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2018 Houston Astros Season Thread

Planet Houston

By Planet Houston
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henrygandorf

henrygandorf 29174

Posted
Posted

so what are the realistic goals for the stretch of death?

the way we've been hitting (before today) i would've said 5-6 would be acceptable, then go beat up on everyone else.

6-5 is winning 2 per series and can be done.  anything better would be pretty special.  winning today when we didn't necessarily have a pitching advantage is big, and gives us a legit shot at 3/4 in cleve.

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Limp Brisket

Limp Brisket 546

Posted
Posted
5 minutes ago, henrygandorf said:

so what are the realistic goals for the stretch of death?

the way we've been hitting (before today) i would've said 5-6 would be acceptable, then go beat up on everyone else.

6-5 is winning 2 per series and can be done.  anything better would be pretty special.  winning today when we didn't necessarily have a pitching advantage is big, and gives us a legit shot at 3/4 in cleve.

11-0

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henrygandorf

henrygandorf 29174

Posted
Posted

really happy for mchugh.  this obviously wasn't his first choice, but he's killing it right now.  last i checked he was leading the al in bullpen era (and i doubt 2 scoreless ip today hurt much).  also helps that he's the number 6 starter on one of the best rotations in history.  easier pill to swallow.

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Limp Brisket

Limp Brisket 546

Posted
Posted (edited)
54 minutes ago, UTexasFight said:

I was thinking about this today as well.
Buddy and I agreed 6-5 would be good especially since 7 games are on the road...except we’re better on the road.
So make it 7-4

Fuck this, you think a Yankee or Red Suck fan thinks this way?  We are the damn defending World Series champs, Holmes!!!   11-0 til it isn’t.

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9369

Posted
Posted
really happy for mchugh.  this obviously wasn't his first choice, but he's killing it right now.  last i checked he was leading the al in bullpen era (and i doubt 2 scoreless ip today hurt much).  also helps that he's the number 6 starter on one of the best rotations in history.  easier pill to swallow.

His only earned run of 2018 came on his first pitch of the season. 

 

Edit: check that. Should say “His first pitch at home this season.”

(he threw a scoreless inning in the opening series in Arlington before pitching the 9th the night the banner was raised. ambushed on a first pitch fastball.)

 

 

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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9369

Posted
Posted

This guy has so many screws loose.
I could feel myself getting dumber reading this and had to stop before the end


In the grand scheme, a Sunday afternoon start in May, even against a high-profile opponent, doesn’t amount to much. Trevor Bauer has pitched like an ace this season. Regardless of how he fares Sunday at Progressive Field, he’ll pitch again five days later and five days after that.

Ah, but this outing will come against the Astros, the team Bauer not-so-subtly linked to a dependence on sticky substances on the mound. And Bauer’s opposition atop the hill, for the first time, will be Gerrit Cole. The two were teammates at UCLA. They were not friends at UCLA.

“We had a rocky relationship in college, because he told me that I had no future in baseball and he insulted my work ethic as a freshman,” Bauer told The Athletic and MLB.com on Thursday afternoon.

So, yeah, perhaps there will be some added motivation, an uptick in adrenaline. But Bauer contends that it isn’t enough to move the needle. He has since released his tight grip on any grudge with Cole or with Mike Montgomery, a high school teammate (and now Cubs pitcher) with whom he similarly clashed.

Those differences no longer deserve residence within Bauer’s mental bandwidth. He has his new slider to worry about. He’s too busy concerning himself with opposing hitters’ tendencies and with searching for ways to exploit their weaknesses at the plate. He has drones to build, donations to make and rival fans’ buttons to push.

He’s obsessed with his craft because he enjoys pitching and cherishes the scientific potential behind it. He’s also fixated on standing out above his peers. He wants a shelf full of Cy Young Awards.

So, yeah, he wants to beat the Astros on Sunday. He wants to win, he wants to be the best, he wants the Indians to escape the inconsistencies that have plagued them at times during the first two months of the season. Those reasons come long before wanting to silence the Houstonians he has riled up in recent weeks.

It’s the same deal with the pitching matchup. Bauer and Cole are cut from different cloths. As Bauer has noted in the past, he received resistance from teammates and coaches at every stop along his path to the majors (and even at this level). Adam Plutko pitched with both at UCLA. He felt the same way about Bauer’s regimens in college as he does now as his big-league teammate: “It’s what(ever) works for you.”

Bauer and Cole have both stymied opposing hitters this season, sticky substances or no sticky substances. On Sunday, they’ll aim to continue that trend from the same mound of dirt in downtown Cleveland.

Bauer spoke at length with The Athletic and MLB.com before the Indians’ four-game set with the Astros in Cleveland about facing Houston, his history with Cole, watching Plutko progress, and more.

Not that you need extra motivation, but is there a difference between, say, your third start against the Royals in a season and facing Houston or, say, pitching in Toronto after trolling their fans?

TB: There’s extra excitement. You get up for it when you have a good pitching matchup or you’re facing a good team or you know people on the other team or whatever. Not that I draw on that motivation, but you’re conscious of it. There’s extra excitement and adrenaline or something. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what it is or how much of an effect it really has, but as an athlete, you’re conscious of the matchup.

There were some off days, so the Indians could have arranged the rotation differently for this series if they wanted. Were you hoping to pitch in this series?

TB: I start when they tell me to start. If they don’t want me to pitch for 10 days, that’s what I do. If they want me to pitch every other day, then I’d love that. Whatever. It just happened to be on schedule and I’m pitching well out of the main part of the rotation.

So much has been made of what Cole’s doing this year. Is there any part of you that’s looking forward to going head to head with him?

TB: Yeah, definitely. I have no problem with Gerrit. We had a rocky relationship in college, because he told me that I had no future in baseball and he insulted my work ethic as a freshman. I don’t take kindly to those couple things, so we had our issues. And I have, I don’t know, those feelings have long since faded. Right now, it’s cool to see him having success. He’s done a lot of hard work. He’s changed his mechanics around. He’s changed his pitch repertoire and how he uses it and his attack plan and stuff like that, and he’s having a ton of success with it. And it’s good to see, because it’s good for him, it’s good for me, it’s good for the tapestry of our lives. Regardless of how each of us feels about anything, we’re intertwined forever. I don’t know if two teammates have been drafted as high (first and third in 2011) out of college ever. I’m not sure if that’s a thing. I can’t imagine it would be, but we’re part of a historic team at UCLA. We’re part of a historic draft. We’re part of, hopefully, historic careers on both ends. I’d love nothing more than to trade Cy Youngs with him for the next 10 years, because it’s good for everybody involved. So, I’m happy for him. I’m happy that he seems to be healthy this year. I know he’s struggled with (injuries). He spent some time on the DL with some lat stuff or tricep stuff, I think, at certain points. You never want to see someone be injured, so I’m happy he’s healthy and pitching well, and it should be fun to match up against him. It’ll be kind of like old days, but not really.

You’ve noted in the past that Cole isn’t the only one who made those types of comments to you when you were younger.

TB: Yeah, we could talk about Mike Montgomery saying the same thing to me in high school and the fact that he struck me out or whatever. But, Mike and I have talked multiple times in pro ball. We’ve just happened to run across each other in the minor leagues and given that he’s been in the American League, we see each other a couple times and whatnot. So, no one really focuses on that. All the focus gets thrown onto Gerrit, because of our time at UCLA. I don’t think a lot of people even realize me and Mike were teammates in high school. But, I don’t have any problem with him, either of them. I think they do a great job as professionals. They work hard. They’ve had very good success so far, and I wish both of them continued success.

Is it the kind of thing that doesn’t bother you much anyway right now, because you can let your numbers do the talking?

TB: It doesn’t matter to me if I had shitty numbers. That’s not the issue. It takes way more energy to be upset and mad and hold a grudge at someone than it does just to live your own life. I don’t know. I probably live my own life too much. People have their opinions and whatever, which is fine. I get it. I completely, from an intellectual standpoint, I get it. I bring it on myself — things that I say. But, that’s just because I choose to speak my mind and be open and honest and stuff like that, and talk about things I’m passionate about. But, there’s no added anything, really.


Trevor Bauer leads Indians starters with a 2.35 ERA this season. (Rick Osentoski/USA Today Sports)
Is it fair to say we’ll all make a bigger deal out of this than you or he will?

TB: I don’t want to speak for him. I talked to him at the alumni game this year and had a pleasant conversation about arbitration and what he was thinking for his number and my number and stuff like that. It was pleasant. I didn’t sense any animosity on either end. So, yeah, it’s a storyline. I get it. It’s fun to write about, because you can play up the controversy and you can get a headline to click on or whatever. I know Sports Illustrated tried to do that earlier this year and make out my talking about league-wide spin rate issues and foreign substance policy to be attacking him or because I’m overcome with jealousy. I know some of their players think I’m overcome with jealousy. Maybe I should take a picture of how green my face is right now and post that on social media. Apparently, I come off as a super jealous, angry young man.

So, it’s not that you want to prove Cole wrong — you wanted to prove all those people wrong from high school on up, the people who criticized your training or how you didn’t conform to traditional ways of doing things. How much is this not about any one individual, but being driven by the many people who doubted your process along the way?

TB: I’m driven by personal achievement. It took me a long time to figure out what actually drove me, like, that I don’t care about the money, why I don’t care about the attention or the fame or the whatever. I’d be perfectly happy to go live in a van and travel and go fly my drone for two straight years and have no one have any clue where I am. I would be perfectly fine to do that, but I’m driven by personal achievement. I want to be a billionaire, not because of the money, but just to say I did it. Like, look, I had this goal and I found a way to achieve it. It’s like, when I win my first Cy Young, it’s going to be a super proud moment for me. I went to UCLA to try to win the Golden Spikes Award, and I did. That’s one of my proudest moments. I set this goal, I had to do all this work and find a way to get there and then I got there. That’s what drives me — the personal achievement of it. And then, proving people wrong or right or whatever, as long as I get it right, I don’t really care if it was my idea or someone else’s idea. I’m about being successful and being the best that I can be. And, if someone can help me, I try to listen to all inputs, right? And, if it’s valuable and if I can use it, then I use it. And, if it’s not, then I go on with whatever else I’m doing to try to get better. So, yeah, it was never about one individual. Or, my high school coach, there’s people like that. I don’t like my high school coach. I’ll never like him. I don’t feel like he treated me very fairly. I feel like he treated me like, he was intentionally, he attempted to be harmful and stuff like that. But, I’m not holding a grudge against him. It’s just not a person I choose to interact with or try to talk to or anything like that. He doesn’t hold any importance or significance in my life. He’s just part of my history.

Some people call that taking up mental real estate …

TB: This game’s hard enough. I try to allocate what mental bandwidth I have to useful information like how I can get better and what I need to do emotionally to balance out the emotion of baseball. That’s why I started to travel. That’s why I started flying drones. That’s why I started photography and videography and stuff like that. It’s why I want to get into business. That stuff helps balance out my life in general. That’s what I’m concerned with. How do I help my close friends be more fulfilled and be better individuals and be more successful in life? How do I become the best baseball player I can be? How do I help my dad and my family and my sister? How do I move the industry forward as a whole with baseball, and help future teams and whatnot? Even though, apparently, when I do that it gets blown up into conspiracy theories or whatever the heck happened in Chicago. But, yeah, that’s what I’m concerned with. That’s what I care about. The other stuff is just noise.

With Plutko, is it weird to be teammates with someone you were in college with and how cool is it to see his progression?

TB: It’s not weird at all. Obviously, we’ve known each other a while and have a long history together. It’s the same thing I went through with Charles Brewer when I was with Arizona. I pitched with him in 2009 and then we were teammates in Double A and Triple A. He was here for a little bit, later, a couple years back. So, it’s something I’m familiar with and it’s just really cool to see our entire 2011 pitching rotation is going to be playing in this series — well, I guess he won’t technically pitch in this series, but we’re all on the big-league roster for this series with the Astros. So, that’s pretty cool to see. It’s a testament to all of the talent level and the hard work of all three members of that staff that are now here. It’s just really cool. Very cool. I talked to him a little bit in spring trainings over the years about mechanical stuff or pitch mix or how to throw a pitch type or whatever, especially with what happened last year, the surgery he had, to see him come back from it so strong and the velo’s up a little bit. He’s pitched really well when he’s come up this year, so that’s been really fun to watch.

Was it fun to see him take the reins at UCLA after you were gone?

Yeah, in 2013, he pitched with a freaking broken scapula or broken back and went full Mike Tyson on people. We got to the final series in 2010 and couldn’t finish it. It was the most successful UCLA team there had ever been and then a couple years later, he finished it off. It’s been cool to watch his progression as a person, as a player and as a

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Ldogg53

Ldogg53 514

Posted
Posted
8 hours ago, UTexasFight said:

Meanwhile that’s already Altuve’s fourth 0-5 game of the year.
He had a total of four 0-5 games in all of 2016 and 2017 combined.

An 0-4 tomorrow would drop him to an even .300

Fuck.  This is beyond just being in a slump.  Something is clearly wrong with his approach and swing right now. 

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Hank Chinaski

Hank Chinaski 6310

Posted
Posted
8 hours ago, UTexasFight said:

This guy has so many screws loose.
I could feel myself getting dumber reading this and had to stop before the end


I know Sports Illustrated tried to do that earlier this year and make out my talking about league-wide spin rate issues and foreign substance policy to be attacking him or because I’m overcome with jealousy. I know some of their players think I’m overcome with jealousy. Maybe I should take a picture of how green my face is right now and post that on social media. Apparently, I come off as a super jealous, angry young man.

So he talks shit, and when he gets called out on it, he tries to play the victim card and gets all passive-aggressive? 

What a bitch. 

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formermav43

formermav43 4599

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Posted
47 minutes ago, Ldogg53 said:

Fuck.  This is beyond just being in a slump.  Something is clearly wrong with his approach and swing right now. 

Meh. Through 50 games last year, he was hitting .300 with a .365 OBP. Currently at .306 and .357.

The obvious concern is his power. But he was slugging below .450as late as mid-May last year. This would be his worst power hitting season since 2013, and he obviously wasn’t yet a slugger when he won that first batting title in 2014.

That’s not going to hold up for a full season. His exit velocity, hard hit %, xSLG, and xwOBA are all actually HIGHER than last season’s numbers for the full year, suggesting he’s been more unlucky than anything.

Not worried at all. 

 

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Hank Chinaski

Hank Chinaski 6310

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Posted
48 minutes ago, Ldogg53 said:

Fuck.  This is beyond just being in a slump.  Something is clearly wrong with his approach and swing right now. 

He's in a slump for sure, but he'll likely bounce back soon enough. This stretch reminds me of September 2016 - he was easily the MVP front-runner heading into Sep, then went into a funk like this for pretty much the entire month. 

Looking at his peripherals...His line drive % is up. His hard-hit ball % is up. His ground ball % is down. 

Main thing that stands out - his overall contact % is down - 82.5% in '18 compared to 87.9% for his career (it was 85% last year). He is making less contact on pitches both inside and outside the zone. 

Also - his HR/fly ball is at about half his career rate, and he is hitting more balls to CF than normal. So could be some degree of bad luck there. 

All in all - he should be fine. His contact rate is maybe mildly concerning, but probably too early and not large enough to worry about that. 

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Scraps

Scraps 13531

Posted
Posted

I get that Altuve is batting over .300 and his OBP is close to regular.  I don't like that his SLG% is at .403.  He is regressing so far this year to, not 2015 Jose, but 2012/2013 Jose.  

He is a bad ass so I am sure he will get on track, but he has looked flat out awful at the plate for large portions of this season early on.  I'm not talking #s, I am talking pitch by pitch watching him.  

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