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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

Mez2

Mez2 4048

Posted
Posted

just saw the score was 4-1 A's in the 6th when SImmons hits a foul ball that piscotty was going to try and make a play on it - may or may not have caught it. it was still in the field of the play when an A's fan leans over and interferes with it. same at bat, simmons hits a line drive to center and then later in that same inning a grand slam. all with two outs. that fan got ejected but holy shit if that was us, I would have been furious and likely may have kicked the shit outta him.

just goes to show you, there are dumbass fans all across MLB

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Gourmand

Gourmand 7778

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

LMJ threw his 2nd simulated game yesterday.  He's going to throw one more at the end of the week.  If it goes well, they'll let him pitch next week.  Also Morton's wife is supposed to have a baby next week.

Assuming the standings don't change and we take 12 position players onto the playoff roster, which pitchers get left off? I think we can assume that the following are locks: Verlander, Cole, Keuchel, Morton, Osuna, Rondon, Sipp, Pressly, and Smith. That leaves four spots to choose from Valdez, James, Peacock, McHugh, Devo, Harris, and LMJ.  Who gets left off? 

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Guadaloopy

Guadaloopy 11129

Posted
Posted (edited)
3 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

On LMJ, what are the roster replacement  rules if he comes up gimp in game 2 of a series ?

You can replace an injured player on the roster,  but the injured player isn’t allowed to be added back in the current series or the next one.  For example, if a player is injured in the Division Series, they wouldn’t be eligible to be on the roster again until the World Series.  

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Seasick Sailor

Seasick Sailor 3747

Posted
Posted
6 minutes ago, kevwun said:

James' control would make me nervous as shit in the playoffs.  I don't think he makes it this year.  Right now I would take Valdez, Peacock, McHugh and wait to see how LMJ looks.

I understand the concern about James, but Valdez has some control issues too. I think I'd go with James. But I'd be nervous about either coming in with a playoff game on the line. I think James's velo gives him the edge. 

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Gourmand

Gourmand 7778

Posted
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13 minutes ago, kevwun said:

James' control would make me nervous as shit in the playoffs.  I don't think he makes it this year.  Right now I would take Valdez, Peacock, McHugh and wait to see how LMJ looks.

I have the same concern but his fastball/changeup combination is pretty damn nasty. He could get big outs in the playoffs. 

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WBT

WBT 20972

Posted
Posted (edited)
27 minutes ago, Gourmand said:

Assuming the standings don't change and we take 12 position players onto the playoff roster, which pitchers get left off? I think we can assume that the following are locks: Verlander, Cole, Keuchel, Morton, Osuna, Rondon, Sipp, Pressly, and Smith. That leaves four spots to choose from Valdez, James, Peacock, McHugh, Devo, Harris, and LMJ.  Who gets left off? 

I think we're only going to carry 12 pitchers, like last year.  I think you can add McHugh as another lock.  Then it will be LMJ if healthy, and either Peacock or Harris for the last spot or both if LMJ can't go.  I see no chance that they would roster Valdez or James.

Actually, last year we only carried 11 pitchers in the 1st round and then 12 for the longer series.

Edited by WBT
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UTexasFight

UTexasFight 9817

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Straw

If they actually add him to the postseason roster who gets left off. Gattis?

Unlike most September call-ups, summoned as depth on the bench or to eat innings in blowouts, Myles Straw joined the Houston Astros last weekend for one precise reason: to run.

The 5-foot-10, 180-pound outfielder has elite speed, as demonstrated by his ridiculous stolen base total this season across Double A and Triple A. His 70 steals — exactly 35 at each level — not only led all minor leaguers but also were 14 more than the player with the next most. “That’s my game,” he said.

So as the defending World Series champions trudge toward a second consecutive AL West title, the 23-year-old Straw will be the Astros’ version of Terrance Gore. He might not even collect his first plate appearance until after they clinch the division. These final two weeks of the regular season amount to an audition for the junior college walk-on and 2015 12th-round draft pick, whose most valuable tool alone will merit him consideration for the team’s 25-man ALDS roster.

“He’s in a very interesting situation because every time he goes in the game for the foreseeable future it’s going to be important,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said. “It’s going to be [representing] the tying run, the go-ahead run, a tack-on run.”

When Straw’s on first base, everyone in the ballpark will know his intentions. It’s been that way all season, ever since he began running wild. He always exhibited the raw speed. But it wasn’t until this year when he translated it into an excessive amount of stolen bases.

Motivated by Hinch’s reveal in spring training that the Astros considered him as a pinch-running specialist last October, Straw set lofty goals for himself at the start of the season. The number of stolen bases he targeted depended on the conversation, but it reached as high as 100. Omar Lopez, Straw’s manager in Double A to begin the season, challenged him to get 70.

“It’s ridiculous,” said J.D. Davis, Straw’s teammate in Triple A for much of the season. “If he gets a good jump, there’s no shot. Like Billy Hamilton.”

Straw’s 70 stolen bases came in only 131 games. He swiped multiple bags in a game 14 times. He was caught just nine times, including a couple of instances in which he slid past the base. It mirrored his caught stealing mark from last season in 32 fewer attempts, evidence of his dramatic improvement.

Straw ran so much this season he nearly doubled the 38 steals he compiled last year in 127 games between High A and Double A. His 2017 campaign, too, had signified progress. In his first two professional seasons, he stole only a combined 43 bases in 64 attempts over 145 games. “Dude, you’re way faster than me and I have the same amount of bags as you,” Kyle Tucker would tease him.

The lower stolen base output early in Straw’s career reflected in part his two years at St. Johns River State College, where he didn’t run much at all. After he turned pro in ’15, Straw was assigned to rookie-level Greeneville of the Appalachian League. The foundation was laid there, where one of his coaches was none other than Astros legend César Cedeño, who stole a franchise-record 487 bases from 1970 to ’81. Straw’s steadily improved every year since, with the greatest jump coming this season.

“These guys were telling me like, ‘That’s your game and that can get you to the big leagues,’ ” he said. “Once they told me that, it’s like, ‘All right, that’s what I’ve got to do. Just go.’ ”



Straw, who grew up in Bradenton, Fla., flew under the radar at Braden River High, where he was cut as a freshman because he was undersized, but came back strong enough to start on varsity as a sophomore. As a high schooler, he played center field and made cameos as a submarining closer.

His speed was undeniable. Those in the dugout viewed any ball hit to a gap as an automatic out. Coaches gave him the green light to steal any time he reached first base.

“I remember when we were doing offseason workouts over by the practice football field and he would run the 40-yard dash against some football guys barefoot and he would beat some of the fastest football players we had,” said Braden River High baseball coach Craig Page, an assistant during Straw’s tenure. “That was the one thing about Myles, he was always the fastest guy around.”


Scott Rovak-USA TODAY Sports
Still, no colleges took a liking. Lacking an offer, Straw followed a high school teammate to St. Johns River, a junior college in the Northeast Florida town of Palatka. He walked on and played his way into a scholarship for his second year.

“I knew what I had playing-wise,” Straw said. “It was kind of like, ‘Just go somewhere and prove yourself.’ ”

A handful of major league teams caught on during his second year at St. Johns River, the same school that produced Howie Kendrick. It included the Astros, whose then-area scout, John Martin, first saw Straw at a showcase for JUCO sophomores. As he continued to follow him in his draft season of 2015, Martin became bullish on Straw’s speed and defense.

So much so that Martin brought Straw to the Astros’ annual pre-draft workout at their spring training complex, then in Kissimmee, Fla. In their scouting meetings the day before, Martin had invited derision from his colleagues when he rattled off his grades for this small JUCO player. He gave 80s — the highest score on a scout’s 20-to-80 scale — for not only Straw’s speed but also his defense. He also considered Straw’s arm a 70. “Who do we got here? Mickey Mantle?” one of the other scouts in the room cracked. Not exactly. But Martin, who had Straw’s hit tool as a 50, encouraged the others to take note of the toolsy outfielder in the workout.

The next day, Straw was “one of the stars of that workout,” recalled Astros assistant GM Mike Elias, who leads the team’s draft efforts. “His speed, his arm strength, his physical tools were very impressive.” There on the back fields in Kissimmee, Straw ran a 60-yard dash in a blazing 6.25 seconds.

The display particularly made a believer out of Paul Runge, then Houston’s minor league field coordinator. When on draft night the Astros plucked Straw with the fourth pick of the 12th round (349th overall), Runge and Martin elicited laughter from around the war room with celebratory high-fives and a chest bump. Everyone knew how badly they wanted Straw.

“We valued him as somebody we could take in the sixth- to 10th-round range, but we gambled a little bit that he might be around a little later on,” Elias said. “Fortunately he was still there for us in the 12th and that was as far as we were willing to wait on him. … To get 80 speed in a guy that could hit, put the bat on the ball and play exceptional outfield defense, we felt we had to pull the trigger there.”



The right-handed hitting Straw has no trouble putting the ball in play but his propensity to hit it on the ground and his extreme opposite-field approach limit his perceived all-around ceiling. He will return to Triple A next year with much to prove offensively after batting just .257/.349/.317 in his first 304 plate appearances at the level after a June promotion from Double A. But his bat’s about the only aspect of his game that’s not already major league caliber.

For the time being, the Astros have encouraged Straw to focus on the skill that got him to the majors. On Saturday, the day of his call-up, he worked before batting practice on leads with coaches Gary Pettis, Álex Cintrón and Joe Espada. Straw running the bases in pre-game early work was a common occurrence when he was in Double A, where he worked with Corpus Christi Hooks development coach Mycal Jones.

Straw made considerable improvements this year in the technical aspects of base stealing. He spent more time paying attention to detail in studying opposing pitchers’s moves and patterns. “Just being smarter, knowing the pitcher, whether he’s quick or what to look for when you run,” he explained. “Not so much counts but what the pitcher does with his body, how he’s moving and things like that.”

It’s the little things that could prove to be the difference in a postseason scenario. As a reminder of the potential value a runner like Straw could bring on a playoff roster, the Astros need to look no further than Game 5 of last year’s World Series, when Derek Fisher substituted for Brian McCann and scored the winning run on Alex Bregman’s now-legendary single. On this year’s roster, Straw could represent the legs for McCann, Martín Maldonado, Tyler White or Evan Gattis among others.

Consider the rest of the regular season a trial run.

“We’re literally just having him take his best skillset, on the bases, and apply it to the major league level,” Hinch said. “As I told him, if a pitcher’s a 1.4 [seconds to the plate] in Triple A, he’s a 1.4 in the big leagues. It’s 90 feet between the bases. When he sees a bloop and he reads go, he should go like he normally does. One of the reasons we feel comfortable with him in these last couple weeks is his instincts.”

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