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Astros 2024 – Why We Can’t Get Too Mad

As fans of any team (in this case, the Astros), we tend to follow specific patterns in our thinking and fall into poor habits as fans and human beings. This includes…

  1. Micro-analyzing the manager and finding fault with every wrong decision he makes. As we have stated before and will continue to remind everyone, managers will make the wrong decisions often because they make so many decisions every day, every game, every moment. They will make more wrong decisions when their teams are hurt or just plain bad. They can make wrong decisions even when all the logic is on their side. That is what happens in a sport where the hitters fail about 70% of the time or more. 
  2. Micro-analyzing the players and finding fault in every bad at bat, every bad relief appearance, every poor fielding play. Yes, they get paid a bunch of money, but man I am not sure what kind of money I would expect to get paid to have millions looking over my shoulder while I tried to do my job. (OK, pay me the MLB minimum and I will probably be fine).
  3. Expecting the past to predict the future. Just like with our investments, having Jeremy Pena hit .327 in the first month of the season, or Alex Bregman hit .216 in the first month is not necessarily a predictor of the next five months.
  4. Forgetting what moves we were all for (a year or so ago). Most of us were all for Jose Abreu coming to this team before the 2023 season. Most of us were wrong.
  5. Judging trades the moment they occur rather than letting things play out.

I could do this all day, but I will not because most of you get it, and if you don’t get it now, you will not get it if I type up 20 more examples.

But after some poor play over the weekend that cost the Astros dearly, Dan P (oh, man, I’m talking about myself in the third person) was getting to be the kind of fan he does not want to be.

So, today I am reminding myself about the reasons I should take into consideration when judging this team:

  • Lance McCullers – 3.48 ERA over 130 appearances with the team and a winner of 60.5 % of his decisions. Zero innings pitched in 2024.
  • Luis Garcia – 3.61 ERA over 69 appearances with the team and a winnier of 59.6% of his decisions. Zero innings pitched in 2024.
  • Cristian Javier – 3.59 ERA over 116 appearances with the team and a winner of 64.7% of his decisions. 34.3 innings pitched in 2024 and done.
  • Jose Urquidy – 3.98 ERA over 79 appearances with the team and a winner of 62.8% of his decisions. Zero innings pitched in 2024.
  • J.P. France – 4.40 ERA over 29 appearances with the team and a winner of 55% of his decisions. 25.1 very bad innings in 2024 and done.
  • Justin Verlander – 2.49 ERA over 124 appearances with the team and a winner of 74% of his decisions. 62 so-so innings built around a couple stints on the IL.
  • Kyle Tucker – Put up wonderful numbers in 2024 for 60 games until his injury and now has been sitting about 80 days and counting.
  • Jose Abreu – A player with a .292 BA/ .354 OBP/ .860 OPS followed up a miserable 2023 with an incomprehensible .124 BA/ .167 OBP/ .361 OPS in 120 plate appearances and sent home with a very expensive “pension”.
  • Chas McCormick – After putting up terrific numbers as the fourth OF in 2023 (.273 BA/ .353 OBP/ .842 OPS) had some injuries and even when well, has been horrible in 2024 (.192 BA/ .257 OBP/ .538 OPS).
  • Joe Espada – Let’s face it – the Astros entered the season with a first-time manager taking the place of a living legend at manager. (OK – sometimes a legend in his own mind). He has had to take over leadership over a very experienced team that is used to him being a bench coach. He has had to learn during a season when all those things listed above were occurring.

Looking at that list and considering the Astros have had to use 31 pitchers so far this season….how can we get too mad at them? They’ve overcome a lot to go from a 10-game deficit to a 4-1/2 game lead in the AL West in the last couple of months. Sure, we have grievances, but overall, this team has overcome a ton of adversity, and most of us would have been happy to have this current outcome after seeing them stumble around the first 2+ months of this season.

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52 responses to “Astros 2024 – Why We Can’t Get Too Mad”

  1. Thoughts

    • Holy smokes, Dubon covered a ton of field before decelerating against a concrete wall. What a play, but gee whiz Mauricio I was worried about you.
    • Bregman’s homer was not quite as impressive as Yainer’s but man – he had to hit it almost 400 feet to get it into one of the front rows of the reconfigured Orioles Park – it is really deep to left.
    • Yainer hit one 455 feet – he is not as big as Yordan, but man when he squares it up – the ball has a motor on it – that one cleared deep center by a ton
    • Are we supposed to get mad at Kikuchi for giving up 3 runs in 5-2/3 innings. If so we are awfully picky
    • Dezenzo ripped that double – 109 mph. Perhaps we should let the kid show us he knows how to charge the ball on the most critical play of the game….
    • The lineup had bookend troubles yesterday – Jose Altuve 0 for 5 with 3 Ks (not his norm) and Chas McCormick 0 for 4 with 3 Ks (too much his norm)
    • If Neris can give us what he gave us Sunday – 1.1 innings – no hits/no runs/no walks/ 1 K – we would take that any time.
    • Nice to see Abreu get back out there and have a clean 8th

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  2. With our bullpen somewhat overworked [esp. Abreu (64 IP), and Taylor Scott (62 IP in 56 appearances), is it about time to give Montero and Whitley, who are both tearing in up on the farm, another shot sooner rather than later?

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  3. Why was Dubon so darn far over in the OF in the first place? It’s like that area was empty. Diaz spurns a walk by grounding out, then blasts a mammoth HR his next AB. Great! In a 3-2 count he swings at a ball Stevie Wonder would have sat on. Walks matter. Does Chas need a stint in Sugar Land to work on his swing. He is a mess at the plate. Or is it the tm cannot afford to send him down?

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    • Maybe Mauricio was doing one of those things where he was daring them to hit them where he wasn’t – how far can I move over and still cover all the area (where is my sarcasm font).

      I think if Pedro Leon had shown anything – Chas would have been sent down. But he didn’t. Next in line might be Quincy Hamilton who has been hitting OK with power. Jacob Melton who was not hitting well or Kenedy Corona who hit poorly at AA, and has hit for good average at AAA in a very small sample.

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    • Yainer is still learning. I am also concerned about the OBP, but this guy is such a good hitter that batting average will keep his OBP at least above league average. But the swinging at pitchers pitches needs to get limited or the book on him will be out there and it’s all he will see.

      But what makes him special is how much more often he punishes a bad pitch more than other guys. If the average major leaguer still watches 50% of hittable pitches go by, Yainer is only letting 30% of those through. He is a pitchers nightmare because they can’t miss. But yes, he can still be got by good pitching right now, and that has to concern you in the playoffs. Bregman, Tucker, Alvarez, and even Altuve (to a point) has made a living off of making a pitcher come to them. Yainer needs to at least learn to do it at Altuve’s level. He will probably never match the other 3 in that regard, but when all is said and done, he is a better bat to ball guy than Bregman, on par with Tucker, and just behind our generational guy Yordan. He is that one small step away from becoming a perennial all star. Hopefully he can make it.

      But for now, we have to live with that wart. He is going to swing at 1-2 slider a foot off the plate every once in a while. He is still doing it less than he did last year at least.

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  5. Speaking of texting …..

    “Aug. 25: RF Kyle Tucker (shin contusion) gives Espada positive update
    Astros general manager Dana Brown said Friday that Tucker, who’s not with the team on its road trip to Baltimore and Philadelphia, could return in early September. Tucker, who has been out since fouling a ball off his shin on June 3, has been working out in Houston and provided an update Sunday to manager Joe Espada.

    “He actually sent me a very long, long, long text message, and it was full of a lot of positive notes,” Espada said. “It was very encouraging.”

    So even if he cannot sprint – his fingers can sustain a long, long, long text message.

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  6. I don’t really have a right to expectations for this club. I wrote them off at the beginning of June. But somehow, a pitching rotation got built along the way defying the logic that said implosion was imminent. And even without a hitting outfielder or a hitting first baseman and all the injuries I still think it’s pretty amazing we’re leading a division, even if it is the easiest one.

    I hope the guys hang on. I hope another bat wakes up. I hope Yordan and Tucker and Bregman can play baseball. I hope Whitcomb and Dezenzo play five days a week. I hope there are no more injuries.

    I still get frustrated when we lose games like the two we lost in Baltimore. Mental errors gave those two back. Mental errors are unacceptable. If a guy strikes out or boots a grounder, that’s simply failing. We do fail. I can accept that. Our manager has had to put inferior baseball players on the field throughout the season. Speaking of our rookie manager, he’ll be back next year. He’s had to deal with a whole lot of misfortune. And he’s kept this club on an even keel.

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    • Well put, daveb7. I had these guys dead and buried in June and they have surprised all of us. If we make it to the playoffs that will be great. If not we’ll all be disappointed but that’s a normal reaction from us fanatical fans. I guess that we should be grateful we’re still leading the division at this point. The real test is in the upcoming games. We can only hope we can win enough to get there. Once there it’s a whole new ballgame.

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  7. Just watching the before game interview with Mini DFB Espada. Oh. My. God. The man is a blithering idiot. Trying to explain what the phrase “monday morning quarterback” means. Which is not at all what he thinks it means.

    And the overweight media buttkisser next to him is nodding his bobble head like it all makes sense to him. Makes me wanna puke and I don’t care about my shoes.

    I’m not at all angry about it. Just mortified (which probably also means something other than what Espada thinks it means) that my favorite team is being run by such morons.

    But not at all surprised given the state of the idiocracy we live in.

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  8. IRL demonstration of the TRUE state of Astros pitching staff: TK is talking about the pitch count in the bottom of the 1st inning!

    I believe what I see – not what these clowns tell me.

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  10. Good morning!

    We got good pitching again. We did not get enough hitting. We just don’t have enough. And once we got into overtime, the odds went down.

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    • Since Dan gets grumpy when we complain, I’ll hide my comment here. I don’t like the Manfred rules, but starting the 10th with Bregman – Alvarez – Diaz coming to the plate is about as good as you can hope for. That’s another tough loss for Hader to pick up. Watching the replay of Harper’s hit, my immediate thought was to question why Altuve wouldn’t have been closer to 1st. Then, anther angle showed he was positioned pretty well and just didn’t cover any ground going after it. I’m choosing to be glass-half-full guy for the two Orioles losses and the first of this series. Those were all very winnable games against teams that will be in the postseason…despite what our lineup looks like right now. Let’s hope they can rebound and take the next two in Philly and get at least a split against KC. We can’t control what the Mariners do, but we’re running out of season and can’t afford to drop too many at this point.

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      • I liked the plays that Whitcomb made at 2nd. Altuve is just a limited defensive player at this point, and watching Whitcomb or Dubon play 2nd reminds us every time.

        I would argue Hader shouldn’t have even been out there in the 9th, but I think Espada is telling us he didn’t trust anyone else he had left at that point. Hader was probably a good choice for the 10th because he is a strikeout guy and the (we agree dumb) Manfred rule forces you look for the strikeout for at least that 1st out.

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  11. That is a lot to chew on. It’s good to remind everyone this pitching staff is missing most of what made it so special in 2022 and its still the best staff in baseball for the last 2 months.

    They are proving what happens when every starter goes out there day in and day out and keeps you in games. Yes, you will lose sometimes when your starter goes 5 2/3rd and gives up 2 runs, but you will most certainly lose when they give up 9 runs in 2/3rds. The five guys you have making up your rotation are, simply put, the 5 most important guys to your success. More important than you HOF second baseman, your MVP level performers at DH and RF, your future star at C, the bullpen runs a close second to preserve those close games, but you have to create the opportunities first. I think what you are seeing is a franchise that understands how to give a starting pitcher the best foot forward not just on the day they pitch, but the 4 days in between.

    This OF has been a mess all year. Jake Meyers shows flashes, but he just isn’t a plus big league hitter. Chas is in witness protection. His confidence is just gone. He needs 2024 to end today. Part of the reason we keep seeing Yordan in LF is to get Caratini in the lineup because he has vastly out performed the outfielders at the plate. Gamel at least gives you a sub mediocre left handed option to your sub mediocre right handed options.

    It may go against the grain here or many other places, but I would keep trotting McCormick out there. He is really the only option you have that has done it before. At some point, he is going to hit that next homer, he missed one by just inches in the last few at bats, and you hope some spark is going to make him a better option in a playoff AB than Dubon, Gamel, or Meyers.

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    • It’s fair to say and probably contrary to what most people believe, but yes, Chas is the most likely guy to wake up and hit. The other options have not done it in the past.

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  12. Quit complaining you whiners! OK – Dave was that good enough?

    Thoughts

    • On the radio they had a unique slant – they were glad for the Manfred rule on extra innings because we have such a thin bullpen right now’
    • I was thinking last night Steven that if we did not bring in Altuve to pinchhit – he would not have been in the field coming up short on a ground ball a younger guy might get.
    • Blanco pitched better than he had recently – I’m hoping the extra day off with the 6 man rotation gave him a gasp of fresh air he needed
    • Some of our faster guys (Meyers and Pena) ground into DPs – frustrating
    • Pena has sure had a slew of errors lately – I don’t think the GG is headed his way this year
    • You’ve got Alvarez and Bregman coming back off of injuries and you put Singleton at the DH. Why?

    OK now I’m the complainer – along with wondering why Dezenzo sits after coming up big on Sunday.

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    • Because it’s the only way to get Caratini and Diaz in the lineup at the same time. Yordan has to be in LF and Bregman at 3B for that to happen. At best, you could argue, that Dezenzo should be in the lineup over Singleton right now. It’s probably dependent on match up. Dezenzo certainly swings a better bat. But Singleton controls the strike zone better and extends at bats. Singleton can put some EV on it as well but just doesn’t do it consistently enough. Given Wheeler’s command I probably would have started Dezenzo at 1B and put Diaz or Caratini at DH.

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      • Problem is that we’ve got too many guys that need to DH. But I want to see both Dezenzo and Whitcomb play regularly. We’ve already got too many guys playing that can’t hit. It’s hard for me to understand why Whitcomb has played just 10 minor games in the outfield and Dezenzo zero. Dezenzo is a pretty good athlete with good speed. Maybe the MILB powers to be determined we were too deep in the outfield positions to require further versatility.

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    • Dan, Altuve had a play on a grounder, I think on Saturday that he just could not close on. Same thing as last night. His wheels need a week off that he’s not going to get. My thought for this season was that he’d get 40 or 50 games as a DH. Going forward for the next five years, that’s got to be his role more and more.

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  13. I think we all have seen the regression of Altuve this year. What upsets me is his stat’s reflect this. More K’s, less walks,fewer hits, flailing at pitches a foot off the plate, etc. I just don’t think he’s being a smart hitter now. He continually tries to pull those pitches and the result is a strike or a weak ground out. If he would go with the pitch and punch that ball into right it would help immensely but I don’t think he’ll do that. I remember that’s what made Tony Gwinn such a great hitter as he neared the end of his career. He never tried to do too much and was a smarter ball player. If I were pitching to him he’d never see a pitch down the middle but constant sliders and sweepers.

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    • Actually Z, he’s on pace to approach 200 hits for the first time since 2017. But he’s already struck out more than he ever has in his career. He’s swinging at everything. I said this a while back. Is Altuve focusing on 3000 hits already, to the detriment of his team and his own stats? He’s got to come back out next season and show patience again.

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  14. We lost an extra inning game to the team with the third best record in baseball. We lost to them on their home field, where they are tied for the best record at home in MLB. The guy who knocked in the winning run is one of the best players in MLB over the last decade. Two of our best hitters, Altuve and Tucker, weren’t in the lineup. We got good pitching against a good lineup. There is nothing to hang our heads about.

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    • Yes 1oldpro, the difference between a 5-0 roadtrip so far and the 2-3 we’re looking at right now is minimal, really one play a game. And we are staying competitive without much of an offense.

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    • Being serious as a heart attack here. If I ever again wake up and nothing hurts, I’ll be as dead as Sam Clemens. Can’t even remember the last time I had a day like that………. 😦

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    • Yeah, that might well mean the BS about Tucker coming back the first, or for that matter the last week in September is simply BS.

      I can still be cynical.

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  18. Something I found amusing…

    With my great hearing I often have closed caption on when watching movies, shows, etc. Anyways CC was on for the Astros game and something that made me giggle – everytime the announcers said “Caleb Ort” it came out as “Kayla Board”.

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  19. The old Tuve he ain’t what he used to be.

    Ain’t what he used to be.

    Ain’t what he used to be.

    The old Tuve he ain’t what he used to be. All those games ago…..

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  22. Thoughts

    • Joe Espada talking about Tucker taking the next step in his rehab – “I can call it a sprint,” Espada said. “It’s not a jog.” Uh – I am not running expert, but there are many shades of running between a jog and a sprint. Was he sprinting like Kyle Tucker or sprinting like Martin Maldonado?
    • Our church choir takes the summer off – we fill in with small groups during the summer and last night was our first practice starting up again. All I can say is that it was a good game to spend not watching the game.
    • I did check in on Gamecast during practice (I’ve been in the choir since 1995 so I know most everything we are going to sing). Trea Turner should have been rung up in the big inning, but instead went on to get a hit. And eventually Castellanos had the huge home run on a curve ball down but smack in the middle of the plate.
    • On some of the Astros at bats I wanted to send them to optometrists as they were swinging at stuff way wide or way high – Nola does have good stuff.
    • Good to see Altuve with a couple hits after his (almost) day off.
    • I hope the good Arrighetti and the bad Tajuan Walker show up for this afternoon’s finale.
    • I’m not thrilled by the Jason Heyward pickup but at this point with the Raggedy Ann outfield production for the Astros I say what the heck. Chas ain’t hitting. Meyers is very inconsistent. Dubon as much as I love the guy has not been hitting much. Yordan of course hits, but he is not a good outfielder. Heyward is a good fielder and as recently as last year (oh shades of Jose Abreu) was productive at the plate.

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    • I like the Heyward pickup depending on who gets released. He may only be hitting around .200, but his OBP was equal to that of Dubon, better than Chas or Cabbage’s, and slightly less than Meyers. It also annoys the Dodgers fans to see him go to Houston, so that’s a plus in my book.

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    • Yup. That’s what we all need. A bona fide idiot who practices ESL explaining the nuanced differences between a sprint and a jog.

      The Stros are gonna be a lot better off the day this pendejo shuffles off to Buffalo.

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  23. In Tucker, this club does not need another DH. If he can’t play right, then he probably should not be brought back, unless he’s been working out at first base. And I sure doubt that’s the case. Can he jog around left?

    We’ve got a whole mish mash of guys that really don’t have a home.

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  24. When you have Jose Altuve actually doing something smart on the basepath, you know it’s a day when truly anything can happen.

    Stealing home is absolutely my favorite play in baseball!

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  25. BTDT: Philadelphia is truly a miserable place when it’s hot and humid like today. In other words, when it feels like Houston…..

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  26. Great to see the lineup rake against a struggling Walker. Would like to have seen Espada give Carantini or Gamel at shot in the 4-hole instead of JP. For whatever reason Pena continues to hit weak grounders to IF’s or FC with the bases juiced.

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