The Astros’ New York/New York tour continues on Sunday after the good guys rebounded from a Thursday heartbreaker loss with a solid win on Friday behind another great start by Justin Verlander. Then they followed it with the Cristian Javier, Hector Neris, and Ryan Pressly no-hit win on Saturday. The team is now 4-1 on this nine-game run through the Yanks and Mets.
This may be the most challenging week and a half of the season for the Astros. The best team in the NL (the Mets) visits from New York for two games, and the Astros head east to play the best team in the AL and in all of baseball, the Yankees, in New York for four games.
This post is slightly shanghaied by the news that Jeremy Pena has been placed on the IL. But since this is all hypothetical, let’s pretend that Pena is back and Dusty Baker has asked your opinion about the makeup of his daily lineup. Talk about hypothetical….
As I morph older and older, I find that I am turning into my parents. Good people living in a world that is not catering to them. Sometimes it is the gazillion ways people choose to be “social” these days, though I assume that anyplace that tosses you because they don’t like your opinion is not that social.
The Astros officially announced the 6 year/ $115 MM extension of Yordan Alvarez yesterday, a deal that was unofficially leaked over the weekend. The Astros bought out the three seasons of Alvarez’s arbitration and the first three seasons of his free agency.
Though the Astros’ pop-gun offense kept the fans from going nuts over it, May was an excellent month for the team as they went 21-8 and rolled from mediocrity into a solid lead in the AL West. The Astros’ pitching was dominant, with a significant league-leading 2.26 ERA. The Yankees – spit!! – were second at 3.06. The hitting (if you ignore BA) was better than April, especially their .315 OBP (4th in the AL) and .736 OPS (third in the AL).
No, I’m not asking for cash. It is just that I’m on the road writing this one on the fly without access to stats unless I want to log back into WordPress every time I go pull a stat. I do not. So I will go back to a tried and true method, ask my dear friends questions, and let you take the wheel with responses. Here we go!
This is the kind of post that can make one look foolish when the subject of early-season praise turns into a pumpkin by mid-season. But something about the way Jeremy Pena carries himself tells me he is the real deal.
CHIPALATTA 