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2021 Houston Astros Thread

Planet Houston

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Gourmand

Gourmand 7774

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I didn't watch the game live yesterday so I went back and watched the replay of the 7th through 9th innings and holy fuck some of y'all were massively overreacting and hopefully you've come to your senses this morning.

Javier pitched better than I expected, very good actually, 5 K 1 H 1 R over 2.2 innings. He was cruising until the 7th when gave up a single, HBP, fly ball out that advanced both runners and fielders choice ground out to make it a 3-2 gm. There were two outs in the inning, a runner on third base, and the bullpen still needed to get seven more outs in a one-run game to get the victory. And y'all wanted Graveman???!! Or Pressly??

Dudes, it was only the 7th inning , you don't bring in either one of those guys in that situation considering a) Graveman has struggled lately and just threw thirty pitches the night before and b ) Pressly has not been used that way all season long so why would you change his routine for a Sept regular season game with the team ahead by a run???? The fuck is wrong with y'all????

Enter Maton, who only needed to get one dang out. He did a good job of not giving Olson anything to hit and pitched around him, then got immediately screwed by the hpu on the first pitch to Canha. Instead of pitching him 0-1, he's at 1-0, gets a swinging strike on an 80 mph slider, followed by another slider in the same spot that Canha pulls and hits into the ground and somehow Bregman didn't glove it. That batted ball had an exit velo of 85mpn and an xBA of .100 per statcast. That *should have* been the third out of the inning, Maton *should have* been walking off the mound having done his job to end that threat, but because a play wasn't made by one of our core studs, y'all are knee-jerking all over the threadwith "fuck you dusty!"hot takes. Granted, it's allowable in the moment to get pissed off and throw words around, but having watched that inning, I can't understand how any of you wouldn't have just chalked that up to "ahh, fuckin baseball." Maton made his pitches, he didn't get hit hard, but sometimes the guys behind you don't make the plays they usually do.

That's baseball, and Dusty Baker doesn't have any control over that....

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henrygandorf
henrygandorf

there's so much to unpack from today, so i'll just start listing them. tuesday was devastating for oakland, today was twice as devastating for the yankees.  they had just started to play better. 

Brisketexan
Brisketexan

The boy and I were at the last ALCS clincher - we were walking on air for days after Altuve’s walkoff. Today, the boy is 5,000 miles and 7 hours away, with no way to watch. So we did a video chat, w

Helobious
Helobious

Enjoy it. Old Altuve, no more Correa means this is the very end of the road for your tainted dynasty. 

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Pimphand

Pimphand 5739

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Crane is a fucking moron for firing Luhnow.  We should have gone the Sean Peyton thing and had Luhnow take a year off and then come back into the fold.

Fucking idiot.

Side note the White Sox magic number is 3 since we own the tiebreaker.   They are pounding Detroit so the Stros better go .500 (or better) in the final 6.

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tx 3 putt

tx 3 putt 76928

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2022 is his year !!!!!!!

https://www.chron.com/sports/astros/article/Houston-Astros-Forrest-Whitley-feels-good-rehab-16491458.php

Former Astros first-round draft pick Forrest Whitley, six months post-Tommy John surgery, posted a video on his Instagram story of him throwing at the team's spring training complex in Florida on Monday. He captioned the photo, "Feels good to feel good."

In the video, Whitley no longer has the long hair he sported during spring training, and is throwing from flat ground as French Montana's "Lockjaw" plays over the complex's speakers.

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TonyTexas

TonyTexas 10510

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13 hours ago, Jshep34 said:

With what is known about what other teams were doing, crane should have told mlb to pack sand and kept luhnhow and hinch.

Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk
 

I really think there was some quid pro quo going on. Go tough on management and we’ll go easy on the players. 

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TexArcher

TexArcher 37774

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47 minutes ago, TonyTexas said:

I really think there was some quid pro quo going on. Go tough on management and we’ll go easy on the players. 

Agreed, plus if MLB started suspending stars like Altuve for, what, 50 or 100 games, it would've hurt ticket sales and tv ratings.  Luhnow and Hinch were the fall guys with the least collateral damage to the league's and team's pocketbooks.

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UTHornFan014

UTHornFan014 710

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My CSB - I randomly ran in to Jim Crane in Compass Cay in the Bahamas earlier this summer.

Told him I didn't give two shits what anyone says about 2017 and that I still wear my Astros gear everywhere. He said "We appreciate that. 15 other teams were doing the same thing, but we got stuck with the bill". He definitely still seemed a bit salty about the whole thing.

He also hooked me and my family up with free tickets to a game.

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Gourmand

Gourmand 7774

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Luhnow is the most fascinating and enigmatic figure in the saga. I would love to know someone with insider knowledge tell it, someone who didn't have an agenda because the Luhnow I've heard in interviews and read about in news stories during his tenure as GM seems far different than the characterizations of him in the media and from former anonymous players/coaches as a giant asshole and raging narcissist who didn't care about any of the people around him. 

This is completely anecdotal and meaningless in the final accounting of How We Judge Jeff Luhnow, but there's a story out there from one of the Astros fan bloggers (maybe Astros County iirc) about Luhnow connecting with him back in the 100-loss years to thank him for writing about the Astros etc and then hooking him and his family up with tickets in the GM's box. Luhnow even stopped in to chat with him during that game in question and the gesture was enough to leave a lasting impression. That, imo, doesn't scream ASSSHOLE BOSS like so many have accused Luhnow of being. 

Luhnow was definitely an easy fall guy for MLB because he was the guy the local and national media hated. He didn't give them the access they demanded and he probably fired old school coaches and baseball lifers who had relationships with these reporters that were valuable to them for their inside sources. We all saw that happen early on with the Buster Olney types who wrote many hit pieces at Luhnow and the Astros for doing shit like manipulating service time rules and "tanking" and using draft slot bonus savings to shape their amateur drafts...all thing every organization does to this day.

Check out all the hyperbolic garbage in this USA Today opinion piece from last October:

Spoiler

Opinion: Former Houston Astros GM still doesn't get he was fired for disgracing baseball

The disgraced former general manager of the Houston Astros, fired for fostering the frat boy culture that spawned the cheating scandal involving the 2017 World Series champions, is now whining about how unfairly he was treated. Luhnow didn’t know about the trash can banging or the text messages, he insisted in his first interview since he was fired, and he’s only the fall guy because Major League Baseball and Commissioner Rob Manfred wanted a high-profile head to roll.

Well, yeah. That’s how it works.

When you run a team, or a company, you get to take credit for its successes. “Taking a terrible organization and turning it into a dominant organization,” as Luhnow himself put it in the interview, which aired Monday night.

Contrary to how Luhnow is trying to spin it, he wasn’t suspended and subsequently fired because the Astros were caught cheating in 2017 and 2018. Or because of the aggressive misogyny of his underlings. Or the win-at-any-cost arrogance that turned pretty much everyone in baseball outside of Houston off the Astros.

He was fired for all of it.

“It is very clear to me that the culture of the baseball operations department … has been very problematic,” Manfred wrote in his January report on the sign-stealing. “At least in my view, the baseball operations department’s insular culture – one that valued and rewarded results over other considerations, combined with a staff of individuals who often lacked direction or sufficient oversight, led, at least in part, to (this).” 

[snip] 

That’s the problem with thinking you’re untouchable. The lies feel like truth and the moral compromises seem more like starting points in the negotiations.

That Luhnow is portraying himself as the victim, throwing everyone else under the bus, is not a surprise. He and his team might have been the smartest people in the room, taking their analytics, technology and operations know-how from the business world and applying them to baseball. But that cut-throat world view left no room for introspection. For anyone to raise their hand if and when he or she saw a problem with how the Astros were doing things.

It also created a permissive atmosphere where no one below Luhnow would have felt the need to inform the boss about the sign-stealing caper, figuring he’d be OK with their any-means-necessary approach.

“They just did it,” Luhnow said. “Whether it’s the players or the video staffers, they just decided on their own to do it and that’s a shame, because had they come and asked me for permission I would have said no. Had they gone and asked (owner Jim Crane) for permission, he would have said no. There’s just no reason why that should have happened.”

He’s right. But that is the culture Luhnow created. Celebrated, really.

The Astros did things differently and if you didn’t like it, that was your problem, not theirs. If they got caught skirting the bounds of decency, well, surely their success would protect them. That, or they’d find someone else to take the fall.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/columnist/nancy-armour/2020/10/20/former-astros-gm-jeffrey-luhnow-still-doesnt-get-why-he-fired/5990482002/              

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Gourmand

Gourmand 7774

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Those op-eds are not going to age well imo because they sound ridiculously over-the-top in light of all the shit we've learned from other players and insiders that confirm what we've all been saying all along: this was a systemic issue in baseball created by the league when it implemented instant replay. The Astros hired a new coach and GM, went to another ALCS, and are on the verge of yet another post-season appearance following a season's worth of comically idiotic fan behavior that had no negative effect on their performances on the field. MLB has dealt with yet another "cheating scandal" in the form of pitchers doctoring the baseball while the same fans excoriating the Astros excuse the use of sticky stuff as something everyone's doing and oh by the way the moral hero of the story celebrated by many for calling it out in 2018 is a misogynist dbag who beats the crap out of women he hooks up with. 
 
But other than that, yeah I guess Jeff Luhnow deserved to be the biggest scapegoat for MLB since Jose Canseco.

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Gourmand

Gourmand 7774

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1 hour ago, TexArcher said:

Agreed, plus if MLB started suspending stars like Altuve for, what, 50 or 100 games, it would've hurt ticket sales and tv ratings.  Luhnow and Hinch were the fall guys with the least collateral damage to the league's and team's pocketbooks.

MLB didn't have the power to do it via the CBA. 

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