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2021 Houston Astros Thread

Planet Houston

By Planet Houston
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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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Scraps

Scraps 13542

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As said before...the main problem with Straw isn't his hitting (which still sucks) it is his CF play. We weren't going to replace Springer at the plate with any option we had for his replacement. I don't expect anything from him at the plate so whatever he does positive there is cool....i do expect him to not suck complete ass in CF....still waiting on that.

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IDIOTsavant

IDIOTsavant 8449

Posted
Posted (edited)
2 hours ago, Scraps said:

As said before...the main problem with Straw isn't his hitting (which still sucks) it is his CF play. We weren't going to replace Springer at the plate with any option we had for his replacement. I don't expect anything from him at the plate so whatever he does positive there is cool....i do expect him to not suck complete ass in CF....still waiting on that.

Image of And wait and wait...

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Gourmand

Gourmand 7774

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Kaplan on Myles Straw and Jose Siri:

Spoiler

 

Jose Siri is off to a great start in Triple A, but it’s not enough to justify an Astros promotion

AP21067025212166-1024x683.jpg
By Jake Kaplan 1h agocomment-icon.png 1 save-icon.png

The Astros have a center fielder problem, which isn’t exactly a surprise considering they lost George Springer to free agency and inserted Myles Straw into their lineup. Center field looked like their greatest position player need all offseason, and it certainly is as much now. Seven weeks into the season, Straw has been a replacement-level player.

On days the Astros don’t lack for offense, which is many days, it’s not a big deal. On days they struggle to score runs, Straw’s deficiencies are magnified. He hits for no power, and he hasn’t been getting on base enough to maximize his speed. He’s supposed to be a defense-first player, but he’s disappointed in the field, too.

It sure looks as if Straw is what many evaluators thought he was coming into the season: a fourth outfielder. And the Astros, who have a deep lineup that came into Thursday with an MLB-best .771 OPS, have played well even without extracting value from center field. But naturally, Straw’s performance has led to speculation about who could replace him.

Combine that with Jose Siri’s blistering start in Triple A and you’ve nearly got a full-blown center fielder controversy. For the Sugar Land Skeeters, Siri has batted .400/.438/.778 with four homers and five doubles.

But here’s the thing: Siri has played in all of 11 games, including five in the hitter-friendly Albuquerque altitude. It’s a sample of a measly 48 plate appearances. He will need to hit over a longer period for his performance to mean anything.

The Astros signed Siri, 25, in the offseason to a minor-league contract primarily because of his defense. He’s an excellent athlete with the skills to patrol center field in the major leagues. But while he was once a relatively well-regarded prospect in Cincinnati’s farm system, there’s a reason he’s bounced from the Reds to the Mariners to the Giants to the Astros in the last 16 months and has yet to make his major-league debut. He’s a free swinger who swings and misses a ton.

Even amid his torrid start to this Triple-A season, Siri has struck out in 29.2 percent of his plate appearances. The Astros brought him in as a project with the hopes they could improve his offense. The early returns have been encouraging. But if teams based promotions and demotions off samples this small on a regular basis, they would routinely both buy into players and give up on players too early.

Siri faces another significant obstacle: the team’s 40-man roster is full and he’s not on it. At some point, the Astros will have to clear a spot for rehabbing reliever Pedro Báez, who is on the 60-day injured list. Maybe they can trade from the back of their 40-man, but they’d probably be selling low and it can be difficult to align on a deal this far from the trade deadline. The closer to the July 30 deadline, the easier it might be for the Astros to reconfigure their 40-man.

In the meantime, they have to find ways to try to get more from their center field position, which came into Thursday ranked 28th in MLB in OPS (.583). Astros manager Dusty Baker has stuck with Straw as the everyday center fielder, and it doesn’t sound like he’s in a rush to make a change. “Straw is the best center fielder that we have right now,” he said before Wednesday’s game. He might be right. But at some point, if Straw doesn’t elevate his .310 on-base percentage by about .030 points and improve his defense, don’t the Astros have to see what they have in Chas McCormick, who’s been stuck on the bench? Even a timeshare between Straw and McCormick would be worth a shot. An outside-the-box possible solution would have been to sell out for offense and try right fielder Kyle Tucker in center field, but the Astros didn’t give that experiment a legitimate chance in spring training.

Straw’s 68 OPS+ isn’t a big surprise. The strangest part of his season is how he appears to have regressed as a defender from when he was a prospect in the upper levels of the minors. He doesn’t get good jumps, and while his speed makes up for some of it, he’s had issues securing balls too often for a major leaguer, like when a fly ball glanced off his glove Tuesday night in Oakland. McCormick is more of a corner outfielder than a center fielder, but the gap between his and Straw’s center-field defense might no longer be enough to outweigh their gap in offense.

McCormick hasn’t hit much this season either but he also hasn’t gotten much of a chance. He came into Thursday with only 39 plate appearances. If the Astros don’t view Tucker as a viable option to play center, McCormick is the only alternative to Straw on the 40-man roster. He’s in line to get a shot before Siri, but Siri has turned into one of the most notable players to monitor on the Astros’ Triple-A roster.

 

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Wulaw Horn

Wulaw Horn 18981

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Can we stop to ponder if Jason Castro fucked Dusty Bakers wife or something like that?  I'm so sick of Maldy getting an 80% share, seemingly, on the job.  Make him personal valet for Greinke if you want and then fucking run a platoon the rest of the time.  That should work out to 50/50 or slightly higher in favor of Castro.  

Maldy is infuriating.  Either that- or automatic bunt with a runner on base so we can get a productive out.  He'd probably just bunt it right into the ground or back to the pitcher for a double play.  It makes me want to strangle a homeless person to see him up there failing over and over and over knowing Castro is almost as good by every defensive metric and has a much higher offensive potential.

 

 

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9380

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Posted
6 hours ago, Scraps said:

As said before...the main problem with Straw isn't his hitting (which still sucks) it is his CF play. We weren't going to replace Springer at the plate with any option we had for his replacement. I don't expect anything from him at the plate so whatever he does positive there is cool....i do expect him to not suck complete ass in CF....still waiting on that.

I like that he tries to channel his inner Willie Mays on every play. The problem is, it’s only the throwing part that he actually does, not the rest of the play.

 

BD120AE5-F35A-423B-BB79-EB4280AB3362.gif

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9380

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“We’re excited. Those teams gotta play us, too. We’re excited to play the Astros. It’s always fun playing them. That’s probably our biggest competition in this division. But we’re the reigning champs and they have to prove it to us.”

 

half game back. time to take over first place and never look back.

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henrygandorf

henrygandorf 29177

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big k.

that inning was a beating.

onto the bullpen.  wonder how we cobble together 4 innings.  wish we had more guys who can go multiple.  this feels like a bielak time for the 6-7th.  i hate having to depend on 4-5 different guys for 4 innings.  both games we blew in the 8-2 streak were because of bullshit like that.

who are our setup men?  in a 3 run lead with everybody rested, who gets the 7th and who gets the 8th?  i'm honestly asking.

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