gets back? DD
Should already be a year and a half into our rebuild. Crane's playing with your emotions.... We all love our Astros, but don't continue to get sucked into this. Sell, Sell...
What are you on about, the rotation is taking shape and Hunter is on the way back, the bats are hot and the AL west is gettable, we need to be buyers not sellers, as long as it doesn't **** with the farm system. Because the AL west is such **** we can tread water for a while then make a run in july-august and take the ****, its a long season, too early cash out now
Isn't that totally dependent on Alexander allowing fewer BB/9 and fewer fly balls? Even though SA gives up fewer HR (1/10th) and H (1/2) per9?
Pretty much. Alexander generates a good amount of ground balls so he should be a relatively high floor pitcher for a AAAA guy. But it also means he allows a good amount of baserunners, and bad batted ball luck in small samples will destroy his era.
Bit of an edit above while you were posting SA has definitely pitched his way out of some traffic so far, his not giving up XBH (1 HR and 5 2B in 41 IP) has been a huge key
No. xFIP assumes that of the flyballs given up, an average number go over the fence. xFIP does not believe guys that give up flyballs and walks like candy will only have one RBI off of homers after 40 IPs. Sure it happens, and what has happened won't change. That said, if Arrighetti keeps walking everyone, his 390 foot bombs with guys on won't always be outs.
It also helps when your first baseman turns two to get you out of an inning only giving up 2 runs instead of 7 or whatever it ballooned into. It would also help if a fielder didn't need to touch a ball to have it considered an error, but here in the year of our lord 2026 that's still how we score really obvious **** if it doesn't get touched. Sigh.
Horseshit. Could he have made that play? Yes. Did it prevent Alexander from ****ing up going forward? No.
The Astros are 3.5 games out of first. That's crazy. Even after an utterly miserable start, they are in the race.
I said it helps when plays are made behind you. That’s not horseshit that’s literal truth. I didn’t say it absolves Costanza of responsibility for getting outs to minimize the damage. Do you contend it’s not helpful for guys to make plays behind their pitcher? Cmon man. I promise Walker would tell you that’s a play that he absolutely has to make.
This is truth. Pena made plays, Walker made plays, Allen made plays, Meyers made plays.... ...and they ended up with a No Hitter Pretty awesome!
The worse the pitcher the more the plays need to be made, too. But it helps everyone. Astros D during dynasty has been underrated imo. It’s not 1/3 of the game or anything (like people say about special teams in football that is also dumb) but it’s really important around the edges. I’d say something like hitting- 45% baserunning- 5%, pitching 40% and defense 10%. defense and baserunning are differentiators and lack of it definitely finds ways to do bad teams in.
If they want to make a run at a WS they need to find a LHB OF and a leverage reliever. Can Dana find these guys by the trade deadline?
