Old school baseball fans recently have had to throw away ideas that had been carved in stone over many years of baseball watching, but blasted to bits by technological dynamite in this new nerd world order. Stealing bases? Not an efficient way of scoring runs. Bunting? Fuggeddaboutit. Placing extra fielders on one side of the field daring the opponent to hit against their trends? Now you are talking. There are tons of others….discuss among your selves.
Time to give the Chippy’s for the second month of the season. It is no surprise that the starting pitcher winner is truly outstanding as compared to the everyday player and bullpen winners.
On the brink of summer, the Astro fans are rightfully upset with a bullpen that had problems closing out games in the 2017 playoffs and recently has struggled mightily closing out games in the 2018 regular season. As of June 1, the Astros were 7th in the AL in save conversion at 65% and seem to bring drama to every situation even when they are successful….especially Ken Giles.
Every front office has a myriad of decisions to make during and after the season and the 2018 Astros are no exception. Here is a look at a set of decisions that this team may face in the upcoming months.
Yes, ball player-wise Lance McCullers is young, but he’s not that young. Carlos Correa is younger. Alex Bregman is younger. When Jose Altuve was Lance’s age he led the majors in batting average and hits. When Larry Dierker was LMJ’s age he was a second-time All-Star in his 7th full season in the majors. Heck, Audie Murphy won the Congressional Medal of Honor at the age of 19 for holding off a company of Germans single-handedly and then leading a counterattack without ammunition.
Dan P’s note….I started researching and writing this post before the SF series, so some of this may seem a bit out of date as life has slowed my writing down the last few days. Still I discovered some things that confirmed what I thought and others that surprised me in putting this post together.
Under the header “Obvious Take” the 2018 Astros starting pitching is pretty good. Or damn good. Or unbelievably good…..
Let’s see…Dave Hudgens was here when the offense was not as good. Alex Cora and Carlos Beltran show up and the offense gets better. Alex Cora and Carlos Beltran leave and the offense gets worse. Voila! Dave Hudgens is to blame.
