10 reasons to step back from (or up to) the ledge for Astros

The Astros are in a bit of a funk having lost five of their last six games and 8 of their last 13.  They are wasting some terrific starting pitching with non-clutch hitting and non-clutch relief pitching. In this 2018 season, the Astros have become really good at winning big (10-1 in games decided by five or more runs) and losing small (4-6 in one-run games).

Absorbing the comments on the blog, it seems that a lot of folks are panicking about their team and ready to jump off the ledge or even more sadly becoming apathetic about their team’s apathetic (or pathetic) performance to date.

So here are 10 reasons to get off the ledge, or return to near the ledge, to be interested, but not suicidal or apathetic.

  1. They have played only 36 games (21-15) ; they have 136 games to go. It is possible they can play better in the next 77% of the season than they have to date.
  2. Even after all of their recent struggles, there are 24 teams in Major League Baseball with worse records than the Astros.
  3. Other “sure thing” teams are struggling worse than the Astros are this season. Cleveland (17-17), Washington (18-17), Cubs (16-15) and Dodgers (15-19) are all far underperforming the pre-season expectations for them and are worse than the Astros.
  4. The Astros have not been buried in their division by their performance, only trailing the Angels by one game to date.
  5. Hitting rough spots is pretty normal even in the best of seasons. Look at 2018. In April the Astros lost four of five at one point and four of six later in the month. In May they lost four of six at one point. June? Five of eight. July? Four of seven. August? Nine of 11 and separately, six of nine. And September? Lost five of six at one point.
  6. The Astros do not have any hitter, other than Max Stassi, who is exceeding expectations at the plate to this point. Maybe not all of them will get hot, but common sense points to them progressing towards the mean.
  7. The Astros have the best rotation in the majors. They have a shot every night out to win and when the hitting does come around, the team has room to absorb some digression by the starting staff.
  8. There is the possibility of help coming up from the minors at some point this season. J.D. Davis (.425 BA/1.129 OPS), Tyler White (.327/ 1.029), Drew Ferguson ( .345/.948 ), Tony Kemp (.336/.840) and Kyle Tucker (.292 / .796) all could assist in pumping up the offense.
  9. The Front Office should be trusted. They earned the trust by picking up the huge piece needed in 2017, Justin Verlander. If something is needed they will work to fill the gap.
  10. Baseball is a streaky unpredictable game. In the Astros worst stretch of 36 games last season they went 15-21, six games worse than the start to this season. They could be in a lot worse shape than they are.

So, did that….

  • Make you feel better?
  • Worse?
  • More apathetic?
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158 responses to “10 reasons to step back from (or up to) the ledge for Astros”

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  1. Springer swung and missed on 3 consecutive 92 MPH fastballs in the zone yesterday to end the game with the tying runs on base.
    Tell me again that this team is not really screwed up in the head.
    I’m apathetic. But so are the Astros hitters.
    One thing that I have heard thousands of times in baseball is the sentence “It’s early. ” One sentence I’ve heard even more in my time following baseball is “It’s too late, now.”
    The thing that is a dead giveaway as to the Astros situation is that no pitcher is afraid to throw the ball over the plate to the Astros because, as a team, they can’t hit the baseball hard.
    Maybe it will change for a few hitters, but it won’t for some others.

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  3. Looking for, recognizing, and responding to trends – positive and negative – is just what guys who have spent years coaching real players on real teams do. Once this kind of feedback -which admittedly is more effective hands-on, coach on player, than in a blog – was coveted. The idea is to encourage and capitalize on positive trends and isolate, stop in their tracks, and reverse negative trends. Now, in blog world, it turns out we have to be politically correct. We have to say all the right happy koolaid ‘buzz’ words and recite all the positive ‘bullet points’ – especially ‘it’s still early’. My manager used to reply: “Yeah, but the attack on Pearl Harbor started ‘early’ too! So tell the sailors on the USS Arizona it’s still too early to be concerned!”

    Pointing out negative trends and weak spots is neither panicking or jumping off a ledge. It is just engaging with the reality of real baseball – that not everything – or indeed much in this game – just magically gets better with time.

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  4. I don’t think going to bed at 10:00 PM makes me apathetic, but I am not going to get into the rut of agonizing my way through 162 regular season baseball games. I’m trying to have balanced life Dan! I’m going to take some night games off and miss some day games, might even go on the 10 day a couple of times to stay fresh. And if the club wakes up and if the GM makes the correct moves, well then I’ll be ready along with them in October.

    I am intrigued though. When does Luhnow start making adjustments? I still think he’ll wait and won’t do much of anything unless we start getting too far away from home field advantage.

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    • I was not really pointing to you in the far-eastern zone on that account – but I just keep seeing people say they are going to go do something else for a while or giving up when we are down a few runs early or whatever.
      Anyways see my other comment that my back ache is making me a bit grumpy – that is the root of some of my thoughts I’m sure.

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      • If it makes you, or the back, feel any better, first thing I do when I wake up is to check the scores. Now if I’m on a 10 day DL in Peru, the scores might not be so handy. But who knows, maybe they’ll win 10 straight.

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  5. I have no problem with anyone pointing out problems with the team – you don’t have to walk in lock step. I like the banter when we all think different ways – as long as it is polite banter. That is why I devoted the last post to “What would you do/change if you were in charge”. I threw out 20+ possible changes / actions to take. Do I believe they are all necessary or even sensical? Not necessarily, but yes I believe they should be taking some action.
    So, today I’m swinging the other way a bit because I do believe it is too early to say whether this team is on the Highway to Hell or is hitting a low point that they will swing up from. I think they need to be seriously considering some action and I’m counting on them taking action to improve – that is why I have #8 and #9 on there.
    And I hurt my back on the weekend so I am not in my best mood folks.

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      • My wife made a 5 layer lasagna for her father and I was carrying it away from my body trying to keep it level and just strained the heck out of it. As I said to her – if it was only 3 layer lasagna I would be OK……

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      • Cheese, Mr. P, they’s many a man would love a 5-layer-lasagna-making wife. That’s honestly the first time I’ve seen that quoted as precipitating back injury. Tell your spouse she’s a humdinger ricotta slinger.

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      • I never order lasagna in a restaurant because it never lives up to what I can get at home

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      • Yeah, every decade or so I flounder and order lasagna out. It’s never better. We’re going to have to get you a rolling cart though Dan, so you can get the real deal from oven to table.

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  6. Actually don’t know what to think.
    I expected some regression but what I’m seeing is shocking.
    Personally I think we’re past the wait and see stage.

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  7. I agree Sandy I thought a bit of a WS hangover., but am they have regressed way beyond my expectations, except JV, salty, and Cole, they still have the fire in their eyes , the rest to much clowning around , they need to get pissed of at loosing and looking like chumps!

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  8. Trouble is, they are almost to the quarter pole….and the position players are kinda sucking. Pretty soon the rotation is going to think they have to be perfect and settle for a one run game. THAT’S going to mentally wear your pitchers down, REAL FAST. If I was Luhnow, I’d pitch a plan to Crane to bring back Beltran as a special, special assistant to help bring some batting mojo back to these guys. Give him $8 million to wet his appetite! Dang…..they paid him $16 million last year to babysit these guys! If Crane would do that, this team would wake up in a HURRY! Just a thought…..but it might just work.
    They can’t keep going like this, or the clubhouse is going to turn on its self.
    Beltran was (in his prime) was one of the most pure hitters who ever held a bat.

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  9. Dan, you gave it the good old college try, but the new post didn’t make me feel either better or worse. I try never to feel bad about baseball. I just examine, identify, and comment on trends. But just so you know, my freind, your blog entry today didn’t make me feel either apathetic OR pathetic – or for that matter, unsympa-thetic. It didn’t make me want to come to your house and rob your medicine cabinet of whatever anes-thetic you might be using for your recent unfortunate bout of 5-layered Lasagna-scented back pain. Neither did anything you said make me septic, feel the need to gargle with Chloro-septic, or even to wash my keyboard off with anti-septic. And furthermore, nothing you said made me feel the least bit hectic, pectic, apoplectic, apologectic, dyslexic, or anorexic.

    Gird your pencil upon your pencil protector, sir, and WRITE-ON.

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    • Actually I wore pocket protectors (not pencil protectors) ….but never as an engineer (though I wore a white short sleeved dress shirt and black tie forever until casual Fridays leaked into the rest of the week – but that is another story). I wore the pocket protectors to shield me from leaking pens when I worked at a long gone grocery store, Lewis and Coker in the late 70’s while finishing college.

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      • My dad was a civil engineer, Dan. He said everyone thought engineers wore pocket protectors, but that was architects. He said civil engineers wear PENCIL protectors – i.e. khaki shirts starched so stiff that if you got hit by the snapback of a tree limb as you were surveying through wooded areas, the pencils you kept in your shirt pocket for your field notes would not be broken by the force.

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      • I worked at the Whataburger on Gessner near Hammerly and then when my girl friend (now my wife) quit Lewis and Coker – I took her spot at the store at Bunker Hill and Katy. I stocked, sacked and did check out.

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  10. I have a question. Last year several here said “All I want to see is the Astros win one World Series and I’ll be happy.” So, what happened? I don’t see many happy bloggers.

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    • 1. Never said anything like that.
      2. Am deliriously happy – good or bad baseball can’t change that.
      3. Blogging by its nature tends to draw out criticism and fault-finding – because what’s going wrong is what always needs immediate attention, not what’s going right.

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    • I’m happy. I’m not going to get too aggravated over things unless they allow the Angels to put some real distance between them. That’s not a good enough team to win the division without help.

      The Angels, Yankees, and Diamondbacks are all good teams with some flaws. The Astros could have won all three of those series…but didn’t. The team needs to get down to business and beat the teams they are supposed to beat (on paper) and then learn/remember how to grind out wins against the real contenders the next time we see them.

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    • There may have been a few of us who said we could die happy if they won (of course now none of us are interested in keeping up the dying side of the bargain). What I do remember is that even after they won it – I asked if people had bought into and trusted Luhnow and some said yes, but…. they reserved the right to question their moves in the future.

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    • Tim, I still have not adjusted to my Astros being WS champs. So what’s happening here is……..these is the ‘Stros I knows. In no way am I unhappy, just joining in the cluster angst about how to emerge from the doldrums. Like Dan said, it’s a streaky game and the stats don’t yet support self-harm.

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    • These are all good answers. I actually stole this from someone on Twitter because there were more promises on Twitter that all they wanted was one World Series win. I didn’t see it as much here, but I really liked that tweet and wanted to ask it here. I thought it was apropos considering the blog title.

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    • I’m stil happy.
      But….I don’t them to regress back to 2013. At lest compete.
      This team is built to do better. Something or someone is missing.

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      • That won’t ever happen again, Sandy. Our front office and owner are too smart at what they do to ever allow what we saw in 2013 happen again. This team is going to be similar to the Cardinals where every year they are looked at as a playoff possibility.

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    • This group, without Garrett Cole, won it all. Yep, Beltran is gone. Did he really play that big a role? Cora is gone. Did he really play that big a role? I don’t think so. I think we are more talented this year, unless a whole bunch of guys had their career years in 2017. That remains to be seen. And what Luhnow does when remains to be seen. I think it would be a shame to have so much talent and underperform. Like I said earlier, I’m intrigued too see how 2018 plays out.

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  11. If we play out the remaining games at this pace we’ll have 94 wins. I think that is almost certainly going to get them into the postseason and probably still wins the division. However, the problem is apparent to me. We’ve had fantastic starting pitching and the guys at the top of the lineup are still amazing. Look at Cole’s gem the other night and the damage the top four did. It was all those guys. Luhnow and Hinch are going to have to decide whether the other guys in the lineup are going to break out and get back to mediocre or if they need to make a move.

    Also, the bullpen stinks…but they have foolishly allocated resources there and will be hard pressed to fix it. Personally, I think they should add a rule that anytime a reliever gives up a run (inherited or his own) he has to take the bullpen car out to the mound next appearance.

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  13. Thank you for the link Dan. He has been in my prayers ever since we found out about it. My hope is that if he wants to come back to baseball, it will be on his terms. Life is short…..it’s not a dress rehearsal!
    Tim, I’m not down on the guys….*yet* but they have the talent, they just need to get their mojo back. Can’t let it creep into the clubhouse.
    Ok you RUBES get off the mat and get your pitchers some R U N S!!!

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  19. Stassi missed out on driving Reddick in with a double the first time, but knocks him in with a double the second time.

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  23. Reading these comments, top to bottom remind me of the old song by Allan Sherman about the kid at camp.

    Hello Muddah, hello Faddah
    Here I am at Camp Grenada
    Camp is very entertaining
    And they say we’ll have some fun if it stops raining

    And then the game starts and we get the end of his song.

    Wait a minute, it’s stopped hailing
    Guys are swimming, guys are sailing
    Playing baseball, gee that’s bettah
    Muddah, Faddah kindly disregard this letter

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  24. Another stat for Diane. Remember when we had that Young Team. In 2018, ESPN says the oldest team is Toronto at 29.9 years of age. Houston is 6th oldest at 29.1. Youngest team is Phillies at 26.5, followed by Yankees as 4th youngest at 27.4, Boston 9th youngest at 28.1.

    Not sure what that means but it has to be an important stat or ESPN would not be calculating it.

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    • That sounds like a question right up my alley! In 2017, the A’s had the lowest revenue in all of baseball at $210M. The Marlins and Rays both had $219M. Houston came in at #6 at $347M. Spotrac estimates the A’s salary commitments at about $74M. Set aside some money to pay draftees and any stakes they have in their minor league / developmental / overseas operations and there is still a healthy amount of money to operate their team, do the laundry, and make sure they’re flying charters between stops.

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      • Why am I picturing something from “Major League” where they are going town to town in a bus held together by chicken wire and the whirlpool is stirred by an outboard motor…..

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  26. So nice to finally see Springer and Marwin break out of their haze. Now for Altuve, Correa, Gurriel, and Bregman to do the same. And while I have no illusions that Gattis will break .200 any time soon, at least even he managed to get a hit tonight!

    And Dallas Keuchel, that was just pathetic!

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    • Correa is hitting .300 with a 140 wRC+. I think he’s doing just fine. Altuve is not quite at his normal level, but still a respectable .322 with a 125 wRC+. The one issue plaguing the Astros this year more than anything is a lack of power (I blame Gattis). Maybe last night will get them out of their doldrums.

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  27. 16-2! Sipp comes in and gives up a run. You just can’t come in to pitch without giving up a run can you Tony. Verlander probably wants to smack someone!
    You ain’t gonna get 16 runs off Manea tomorrow!! Night everyone!!!

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  29. For the second time in three nights, Sean Stutzman came into the last inning for Corpus Christi to try to get a save and gave up a walkoff grand slam.

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  30. After last night’s game, I decided to come off the ledge and crawl back through the window. However, the pessimist in me will keep the window open in case I need a sudden exit.

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  31. Not to prove a point, but just wondering. Franciso Liriano was primarily a starter all his career. He didn’t do well here while pitching out of the bullpen. He has a good beginning of the season in Detroit as a starter.

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  32. It was nice to get a win and see almost all the bats come alive. Now let’s see if we’re starting a new trend. Manaea on the mound for the A’s. Let’s put a hurtin’ on him and hope LMJ’s stuff is electric.

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  33. Haven’t read comments below but great post, DanP!

    What I’ll say to reiterate my original comments on Keuchel (weeks ago) is that my sources say he figures into longer term plans (of which I *still cannot believe), but that it makes sometimes an insurmountable difference even as good as DK is, to stay out of trouble when a.) your team is losing and cannot get a hitting rhythm, b.) get squeezed and must pitch from hitter’s counts. Having to pinpoint when he’s down 3-1, when it should be 2-2 makes all the difference in the world.

    As you saw last night — or maybe got an incomplete view by reading the stats/watching gamecast online — Keuchel was masterful. Entering the game as the least supported pitcher in all of baseball hello, his team finally made a turnaround.

    I’ve watched the A’s on gamecast mostly all season, as with the other teams. Their recent surge is nice but nobody has the armament of the Astros. For the record, the only game all season the Astros have *not* been heavy favorites was the Severino start. That’s it!

    One other minor point. A few weeks week ago Stassi’s framing was highlighted nationally. I noticed his next few starts the umps didn’t give those marginal calls to him. I suspect because umpires realized he was using slieght of hand. Meaning that everyone in this league is making adjustments [every team is employing shifts and using sabermetrics; and they’re anticipating how the Astros will counter].

    I read a quote by Cora the other day, talking about how good his pitcher is doing, got a big out at the end of the game – his outfielder made a great play to seal the win for the pitcher, he said, “we put a lot of work into making sure that fielder is positioned in the right place.”

    Think about how much of a team game this is if your fielders aren’t positioned to where the ball has to be pitched, how ERA is effected by fielding. Recall how difficult it was to win and Demoralizing with Oswalt and Clemens getting zero run support?

    Three step plan:
    1. Gattis to DL for Davis
    2. Jake to Fresno for White
    3. Close eye on Kemp Ferguson for Fisher; Hoyt Paulino for “least effective” (candidate, Sipp). Keep Giles Smith Harris lower leverage.

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  34. Great to see a deluge of runs last night and for Keuchel to get the support. I was pretty concerned with him at first when he was locating most everything up but he did get better as the game progressed. Still I had these thoughts that I could not get to post last night before the game and I think still appropriate. If a win in April and May is as good as a win in August and September (and I do believe that to be true) then we are squandering historically great starting pitching by not addressing the offense right now. When the inevitable pitching pinch comes we won’t have what should be a bunch of easy wins in the bank. We were horrible in August last year but had been so good leading up to it that it didn’t matter. We have played a significant number of games to warrant giving someone else a chance to produce. Kemp surely doesn’t have Fisher’s power but I’ll gladly give up some power for a markedly reduced K rate. Marisnick is a tougher send down because of his history as a bona fide major league center FIELDER but his ineptness at the plate just cannot be ignored. Could Davis be any worse? And Davis was starting to hit before getting sent down and has continued to rake at Fresno. Gattis is the hardest nut to swallow but he is lost, will not get enough consistent at bats to be found and White has at least some defensive versatility. Moving Gattis will be a big hit in the wallet but revenue has to be going through the roof with higher attendance and ticket prices. This is a performance driven business. We have alternatives to our lousy offensive production. Patience is overrated.

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  35. doc, I don’t believe moving Gattis will be a big hit in the wallet. At this very moment the Astros are paying him. THAT is a big hit in the wallet!
    Letting him go and paying him, while bringing up someone who might hit sixty points higher (.247?) is a lot less expensive than paying him to hit .187 with one home run that landed in the first row of the Crawford Boxes.
    Currently, Gattis has a negative 0.3 WAR meaning he is costing the Astros wins and money. His OPS+ is 53. If he keeps this up he could cost the Astros more than money because he is leaving runners on base that the Astros really need to score.

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  36. So, let’s get this straight – the Oakland A’s came in to last night’s game having swept the Orioles and had an above .500 record and were hosting the World Champion Houston Astros and their official attendance was 7,360…..no I am not missing a digit there. And from the views on the TV last night, it seemed like about 1/2 those 7,360 were disguised as seats.
    I looked back and they have had pretty bad attendance other than opening day and when the Red Sox came to town, except for bringing in 46,000+ for a Tuesday game against the ChiSox. How did they do that? They gave away free tickets to that game marking the 50th anniversary of them coming to Oakland. And even then they only gave away 46,000 of 70,000 possible on a night where they took off the tarps in the upper deck.
    It would seem like they are ripe to be poached. Maybe Las Vegas swoops in for a second major league team or Portland pulls them up the coast a bit.

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  37. After watching the reply of the route Jake, playing right field, took on Lucroy’s opposite field smash in the 9th inning, I now understand why when he and George Springer are on the field at the same time George usually moves to right and Jake takes center. It’s not that Jake is a better centerfielder than George – he isn’t. It is that Jake just does not read the ball off the bat – or the natural oppo boppo slice – nearly as well from that side of the field.

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    • Fisher had a horrible jump on what was just a fly ball that he played into a double on the previous play.
      Jake then looked like a rookie on the ball that played him in right field .
      Sipp did deserve better last night.

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  38. I’m going to procrastinate a bit. Fisher actually has an 0.4 WAR. He’s hitting .267 with a 1.000 OPS over the past two weeks. Unfortunately, his numbers with RISP remain awful. Maybe he’s a no pressure hitter. But, in spite of all, he’s managed a .674 OPS on the season. Tony Kemp has a lifetime .593 OPS. I hang with Fish a bit longer.

    Jake has a OBP of .162. That’s incredible. His OPS is .464. Lifetime it’s .637. That .815 last year was a hoax. Jake is a hoax. Bring in Davis or White.

    Gattis is the real head scratcher. But I can’t personally send him packing as of yet. His worst career BA is .246. Worst OPS is .748. Right now he’s hopeless, but I have to believe he’s going to correct back soon. He’s the one guy out of the three that has an encouraging history. He’s 31 years old. He’ll get better.

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    • All of Fisher’s numbers are inflated because of his SLG, which is very high . It is high because he has 8 extra base hits. The guy has only hit 3 singles out of 11 hits. 29 Ks in 62 plate appearances. That will deliver a big SLG, but that is all he’s had to offer.
      Fisher has been a huge disappointment.

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      • Agree OP. Huge disappointment. But we don’t have a lefty bat to replace Fisher with right now. Maybe Kemp will do more, but maybe not. I think Fisher will get a bit more time.

        Dan, I’m yawning already so will be signing off. I don’t expect to wake up to 16 runs again, but I think Manaea can be had. Hope your back is a bit better.

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      • Fisher has one of the highest exit velo’s in baseball. I’m with Dave on this one and I stick with Fisher. However, I’m also sticking with Jake since we don’t have a solid defensive OFer in the minors that can replace him. The only player I think the Astros consider removing from the 25-man roster is Gattis, but it probably won’t happen until the end of May.

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  39. If the core of the team starts to hit but Gattis, Fisher, Marisnick continue to flounder, I’d say Luhnow has no choice but to make a move. As for the bull pen, not sure what you can do. Giles is either hot or cold, no in between. Sipp (no explanation needed), and Smith is an absolute 15MM disaster. I think we’re stuck with Smith and Sipp and their salaries unless we release them. Giles might have some trade value but not much. He’s the kind of guy that could go elsewhere and turn into “super closer”. Just don’t think it’ll happen with us.
    Getting ahead of us for next year we probably won’t see the following:
    Pitchers – Harris (maybe), Giles, Sipp, Smith (have to eat 7MM), Keuchel (contract?), Morton (retire/contract?)
    Players – Gattis, Marisnick, Margo (Contract?), McCann (retire?)
    Of course this is all speculation for the sake of speculating.

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    • I think Giles will be back -he’s cheap, Smith because he will figure it out, Morton because he is having more success each year here than his whole career before coming here, Maybe Margo

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      • I agree with you on Smith. Yes, he has a 8.44 ERA (have I mentioned how much I despise using ERA to evaluate pitchers, especially relief pitchers?), but he has a 4.66 FIP and 3.73 xFIP. I think Joe Smith is going to be an asset in the bullpen this year.

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  41. Let’s see. A guy who walks a lead-off batter and throws two wild pitches in one inning is . . . a guy who is probably about to be the game’s losing pitcher.

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    • I think they were driving Lance nuts too. Did you see him put his hands up to his ears? That guy has been pounding on that stupid drum since the ’70’s.

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  44. Man – Springer makes a difficult catch and Altuve-Correa turn an insane DP to limit a bases loaded no out situation to 1 run

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  45. Nice 2 out rally to put the Astros back ahead. Big doubles by Jake and Springer and Altuve got robbed on another one – Astros 3-2.

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