Jump to content

UTexasFight

Legacy Members
  • Posts

    15,500
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by UTexasFight

  1. Talk me into going to Boston for game one.  I can fly on miles, but can't justify the $350 night hotel and mid $200 game ticket.

    I have a single for Sunday in the RF grandstand, row 1 I’ll sell you at cost.
    $200
    • Like 1
  2. Good stuff on Whitley's AFL start last night.
    The Astros, one of the most analytics-driven organizations in the game, have used video, TrackMan and a host of other data to help their prized prospect fine-tune his pitches into their current, dastardly forms.

    "There’s so much, but the way that they utilize TrackMan is very good and I’d say that has helped me a ton with my pitch development,” Whitley said. "And I am very, very fortunate to be a part of the Astros’ organization.”

    Specifically, he’s used the technology to help maintain the consistency in the shapes of each of his pitches. The data, which shows how his measurements in a variety of categories vary from start to start, are constantly available to utilize as part of his development of the course of a season. 

    His changeup, he says, spins at an average rate of 2,200-2,300 revolutions per minute. His curveball, on the other hand, has peaked at better than 3,000 rpm. 

    Of his four pitches, his cutter has made the most progress over the last year. The shape has stayed roughly the same, but he’s done a better job locating the pitch. 
    https://www.baseballamerica.com/stories/forrest-whitley-dominates-in-first-afl-start/
    97 mph fastball with a 3,000 RPM curveball, and he also has a low 90s cutter.

    Good to see the ball doctoring has made it’s way to our lower levels.
  3.  My wife and I will be out to dinner during game 1 celebrating our 17th anniversary.  Have had the reservation for a couple of months.   Poor foresight on my part.  

    Seriously, what were you thinking 17 years ago getting married during the MLB playoffs?
    I bet it’s also interfered with Texas/ou more than once
    You really botched the long game on this one.
  4. Have times been announced for games 1 and 2 of the ALCS yet? I know the location depends on who wins between Boston/NY but the times should be pretty easy regardless right?

    Here is the schedule from last year if you want to attempt an educated guess.
    Flip the leagues for this year (i.e. ALCS is on TBS starting Saturday).
    Times zones of this year’s participants is the same as last year (AL: Team in central time zone vs team in eastern time zone). NL: team in pacific time zone vs team in central time zone)

    Idk if FOX or TBS have rights to pick time ahead of the another or if MLB decides, but guessing ALCS games 3 and 4 will be 4pm Central.


    66b334a31d3af7e45bd68625ac61d4d8.jpg
  5. Houston had home field because of an Oilers/Bears game scheduled in the dome the same day as one of the games that should have been an Astros home game.

    Crazy to think about.

     

    Oakland is the only team that could have such a potential conflict today?

     

     

    And yes, per baseball reference was a Day game.

    Game 7 of the ALCS (California at Boston) was the same day and started at 7:30 Central that night.

     

  6. And Brisbee:
    https://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2018/10/8/17953114/astros-alds-indians-alcs-yankees-red-sox-bregman-correa-altuve

    The Astros absolutely flattened the Indians by acting like the Astros. They were the team we’ve gotten used to. There were no tricks, no misdirections, no aces up the sleeve. They were simply the Astros, just better.

    To which we should respond, oh. Oh, cool. The Astros are better than ever. This is definitely not frightening at all. This is definitely not like the raptors figuring out a Rubik’s Cube in Jurassic Park 5, and everything is fine.

    It’s the normalcy that should have everyone else worried. This Astros team didn’t need to use Charlie Morton for four innings of relief in a clincher. They didn’t need Lance McCullers, Jr. to throw 24 straight curveballs to win. They used starting pitchers, and those starting pitchers dominated. They trusted their regular hitters to take a lead, and they did. They would let the bullpen hold that lead, which they did. There were no surprise permutations, no “Guess what! Jeff Francoeur is on the postseason roster*! *we signed him on Aug. 31 when you weren’t looking.” The Astros are the Astros we expected, and it’s terrifying.

    Think about the plan the Astros had for this season:

    Have Justin Verlander dominate
    Unlock Gerrit Cole’s full potential
    Enjoy unprecedented rotation depth
    Reach October without a wheezing, gasping bullpen
    Produce at least one MVP candidate out of Carlos Correa, Jose Altuve, or George Springer
    Employ 73 different gigantic, bald lumberjack-looking dudes who look like a dad that answers the door while his daughter is still getting ready
    Only one of those plans was scuttled — the one about the MVP candidate. Except it turns out that Alex Bregman is that candidate,

    • Like 4
  7. From the Stark article

    Holy shit:

     

    “This was the lineup you would have read about in March in all the season previews:

     

    Springer CF

    Altuve 2B

    Bregman 3B

    Gurriel 1B

    González LF

    Reddick RF

    Correa SS

    McCann C

     

    But you know how many games the Astros ran those eight guys out there in those spots during the entire regular season? That would be eight. Eight!”

     

     

     

    And that slash line I posted above?

     

    “Meanwhile, the Astros rolled out a lineup that hit a ridiculous .327/.421/.614/1.036 as a team in this series. And you don’t see that much – by which we mean ever.

     

    That’s the best OPS any offense has ever had in a postseason series of any length. And that .421 on-base percentage is tied with the 1932 Yankees for the best OBP any team has ever had in a postseason series. Yeah, we said ever”

    • Like 3
  8. STARK!!!!

     

    The Astros are back in October, and even better than you realize.

    CLEVELAND – It probably hasn’t dawned on you yet what you’re watching. That might be because you haven’t been watching the 2018 Houston Astros at all.

    They just played their Division Series games at lunchtime, so TV could get them out of the way so they wouldn’t upstage (ahem) The Main Event. Because they’re not the Yankees. They’re not the Red Sox. They’re not the Dodgers.

    They’re just the defending World Series champions. That’s all. But really, it’s not. If that’s all you think the 2018 Astros are, Alex Bregman would like a word.

    How good is this team? How potentially historically great is this team?

    “To be honest with you?” the Astros’ effervescent third baseman said Monday, after his team had finished decimating the Indians, 11-3, to finish off an ALDS sweep. “Think about it, OK? [José] Altuve goes down. [George] Springer goes down. [Carlos] Correa goes down. And we won 103 games, OK?

    “If those three don’t go down and [they] play a full season,” Bregman said, staring three members of the media right in the eyeballs, “we’re looking at the most wins in the history of the game.”

    It’s hard to say what reaction Bregman expected. Maybe enthusiastic agreement. At the very least the sight of his audience’s heads nodding up and down.

    Instead, however, he got laughter. Not acceptable.

    “No. Honestly,” he said, emphatically. “I’m being honest here.”

    More laughs. So he glanced around the room. He caught the eye of the Astros’ director of pro scouting, Kevin Goldstein, who had just wandered into the conversation.

    “Am I wrong?” Bregman asked Goldstein, and everyone else within earshot, before he literally began shouting. “AM I WRONG?”

    More laughs.

    “You’re wrong,” Goldstein told him, finally. “But I love you.”

    “Nobody says right,” Bregman muttered, then turned to Goldstein yet again. “Would we have the most wins in the history of the game if those three don’t go down?”

    “Whatever you say is right,” Goldstein conceded, not totally seriously, with the knowledge he was dealing with a man it’s very hard to say no to.

    “So it would be the most,” Bregman said, once he had that opening, “since when – the 1927 [freaking] Yankees?”

    All right, let’s introduce some quick facts here. It would not have been the most wins since the 1927 [freaking] Yankees. They “only” won 110. The correct answer would have been the 2001 [freaking] Mariners and 1906 [freaking] Cubs. Who won 116 each.

    But now that we have that out of the way, we’re not sure he’s wrong in concept. Because the 2018 Astros are special. And here’s where we point out how special they are, with the assistance of The Athletic’s stats-and-info guru, Katie Sharp.

    These Astros finished the regular season with a plus-263 run differential. Amazing. That’s the third-best differential in the 58-year era of 162-game schedules – behind only the 1998 [freaking] Yankees (plus-299) and 2001 [freaking] Mariners (plus-300).

    But wait. We mentioned the Astros are the defending World Series champions, right? So that run differential also happens to be the greatest by a defending champion in over seven decades – since Joe DiMaggio’s 1942 [freaking] Yankees put up a plus-294.

    Finally, speaking of defending champions, the Astros won 101 games last year on the way to the World Series parade, then came back and won more games this year (103). That, ladies and gentlemen, is incredibly rare and incredibly difficult. In fact, only two other teams have ever done that (i.e., win 100-plus, win the World Series and then win more games the following season). That would be those ’42 Yankees again and Connie Mack’s 1930 Philadelphia A’s.

    Year Team W L Next Yr W Next Yr L Result
    2017 HOU 101 61 103 59 ?
    1941 NYY 101 53 103 81 Lost WS
    1930 PHA 102 52 107 45 Lost WS

    Pretty cool company, wouldn’t you say? But now let’s point out something important that separates the 2018 Astros from those 1930 A’s and 1942 Yankees. When those teams won the World Series, the entire postseason lasted a week. One best-of-seven series. Thanks for playing. Have a great winter.

    Nowadays, it doesn’t work like that. As you may have noticed, in the wild-card era, the postseason is a grueling four-week marathon – compounded by night after night of late starts, later finishes, high-stress at-bats and multi-time-zone travel. It takes its toll.

    Why has no team in the wild-card era, other than the 1998-2000 Yankees, repeated? We repeat: It takes its toll. And it has taken its toll on this Astros team.

    “These guys are banged up, man,” Bregman said. “There’s no way around it. “You see guys taking swings and grimacing. You see Altuve hitting a double and limping into second base. I mean, you all see it. It’s not like everyone feels great.

    “When you play into November,” he said, his voice rising again, “we understand why it’s so hard to repeat. When you play into November, your body is banged up.

    As much as Bregman would love for us all to play his what-if game and add, oh, 20 theoretical wins to the Astros’ total in our heads, that game is impossible to play. But he does have a point.

    The lineup they ran out there Monday in Game 3 against the Indians was the lineup they would have expected to play more than any other this year (aside from the DH, Tony Kemp). This was the lineup you would have read about in March in all the season previews:

    Springer CF
    Altuve 2B
    Bregman 3B
    Gurriel 1B
    González LF
    Reddick RF
    Correa SS
    McCann C

    But you know how many games the Astros ran those eight guys out there in those spots during the entire regular season? That would be eight. Eight!

    They also went two full months (June 26 to Aug. 26) without ever being able to write out a lineup card that included Springer, Altuve and Correa at the same time – and often included none of the above.

    And they still won 103 games – with the third-best run differential in the expansion era.

    Wow.

    All of which is a long, detailed way of saying: You know what? Alex Bregman might not be wrong. Or, if we’re not going to go that far, we think it at least says this:

    This is a team that won the World Series last year – and there’s an easy argument that it’s even better now.

    “Yeah,” said Justin Verlander. “I think there is. I mean, obviously, the postseason is a little bit of a coin flip. The best team doesn’t always win, especially in a five-game series….But in my opinion, this is the most complete team in baseball.”

    Statistically, it’s not the same group offensively. But if it could weather this many injuries and still win 103 games, “it just speaks to how good this team is,” Verlander said. “How deep it is. How talented it is. Like I said, I think we’re the most complete team in baseball. And that’s where it really shows.”

    Across the room, Bregman ticked off the names of the impact players who weren’t even here a year ago: Gerrit Cole … Ryan Pressly … Roberto Osuna … Martín Maldonado. They’re all upgrades on the men they replaced, with all due respect to those men they replaced, men who helped them win it all.

    And this team, with those players, just obliterated a really good Indians team. Held them to 13 hits in three games. Held them to zero hits in three games with runners in scoring position. Spun off back-to-back games (Games 1 and 2) of three hits allowed and double-digit strikeouts – something nobody had done to the Indians in consecutive regular-season games in 31 years.

    But that’s just the pitching staff. Meanwhile, the Astros rolled out a lineup that hit a ridiculous .327/.421/.614/1.036 as a team in this series. And you don’t see that much – by which we mean ever.

    That’s the best OPS any offense has ever had in a postseason series of any length. And that .421 on-base percentage is tied with the 1932 Yankees for the best OBP any team has ever had in a postseason series. Yeah, we said ever.

    So that’s what these Astros have accomplished so far. Now they await whatever AL monster shows up next. Red Sox? Yankees? They don’t much care.

    “I’ll just say,” Bregman said, with a knowing grin, “that if you like the game of baseball, if you like two of the best playing each other, you’re going to tune into the ALCS.”

    But until you do, it probably won’t dawn on you what you’re watching. On one side of the field will be a team that won over 100 games. And on the other will be the defending champs, highly motivated to prove that someone else should have been playing this week at 1 in the afternoon – and even more motivated to prove they’re still the best baseball team on planet earth.

    But seriously, is it really possible that the 2018 edition of the Houston Astros could actually be better than the team that just threw itself a parade last November?

    “Well,” said Alex Bregman, “there’s only one way to find out.”

    • Like 1
  9. I saw that on the gamecast, and was wondering, "since when does McHugh throw 95?" Glad to see it wasn't just me.
    Guy was filthy today.

    Playoffs add 2 mph to everyone’s fastball and 1’ of break on every breaking ball

    Moose out front should have told us.
  10. Also, we’ll rightfully talk about the offensive explosion late, but I find it somewhat fitting that Keuchel and McHugh, the foundation of the 2015 staff that was the first spark of this crazy run we’re enjoying now, went a combined 7 strong, only 2 runs.

    • Like 1
×
×
  • Create New...