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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

henrygandorf

henrygandorf 29189

Posted
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1 hour ago, kevwun said:

They should have gotten a rental 3rd baseman and moved Bregman to short for the rest of the season.  They had to have known that Correa's back injury was bad.

so if correa is out out, how does this go?

bregs to ss, yuli to 3rd, white to 1st, marwin to lf, gattis to dh?  some sort of variation of this?  possibly marwin to 3rd/ss, yuli at 1b, white at dh, and jake or kemp in the outfield?

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9431

Posted
Posted
so if correa is out out, how does this go?
bregs to ss, yuli to 3rd, white to 1st, marwin to lf, gattis to dh?  some sort of variation of this?  possibly marwin to 3rd/ss, yuli at 1b, white at dh, and jake or kemp in the outfield?

Yuli is not moving to third

Marwin and Bregs would cover the left side of the infield with a lot of Kemp in LF in the playoffs
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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9431

Posted
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Kaplan yesterday on Correa/LMJ:

The prizes of the franchise-altering 2012 draft class will be at the center of two of the biggest storylines of the final week of Houston’s regular season.

For Carlos Correa, the Astros’ seven-game road trip to Toronto and Baltimore that begins Monday represents his final chance to find his swing before the postseason. For Lance McCullers Jr., it’s his only shot to prove his health and effectiveness before the team sets its playoff roster.

Both players were the subjects of conversation when Astros manager A.J. Hinch addressed the media Friday at Minute Maid Park. Especially Correa, who was conspicuously absent from the lineup for a second consecutive game. In a last-ditch effort to extract better production from their star shortstop heading into the playoffs, the Astros have committed to putting him on the shelf for the entire weekend.

Still apparently symptomatic from his back injury and amid the worst offensive stretch of his career, Correa won’t return to the field until Monday’s game in Toronto at the earliest. Hinch described this weekend as “a complete break” for Correa, who wasn’t available for comment on Friday.

In the 34 games he’s played since he returned in early August from his disabled list stint, Correa has seen his overall season OPS drop to a merely average .723. The 2017 All-Star has batted .174 with a woeful .480 OPS in 140 plate appearance since his activation, results that have dropped him from fourth to sixth in Houston’s batting order.

“He hasn’t looked comfortable,” Hinch said. “He’s been able to maintain [his performance] defensively, but it’s looked like he’s had a little bit of a governor on his swing when he’s been up to bat. I haven’t seen him quite let it go really since his time off the DL.”

Correa will still accompany the Astros to Toronto on Sunday night and they will reassess his status Monday. Hinch was adamant that Correa will play on next week’s road trip, though he didn’t commit to it necessarily being the first game of the Toronto series. The team’s doctors, Hinch said, “feel good about where he’s going to be at the end of this rest period.”

If getting Correa’s bat going is the Astros’ top non-division clincher-related priority of next week, putting McCullers in position to try to cement his spot on the playoff roster might be second. The starter, out since Aug. 4 with a forearm strain, could be available to make his first relief appearance as early as Monday. He might have time for only two outings before regular season’s end, however.

The Astros have built McCullers’ right arm back up as a reliever who could go one-plus innings. In a simulated game Friday at the team’s spring training facility in West Palm Beach, Fla., he faced a batter, rested for five or 10 minutes and then pitched a full inning. He was set to fly back to Houston Friday night and will be around the team this weekend.

Hinch indicated the team would lay out a plan for McCullers for the regular season’s final seven days.

“I’d like to see him pitch and pitch well and feel like he’s himself with using his pitches,” Hinch said. “We want to see the spin on the breaking ball that we’re accustomed to seeing. We want to see the velocity we’re accustomed to seeing. But we need to see strikes, too. And so I want him to be an effective major league pitcher. I know it sounds sort of simple, but we’re running out of time.”

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9431

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What’s the scoop on Fast’s departure?

Mike Fast, a core member of Jeff Luhnow’s front office throughout the Houston Astros’ rise from last-place finishers to 2017 World Series champions, has left the team after seven seasons to seek a new opportunity.

It’s not known what prompted Fast’s decision to depart the only team he’s ever worked for, but he said Friday he hopes to continue working in baseball. His contract with the Astros is set to expire at the end of October and he informed Luhnow on Wednesday he wouldn’t seek a renewal.

“It was time to move on, and I’m looking for other opportunities,” Fast told The Athletic. “I definitely would like to latch on with another team.”

As the director of their research and development department, Fast filled a pivotal role in the Astros’ data-driven front office. He assumed that title and began leading their analytics team after the 2015 season, when Sig Mejdal was promoted from director of decision sciences to special assistant to the GM.

Fast declined to elaborate on Friday about his reasons for leaving the Astros, with whom he was in charge of eight analysts. Given his pedigree and reputation around the game, it’s expected he will have his choice of suitors for his next landing spot.

Fast was among Luhnow’s first hires after Luhnow left the St. Louis Cardinals to lead the Astros in December 2011. He officially joined the team in February 2012 as one of their top analysts after proving his expertise in player performance-tracking systems like PITCHf/x and HITf/x through his writing job at Baseball Prospectus. He is also considered a pioneer in pitch-framing research. Before he began his career in baseball, Fast spent 17 years as a semiconductor engineer.

“It was amazing. There are a lot of very special people that I worked with and many of them still here with the Astros. I’ve never had a job like this before,” Fast said. “Obviously, we went from bottom of the standings to World Series and that didn’t happen by accident. There were a lot of people putting in a lot of hard work and a lot of amazing baseball people in all departments. I’m just very grateful for the opportunity to have been part of that.”

Fast was one of five department directors in the Astros’ front office, the others being Pete Putila (player development), Bill Firkus (sports medicine and performance), Armando Velasco (minor league operations) and Jay Edmiston (Florida operations). It’s uncertain as to how the Astros will fill Fast’s position, be it internally or with an outside hire. Luhnow declined to comment Friday on Fast’s departure, citing a team policy about not discussing the status of front office employees currently under contract.

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