I’m not sure where to begin, and y’all know I am rarely at a loss for words.
- First, I was texting back and forth with Chip Bailey and we were not sure we would make this trade. And that was when we thought it was just Jake Bloss for Kimchi (that was what Chip’s auto-incorrect did to Yusei Kikuchi’s last name). Kikuchi has been consistently below average with a 4.72 career ERA that pretty much matches his 4.75 ERA this season. You get him for two months. Two! And you don’t get to find out what Jake Bloss might be able to give you after doing a below-average job after skipping directly from AA to the majors. Oh, and then you send the young and exciting Joey Loperfido with him. Oh, and send the son of a legend, who has some nice minor-league numbers in Will Wagner. Huh?
- Well, everyone I was in contact with about this trade was beyond angry about it. Some of us were praying there was more coming back from the Blue Jays—OK, not Vlad, but we can dream. But apparently, that was not true.
- Did we bring this upon ourselves by putting so much pressure on Dana Brown to trade for a pitcher? C’mon, man. If you can’t take this little bit of pressure….
- One quick thought was that Jeff Bagwell was drinking again. Another thought was that he would be driving a bunch of us to drink.
- Maybe they have a secret formula for Kikuchi and he will be like Charlie Morton and Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole and Ryan Pressly and (fill in the blank) who all pitched much better with the Astros than they were the season before they came here. Of course that was with a different pitching coach, but maybe that can happen. But it was still too much to give up.
- The team gave up multiple prospects for Justin Verlander…. For 2 months plus 2 seasons. And, after all, he was Justin Friggin’ Verlander. They gave up multiple prospects for Gerrit Cole, but again, that was for two seasons, and he was not Yusei Kikuchi. Yes, they gave up three young sure things for two months of Randy Johnson, but if Kikuchi goes 10-1 over the last two months of this season, I will print this post out and eat it.
- I thought Dana Brown would value youngsters, especially when we are so short of them in the organization. But this seems like a fleecing job and likely led by a special advisor in the Blue Jays front office. The special advisor? James Click.
Maybe this will work out. Maybe Kikuchi will fill in admirably in the back of the rotation, helping the Astros get into the playoffs and take another shot at a ring. Maybe the three prospects are just that and are being traded at the height of their value. Maybe.
But a whole slew of Astro fans are wishing they could do a little horse trading with Mr. Brown and see if they could win a trade like the Blue Jays appeared to win theirs. Hey Dana, please trade us three new Porsche’s for our used Hyundai.
Dear Lord, I’ve lived through the Astros trading away Joe Morgan, Rusty Staub, Mike Cuellar, John Mayberry and so many others. Please, don’t let this happen to my team again.
ALL THINGS ASTROS 
74 responses to “The “Trade”: Hey, Dana, what’s on the back of that baseball card?”
This was the rated PG version. I wanted the Rated R Version of this.
Honestly, Joey never got a fair assessment from the team. He was moved up for a month then was sent back down and then moved back up for a week just as a pinch runner. I was in Sugarland and he did hurt his finger sliding into 3rd base which was never discussed. He sat out two games and saw the bandaging around his fingers.
He got moved back into the Majors for for a final time and I do admit that his strikeout rate was high but I am very positive in the offseason he would have corrected it as he has done in the past offseason.
Just being around him and seeing him in Double AA and Triple AAA and seeing his growth was amazing. Of all the players I got to see the past two years by far he has been the most impactful from a clubhouse standpoint. you can never measure this on a back of a baseball card and understand the impact on how someone can rejuvenate a clubhouse like he did when he moved up. We wish the best of luck and will always be a Astro in my mind.
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Dan, I’ve slept on it. I’m not sure there’s a Cuellar or Mayberry in this bunch. After all, the FV for the three guys traded is 50 or under. They’d all be flying high at AAA now without the Astros’ injuries, but they have all done quite well. They are at the top of the Astros’ minor league system because the system stinks right now.
A couple of other thoughts.
• This is a HUGE sellers’ market. Some of the bigger names are still on the table because the asking price is TOO huge.
• ESPN gave the Jays a C+. Astros got a C+ on the deal too. All in all a “meh” deal for them it seems.
• FWIW, Wagner was traded away from his dad’s old team on his birthday. That also stinks.
BUT…I still don’t like it. Not at all. This is not a deal worthy of the Jim Crane era. And certainly Luhnow — and possibly Click — are snickering at the listless effort.
Is this IT? The best you can do? Is it the only thing you can do? If so, I’m not optimistic about this year’s run to the ALCS. Did Crane pull the $$$? Does Brown have what it takes as a negotiator? I’m not sure he measures up and we’ll see how long Crane stays with him, especially if the ALCS run is ending this year.
There are still some big guns out there today, but some of the Astros’ little guns are gone now and the Flahertys and Snells will take more than pop guns in return.
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I do agree the Minor League as a whole is not that great right now. However, we have had players like Javier, Garcia, Valdez and a few others out perform the rankings. We continue to have serviceable players from our farm system that have recently performed.
Also our Triple AAA team won the PCL first half season. I know it doesn’t mean much, but shows that we have some decent players in our farm system.
Triple AAA – Melton, Denzenzo, Blubaugh, Salazar, Gordon
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Welcome “FireDana” unless you are one of the regulars with a new name, in which case welcome back. This one hurts, because Loperfido looked like the kind of kid who would be making heart stopping plays for a decade for this team. He struck out too much, but that seems to be a theme with some of our young guys.
Chip – what I keep telling people is that if it had been three players for Flaherty (a guy with a sub 3.00 ERA – I could have seen it). But not for this guy.
Yes I know that there is a good chance all three guys go the way of all the other guys we’ve traded along the way, but to me it does not bode well for front office judgement.
On the radio they were saying – if Kikuchi pitches well and the team goes on and wins it all – we will no longer have a hard spot about this. But hey – I have a hard time seeing that that will be the case.
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Yeah, this does not seem to be a 2024 game changer for Houston. Though when you’re looking at the ’25 rotation and JV is gone, among others, you may wish you had a young guy to run out there and eat some innings.
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First – let me say – this deal is ridiculous.
That said, Loperfido or Wagner are no Staub or Morgan. They are older prospects that took some advantage of the combination of shell shocked PCL pitchers and the parks they play in. BUT, they were the best we had. Loperfido has a punchers chance of being an effective major league starter, it will come down to limiting his strikeouts. That’s a big ask, one Jon Singleton couldn’t do at 23 or AJ Reed couldn’t do.
Personally, I rated Loperfido and Wagner on a higher curve than Dezenzo and Melton, but those are the guys the Astros chose to protect in this deadline. I don’t get to watch these guys, I am just looking at numbers, but I would rather have Loperfido and Wagner. Dezenzo though, at least according to the scouts, plays a good 3B and is more of the traditional bat you see from the position than Wagner.
I can’t make this deal make sense. In a vacuum would I rather have Kiguchi for the rest of the year than any of those 3 on the roster? Of course. For the next 2 months he will be better in a major league uniform than any of those 3 individually. But you traded 2 months of a 4.73 ERA pitcher for 17 years of major league control from 3 early to mid 20 guys who have performed moderately well in the minors. This is how you kill franchises.
I have no reservations about saying there is nothing about any of those 3 that seem “special” to me. The trade didn’t include our best young players like Yainer and, well, uh, Yainer. We still have a rotation that next year will feature Framber, Garcia, Brown, with Blanco still around, with Arrighetti a year older, maybe McCullers, France, and at some point a returning Javier and Urquidy. There just seems a point where this is still a championship caliber rotation on the other side of surgeries. And that matters more than Loperfido and Wagner.
But if this franchise can’t get on the other side of the knife, than Jim Crane deserves this franchise to return to mediocrity with the people he has surrounded himself with.
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Steven – Yeah I know that the guys we let go are not where Staub and Morgan were – but at this time we just do not have much value with youngsters and you gave away three of the better ones for a questionable get.
Funny you wrote that this is how you kill franchises. Last night I was texting with friends and typed “This is how you ruin a franchise”
I guess we will see where this goes, but i sure wish we had gotten more than this for that haul. For Flaherty I could see it. But unless this guy does a Charlie Morton and explodes here – I don’t think this will be worth it.
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Dan, I was royally pissed when I saw we’d given up Bloss, because we obviously need as much pitching as we can get (and develop). But then when I saw that Lope and Wagner were also part of the deal, I was angry beyond words (you can ask my wife). What an incredibly stupid deal. Brown definitely got fleeced by Click. And when I saw the quote by Brown about “you don’t want to get caught not doing anything to help the major league team get back to the postseason,” it was clear he made this move out of total desperation. I mean c’mon, Kikuchi is 0-4 with a 7.75 ERA in his last 8 starts! This’ll go down as one of the Astros’ worst deadline trades. And I don’t think Brown will make any more today, because no one’s buying what he’s selling. It’s Singleton at 1B the rest of the way, but he’s been better than I expected.
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I’m just not happy with the trade. If Brown can resign Kikuchi this offseason it changes things a little. If he makes 11 starts and is great down the stretch it changes things. If he goes 2-6 with a 4.17 ERA it won’t feel like it was worth it. In a perfect world we’d be getting Tucker, Verlander, and Garcia back and wouldn’t need to make a trade for a starter. I’m guessing end of August or never is the timetable on all three right now. Shifting our gaze to the offseason, we don’t know what Crane is going to do with Bregman. We can guess they weren’t going to protect Wagner. I guess we’ll find out if Pedro Leon has any value and can make an educated decision, but I’d feel more confidence with Loperfido running the bases this October than Leon.
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I think the dugout was shocked last night. The fired up group playing an impeccable game early seemed like the wind had been blown out of their sails, once the trade details came out. And the crowd, so into the game through six innings, spent the rest of the night murmuring. The architect at work last night was again Jeff Bagwell. He’s never liked Loperfido. Maybe he’ll end up being right, but JL never got much of a chance. We’ve seen many slow starts over the years by guys that ended up having long, distinguished careers. Guys like Bagwell, Tucker and Altuve. Today we have Hunter Brown as an example.
Will Wagner? You want a guy at the bottom of the line up to get on base? I think his AAA OBP of .437 will translate. What a 26th Birthday yesterday. He’ll get a chance to play soon.
Bloss was a Brown pick, rushed to the front. I think Brown is responsible for that, but I’m not holding Dana accountable for this trade. I do wonder though, if the man does have a spine, how long will his dignity allow him to remain in Houston? James Click got out pretty quickly.
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I was surprised at who we gave up and who we received. However, I am a fan who has never seen any of the four players play in one single game. I spend at least an hour a day on the Astros on my PC, but I have no access to their games or their minor league games.
My info comes from “Astros sources” and “Astros fan sources”.
The trade ends in a combination of who the Astros wanted, who the Blue Jays wanted and who each team ended up with. The trade will be judged on the Astros side by October or November and on the Blue Jays side in five years or so.
My job, as a fan, is to concentrate on who is still in the organization. That is what I shall do. I am too old and too experienced to worry about what would have been. My focus is on what is and what will be.
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Thoughts…..
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Loperfido the athlete, a guy with a solid baseball IQ needed more time. He’ll get it now. And we’ll find out if he’s another Jake from State Farm. We’ll also find out if he’s worth more than a middling 2 month rental. Even Jake was.
Wagner and Bloss, I don’t know, but I agree with fchristlieb. If Brown manipulated Bloss by sending him to AA prematurely and then on to the majors after 81 professional innings, it was a devious ruse. I want to doubt it.
I’ll be following these three guys more than most past departures. They were three contributors for me in 2025 and beyond.
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Maybe Bloss is the next Franklin Perez or Corbin Martin. Maybe Loperfido is the next Daz Cameron or Derek Fisher. Maybe Wagner is the next Abraham Toro or Tony Kemp.
The best we can probably hope for is that Kikuchi is the next Brad Peacock or Scott Kazmir; stays healthy, eats innings and keeps us in games. I would rather we had kept Bielak or try to make Montero a starter instead of this trade.
Yusei good buy? And I say hell no!
Hell no, hell no!
I don’t know why you say good buy, I say hell no!
Hell no, hell no!
I don’t know why you say good buy, I say hell no!
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Astro Nut – I always love your song parodies – the Beatles never knew they would have the honor of being referenced on our blog.
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Three new prospects replace three traded ones. #9 is the most interesting. The other 2 are pitchers drafted last season and are #29 and #30.
https://www.mlb.com/prospects/astros/
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Crane is an idiot. Bagwell is a drunk. Brown is a DEI loser. And the Astros aren’t going back to a World Series until ALL those guys are gone like a cool breeze in August.
I hope Bloss, Wagner, and Loperfido all have stellar careers and inflict massive damage on the Astros every time they meet on the field for the next 10 years.
Once again – living proof that EVERYTHING woke turns to shit,
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TOF
Always love your passion. Please, please, please temper your language. We take pride here in rarely if ever using profanity. Though we do sometimes say Chron.com (Spit!)
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OK fine. But be careful with the pride thing. Easy to overdose on that stuff and take a fall.
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And I said the S word yesterday too. Won’t happen again.
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I guess I missed it daveb – thanks for self reporting – behave yourself
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Dan, TOF is a bad influence on me. I’ll try to be a good influence on him going forward.
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Awfully narcissistic of you to imagine that you have any influence on me one way or the other. Trust me – you do not.
How long have you had this personality disorder and how often does it usually manifest itself, Dave? Has is caused problems for you in the past in other aspects of your life?
Do you self medicate in addition to self reporting? Is the pat on the head from teacher usually gratifying enough for you or are there other things you have to do for yourself to achieve that?
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Tired Old Fan, you’re on a roll tonight and have lost your sense of humor too. But I initiated the failed attempt at humor, so my bad. I’m done.
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Trade grade for Dana Brown…. D-
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Sargeh, you are being too generous.
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Sarge, I’m going to be compassionate. I’ll say the Astros hierarchy get’s the D-. I’m convinced Brown is just Bagwell’s pawn.
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I was going to say heck no! instead of he_ _ no! but it just did not roll off the tongue right.
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You too AN
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Dana said he wanted to “go big.” Sorry, I don’t get it: https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2024/07/yankees-to-trade-caleb-ferguson-to-astros.html
What the fork?
Mother trucker!
Slug in a ditch!
Load of scrap!
Bull shirt!
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I do believe that Josh Hader proved last night that we already have a guy who can come in and walk two guys before giving up the gopher ball. We sure don’t need this guy.
I’ve always heard it said that people tend to hire other people in their own image. And after 40 some years in the corporate cubicle ranches, I found it to be largely true.
It also explains why Dana Brown is so attracted to overrated, below average, reject losers like Heinz Abreu, Monterrible, and these two dead armed lumps. He’s one of them!
My whole motivation for watching the Astros from here on is to root for thge worst collapse in MLB history. That will get rid of the unqualified, incompetent, mushmouth politician butt kisser named Brown as soon as possible.
But since Crane has his severe chronic testosterone shortage problem and is guided by a drunk washed up ballplayer with a scrawny beard and probably bad breath, too like Romanov was enamored with Rasputin, Brown’s demise will not come until well after that of the Astros.
If I was Tucker (and I hope he has somebody who loves him telling him this) I would take the rest of this season off and walk away to the nearest plane to D/FW and show them how it’s done. He’d look great wearing a Rangers uniform!
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But Dana Brown had nothing to do with Abreu or Montero. He’s Bagwell’s puppet. My only question is whether he quits or gets fired first. I suppose that might depend on if he’s got any backbone.
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And I doubt he had anything to do with Hader either.
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He took the job and the huge paychecks that come with it. So he gets the blame, too. Whether HE likes it or not.
If Brown had any stones at all, he wouldn’t have put on the jockey uniform and stood out there by the gate at Bagwell’s mansion in the first place.
He obviously doesn’t have any pride as long as the checks don’t bounce. Except false pride which they ALL have.
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Getting back to baseball, our deadline deals might help the club overall in 2024;
If Kikuchi pitches like the starter we badly need.
If Ferguson can give us another reliable pen arm.
With Loperfido gone, we’re not losing a whole lot at the plate, at least based on what he provided in his limited time as an Astro. It’s tough to break a struggling rookie in during a pennant race. But the Astros were 20-11 in his starts. I thought he added a spark. He fit in well. He was solid defensively. He did manage 16 RBI’s. Houston fans took to the kid.
Bloss was not helping. He definitely needs more time in the minors.
Wagner was not given an opportunity.
I think we’ll find out if the “Big Deal” was worth it (at least as it applies to the 2024 season) in August. It’s a tough month. I hope we stay in it. But we’ve got holes and question marks surrounding injured players and when they might be back. Forget McCullers.
I don’t even want to think about 2025 at this point. Far too many unknowns.
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I’m looking at what the Dodgers gave up for Flaherty and wonder – why them.
OK – I know the young C-1B is supposedly a top 70 prospect though he’s hitting .210 in A+ ball. And then you have a AAA shortstop hitting a little above average.
It does not make much sense to me – but what do I know.
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Dan, that’s why we’re all having a hard time today.
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A line from Herman’s Hermits song Henry the 8th… “Second verse, same as the first“
Pittsburg pitcher throws 9 pitches in the first. Meanwhile, Brown throws 19.
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if TK & Blum are gonna interview every rish bastage in he building, this is gonna take a while!
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Blum, during his response to the trade with Toronto, tacitly admitted the Stros gave up a lot. In other words they got fleeced. But that’s old news now
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Poor Princess Dana dropped the soap in the varsity locker room and Click done him dry without even lending him a hand.
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BwHAHAHAHA!!!
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Espada looks like he’s trying to hide! Not that I’d blame him…..
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So did Crane not pay the electric bill this month? They can’t turn the A/C on?
Or is the Bidinflation kicking his ____, too?
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TK is 100% right. Everybody could see that Hunter Brown was out of gas.
Everybody except Joe Espada.
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Division lead, it was nice knowing you.
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Might be quite a while before you see it again. I wish I hadn’t sold that old Lastros jersey. Oh well.
Probably wouldn’t fit anymore anyway…
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Good morning! Full disclosure. I did not watch the game last night. Our Astros need to correct today. Their last 12 innings of play have been uninspired, for whatever reasons. Even a three game losing streak is far too much right now.
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Thoughts
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It seemed like teams were giving up A LOT for some pretty average players. Obviously, quite a few teams think they have a shot…including the Astros. I’m not sure of they see Kimchee as an innings-eater or what, but I’d hate to see the guy starting a few games in a 5 game series if I was a ‘Stros fan.
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Let’s face it – if they get Justin Verlander back – then Kikuchi will be the 5th starter behind JV, Hunter, Framber and Blanco. He might not even start in a 5 game series with a travel day thrown in there.
The more important thing is – will he help them win a few games in the regular season that Bloss was not going to do for them? That I can’t answer.
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Trying to give them the benefit of the doubt (even if they haven’t earned it), Kikuchi pitched great in two wins against the Yankees and poorly in one loss. He’s also made all his starts. In terms of his performance, I think the biggest problem is he’s falling behind 1-0 in 39% of opponents at bats. If we can make it to the postseason the trend of starters having shorter starts will likely continue. As such, he probably isn’t a 5th starter but rather your first or second option to come into the 3rd or 4th inning of games in a series with the expectation of getting through the lineup once.
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If we get far enough to talk about a post season rotation, then it’s pretty likely Kikuchi will have done his job. And if the guy were to end up in the pen at that point, that would be another good thing. Right now though I’m looking at whether or not we’ll come out of a daunting August in good enough shape to win the division in September.
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I have to think Tucker missing has impacted most everyone, except for Yainer of course. But Yordan is really struggling at home. He’s all world on the road though. .743 OPS in Houston, 1.086 everywhere else.
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The Astros have called up Pedro Leon. Congratulations to him!
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There was earlier discussion here about what the Dodgers gave up for Flaherty and it turns out the Tigers and Yankees had an earlier deal for him and the Yankees backed out because of his medicals. That seems to have caused the Tigers to accept a lot less than expected for him from LA.
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Just read that Montero has been DFA’d. Someone noted on X that in the 6 weeks following Clicks departure, 105 million was spent on Abreu, Montero and Brantley. Those deals resulted in a negative WAR.
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My apologies for yesterday, BTW. I got carried away. Sorry about that.
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No worries.
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So, an arson arm is gone.
https://www.cbssports.com/mlb/news/rafael-montero-designated-for-assignment-astros-dump-reliever-in-second-season-of-3-year-34-5m-deal/
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Sarge, that story tells it like it is/was. I had forgotten about Scott Powers, Click’s chief nerd. Today he’s an analytics professor at Rice. It’s hard not to look back at the 2022 WS run and then the immediate upheaval following.
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Seth Martinez was sent to SL, too. Nothing bad can come from this news at least.
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https://www.mlb.com/astros/news/yusei-kikuchi-excited-to-join-astros
““Mechanics-wise, there’s no issues,” Kikuchi said through an interpreter.”
It must be tough to find a Japanese to Spanish interpreter in Houston. Can’t be a whole lot of of em……
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That “first Japanese _______” schpeil didn’t work out too well that shortstop they had in Minnesnowta a few years back. Don’t remember his name but I do remember he was an all around flop. IIRC he had a career ending injury after 2 or 3 years.
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I’ve had a few days to process. I think we all have admitted, even in our fawning over the kid that charmed the socks off a fanbase, that all 3 of these prospects have limiting factors. Whether it’s Wagners age and this singular season far outperforming career norms, or Loperfido’s strikeouts, or Bloss’s moderate 92 mph fastball in an age of guys throwing 97, there are issues with each one, a proverbial mountain for them to climb.
But Kikuchi is the issue, not losing those 3. He has a career 4.72 ERA. He is 10 games under .500. This is the average line against him from a player with 500 plate appearances – .262/.328/.412 with a .787 OPS. They would have 21 HR and 45 walks. Pretty much, what could be for us a decent mid-range LFer. He has an average exit velocity above major league average, a hard hit percentage 5.1% higher than average, and a homerun percentage a full point higher than ML average. He has basically been worse than an average major league pitcher in almost every category from BABIP to BA to OBP to OPS. He is hittable. Never seen him pitch. But I’m guessing we will see him throw hard, but straight. And I’m also guessing he that he didn’t grow up in an environment where he had to “get” people out, that throwing 97 did it for him, so he didn’t have to worry about hitting corners.
The first thing I would try to get through to him is you don’t have to give in if you fall behind 3-1. You don’t have to groove a pitch. His splits in favorable counts to him versus favorable to hitters is larger in difference than the average major league pitcher. There is a different mentality about walks in Asia because there is usually only 1 or 2 guys in a lineup that can punish you for giving in.
Dude is 33. You got him for 2 months, and he is, in many respects, a below average major league pitcher. I do get that we get an average major league starter NOW for 3 guys that aren’t giving you much NOW, and you are trying to win NOW so I have some patience, but I don’t know how much.
You surrendered 18 years of team control of guys that, while not future all stars, are all going to play in the major leagues and make positive contributions. There are things about Kikuchi to like, the arm itself, is there. I think we will see that. But he is going to frustrate us with a 3-1 pitch with 2 men on base that will turn into a 3 run bomb, or at least, that is what the numbers suggest. As for some mythical creature mentality about how the Astros have turned around so many guys, really, it’s just Charlie Morton. That’s what the myth lives off of, a guy from 7 year ago. And it’s not like Toronto hired their staff straight from the Manitoba Manatees.
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Good post Steven, I’m giving Collin McHugh a shoutout too. Another overachiever that executed, got guys out, and for a long time.
We’ll find out in August if the Kikuchi trade made good sense or not. Really, all this club has to do is hang around until we get into September. And then whatever team that can rattle off 6 or 8 in a row and win 90 again will likely keep playing.
And maybe by sometime in 2025 we’ll get a better idea of what our lost guys are capable of. For right now, it looks like Loperfido will be playing daily. Man, he sure has a rare charisma that the fans, and it seems the clubhouse here too, really embraced.
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Count me among his supporters. I will be rooting for Joey Loperfido every at bat of his career unless it’s against us. And I can’t quite explain why. Some of those catches were just old school, how relentless he was going after a ball.
Oh well, my favorite player Mr. Yainer Diaz is still here. But even I admit, Yainer is going to have to layoff both outside sliders and cheeseburgers a little more. The pitchers want you catch like Maldy, not look like Maldy.
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Yainer apparently has a lasagna problem.
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Good morning! The Astros got a badly needed win last night by getting 2 hits and no walks off starter Jake Woodford in 5 innings of work along with 3 unearned runs. The Pirates gifted our guys with 4 errors on the night. We finished with 4 hits, including the game saver by Frenchie Dubon. Any chance of giving the latest call up, Pedro Leon, a few starts? Our outfielders had a collectively terrible month at the plate.
Jake .541 OPS
Chas .547 OPS
Dubon .521 OPS
Cabbage .408 OPS
The good news is that these guys should not be capable of continuing such terrible hitting. I think it’s called positive regression these days. Anyway, we need some of that stuff!
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As for this Pittsburgh series, bad Framber started, faltered, got back on the horse, and toughed out 6 – and got rewarded for it. Hunter had one of those games where it just seemed he got nickeled and dimed, but you could argue that Espada’s decision to go mid-leverage guys in a high leverage spot cost them, when he had high leverage guys available. The bullpen game was, oddly enough, again the best pitched game in the series.
Hunter getting outpitched by a guy that I think we got have gotten instead of Kikuchi was disappointing. Pittsburgh’s OF and offense are in a way that Loperfido could have been a huge boost to them, they could have probably pulled that one off straight up, and Falter at least has one more season of control after this one. But I guess maybe Pittsburgh just wasn’t going to trade the guy despite the rumors.
Going to have series you don’t win. Doing because the offense falls asleep isn’t great, but the Pirates are fighting for their proverbial wildcard lives and have a lot to play for.
Rafeal Montero joins Jose Abreu in the “maybe took a little longer than the fanbase has patience for but it’s not our money so we can be impatient” junkpile. I would say maybe they can get on the other side of boneheaded “real baseball” people type decisions, but then this trade happens.
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And, I promise, last note about Kikuchi before I start rooting for him (we can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube), he has given up 28 runs in his last 31 innings. I’m hoping that all the games he has pitched this year isn’t wearing on him. He has thrown 1951 pitches this year, around the same as Blanco’s 1901. At 33, is he another guy that we have to “watch the innings and pitch counts” on?
OK, from here on out, positive Kikuchi vibes. He does throw missles.
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This is it. Two months left and August is here. Except for a 3-game set against the CWS, every team we play in August is either playoff bound or very close to playoff bound and most of them have better records than the Astros.
The Astros have put themselves into a position where every game is like a playoff game. They played themselves into the pressure cooker and we will see if they can win under pressure.
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Thoughts
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In the interest of fair dinkum & giving credit when it’s due, I will agree that the pinch hit homer from Dubon was great and the decision to put him in for Big Jon was the right one at the time. Glad to see he didn’t choke this time.
But that only goes so far. My Opa had a saying (in German, of course) that even a blind pig can find an acorn if he walks around with his nose in the dirt long enough.
Put another way, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
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