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2018 Houston Astros Season Thread

Planet Houston

By Planet Houston
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TexArcher
TexArcher

Bregs is going Crawford Boxes right here.

ERhine
ERhine

Prior to the footage being edited by Bender:

wesleywest
wesleywest

Two Diamond Club tickets available for the Sunday night game.  Free.  Need to pick them up from me in 77027. Rules: Poster must be a big contributor to this thread/last years shag thread.  No gue

Bender Bending Rodriguez

Bender Bending Rodriguez 1678

Posted
Posted
10 minutes ago, Gut Wagon said:

Well-played game by two real teams. 

I’m not so sure about Cleveland, right now. Super top heavy team. They have very good front end of the rotation pitching and a very good lineup 1-5, but tons of issues at the bottom of the order and a statistically horrible bullpen. They have really good pieces and really bad pieces, which makes sense considering they’re a .500 team almost a third of the way through the season. 

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Gut Wagon

Gut Wagon 8065

Posted
Posted
12 minutes ago, Bender Bending Rodriguez said:

I’m not so sure about Cleveland, right now. Super top heavy team. They have very good front end of the rotation pitching and a very good lineup 1-5, but tons of issues at the bottom of the order and a statistically horrible bullpen. They have really good pieces and really bad pieces, which makes sense considering they’re a .500 team almost a third of the way through the season. 

They’re not dominant, and like almost every other team, they have holes. But we had to pitch great to take a home series against them after they won the series against us last year. So for now, i guess I’ll continue to feel they’re a real team. 

For what it’s worth, a top-heavy offense with a good top of the rotation and a weak bullpen sounds like a description of our 2018 offense mixed with our pre-JV 2017 staff. So maybe the Tribe’s not all that far from putting it all together. We’ll see.

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huge

huge 3793

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Posted
They’re not dominant, and like almost every other team, they have holes. But we had to pitch great to take a home series against them after they won the series against us last year. So for now, i guess I’ll continue to feel they’re a real team. 
For what it’s worth, a top-heavy offense with a good top of the rotation and a weak bullpen sounds like a description of our 2018 offense mixed with our pre-JV 2017 staff. So maybe the Tribe’s not all that far from putting it all together. We’ll see.

At no point last year was our bullpen an abject disaster. Their ERA in May is over 8?
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Gut Wagon

Gut Wagon 8065

Posted
Posted
12 minutes ago, huge said:


At no point last year was our bullpen an abject disaster. Their ERA in May is over 8?

No, ours was serviceable, even with Gerg and Sipp and Liriano getting too much work. Better than Cleveland's currently is. But hardly a team strength until AJ handed a good bit of the heavy lifting to spare starters. 

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Guest

Posted
Posted

Hell, any more, it’s more about which night the bats stay asleep.

 

The pitching has been as devoid of peaks and valleys as the land above the Caprock.  Well, actually it’s been a very, very high plateau of greatness, but you get my piont.  Doesn’t really matter who’s on the hill with these guys. It matters if Houston can score 3 or more runs that day.

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Gut Wagon

Gut Wagon 8065

Posted
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5 hours ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

Morton started the first game.  Cole and Verlander did not get starts. 

My bad. Was thinking Friday was JV, but obviously off a day. But I guess the point is the same either way: won the series despite starting just one of our three sub-2.00 guys. Awesome. 

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Scraps

Scraps 13561

Posted
Posted (edited)

 

9 hours ago, Gut Wagon said:

They’re not dominant, and like almost every other team, they have holes. But we had to pitch great to take a home series against them after they won the series against us last year. So for now, i guess I’ll continue to feel they’re a real team. 

For what it’s worth, a top-heavy offense with a good top of the rotation and a weak bullpen sounds like a description of our 2018 offense mixed with our pre-JV 2017 staff. So maybe the Tribe’s not all that far from putting it all together. We’ll see.

Series win is a series win, but Cleveland blows.  They are only going to win their division because it is so horrible.  They are gonna end up the smartest retard.  

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runthebone

runthebone 7967

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8 hours ago, henrygandorf said:

winning a series against an eventual playoff team without cole/verlander - our best two sp this season without a doubt - is plenty impressive.

we actually play cle 7x in 9 games and somehow they miss verlander twice.  who knows, maybe it'll help come playoff time?

I’m sure they faced him in Detroit about a million times, though

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Amos Moses

Amos Moses 795

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Starting pitching dominance - MOAR:

https://theathletic.com/362876/2018/05/21/numbers-behind-astros-pitching-dominance-justin-verlander-gerritt-cole/

Spoiler

The first World Series championship team in Houston history was built last year on a historically great offense.

The 2018 Astros, conversely, have jumped out to their 30-18 start behind their major league-best pitching staff, in particular their incredible rotation. All five of their starters have remained healthy through the season’s first seven-plus weeks, and Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole have performed like two of the best three or four starters in all of baseball.

“There’s a reliability that’s coming with our rotation that our team believes and the other team believes is going to be there,” manager A.J. Hinch said. “Whether we’re swinging the bats well or whether we’re not swinging the bats well, we feel like we’re going to be in the game and in a position to win because of our starting pitching and the tone they’re setting and the results they’re getting.”

If the starters can maintain their health, the Astros’ rotation has a chance to rank among the all-time greats. Houston’s numbers through almost a third of the season tell the story of the dominance.

ERA: 2.25

The Astros enter the week of May 20 with a rotation ERA that’s 0.71 better than the next-best team, the Nationals (2.96), and nearly two runs better than the major league average (4.18).

Their best three starters this season, Verlander (1.05), Cole (1.75) and Charlie Morton (1.94) rank first, second and third in ERA in the AL and first, third and sixth in the majors.

Their other two starters, 2017 All-Stars Lance McCullers Jr. (3.20) and Dallas Keuchel (3.43), rank 16th and 21st in the AL and 31st and 42nd in the majors, respectively. Put another way: the Astros’ worst starter’s ERA is still 14 percent better than the league average by ERA+.

The 2018 Astros’ current rotation ERA would be the best ever in the live-ball era (1920-present), a distinction actually owned by another Houston team. The ’81 Astros’ rotation had a 2.43 ERA. It featured Nolan Ryan (1.69), Bob Knepper (2.18), Don Sutton (2.61), Joe Niekro (2.82) and Vern Rhule (2.91).

OPS against: .562

Verlander leads the majors with an utterly dominant .449 OPS against, .060 better than Cole, who ranks second.

Verlander’s is made up of a .204 on-base percentage against and a .245 slugging percentage against. He has issued only 14 walks and allowed only 14 extra-base hits (10 doubles, one triple, four home runs) in his 68 2/3 innings.

Cole (.225 OBP against, .284 slugging against) also has only 14 walks but in 61 2/3 innings. He’s yielded just 15 extra-base hits (10 doubles, five homers).

Morton ranks eighth in the majors with a .558 OPS against and McCullers (.604) is 19th. Keuchel is the only one of the five outside the top 20. His .687 OPS against ranks 47th.

Double-digit strikeout performances: 12

Cole accounts for five of those but every Houston starter save for Keuchel has at least two. Cole, Morton and Verlander have each struck out 14 or more batters in a game this season, and Cole has accomplished that feat twice.

The Astros are already halfway to their franchise record for double-digit strikeout performances in a season, set by their 1964 team. Don Wilson had 10 of them that year, Tom Griffin had seven and Larry Dierker had four.

The single-season major league record for a team is 36, held by the 2001 Diamondbacks. Incredibly, Randy Johnson (23) and Curt Schilling (13) accounted for all 36.

For comparison’s sake, the 2017 Astros had only nine double-digit strikeout games. In 2016 they had seven, and in 2015 they had 10.

Strikeouts per nine innings: 10.5

Last year’s Indian’s rotation set the record in this category with 10.1. These Astros could break that, as they currently sport 10.5 strikeouts per nine. The Nationals (10.3) are also on pace to eclipse the ’17 Indians.

Cole (13.6, second-best in MLB behind Max Scherzer’s 14.3), Morton (11.3, eighth-best) and Verlander (11.0, ninth-best) each rank among the top 10 in the majors in strikeouts per nine. McCullers (10.1) ranks 20th. Only the sinkerballer Keuchel (6.9) is below 10 per nine.

Batting average against: .186

Verlander (.148), Cole (.166) and Morton (.173) rank first, second and fourth in the majors in this category. McCullers (.210) also ranks among the top 25, checking in at 23rd.

Luis Tiant and the 1968 Indians hold the record for best batting average against by a rotation, having held hitters to a .199 clip. The best in Astros’ history is .222, set by the 1986 rotation featuring that year’s NL Cy Young Award winner, Mike Scott, as well as Ryan, Knepper and Jim Deshaies.

WHIP: 0.938

Led by Verlander’s major league-best 0.714 and Cole’s second-ranked 0.795, the Astros are the only team with a rotation WHIP under 1.000. The next-best is the Nationals with a 1.070.

No Astros starter has allowed a hits-per-nine-innings worse than 7.9 (Keuchel) or a walks-per-nine-innings worse than 3.5 (McCullers). Verlander has allowed the fewest hits per nine innings in the majors (4.6). Cole (5.1) and Morton (5.5) rank second and fourth, respectively.

The 2016 Cubs set the standard for rotation WHIP in the live-ball era with a 1.067.

Swinging strikes: 12.9 percent

The Nationals (12.0 percent) have the only other rotation that has generated at least 12 percent swinging strikes, according to FanGraphs.

Among individual starters, Cole (16.0 percent) ranks third in the majors in swinging strikes behind Scherzer (17.2) and Chris Sale (16.2). Verlander (13.4), McCullers (13.4) and Morton (13.3) rank 12th, 13th and 15th, respectively.

If you're not subscribed to The Athletic, you're missing out on great Astros coverage.

Edited by Amos Moses
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Fudge Nuggets

Fudge Nuggets 19190

Posted
Posted
47 minutes ago, Spoosner said:

Good win.  Can't say I felt the same about the ESPN game calling.

No shit.  I’m watching a replay and these fucksticks are awful.  Sad thing is they will be doing the Sunday game against Boston in a couple of weeks.

Oh for the old days of Bill Miller and Joe Morgan on the Sunday night game.

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mbtex

mbtex 683

Posted
Posted
6 minutes ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

 Sad thing is they will be doing the Sunday game against Boston in a couple of weeks.

Oh for the old days of Bill Miller and Joe Morgan on the Sunday night game.

Pretty bad when Mendoza is the best one of the group.

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