Your loyal scribe was riding home from a haircut and listening to the good folks on local talk radio discuss the JV “Situation”. The situation concerning Justin Verlander is that he easily rolled past a contract goal in his last start (130 innings), which automatically meant that should he opt for it, he can make another $25 MM in 2023 as the Astros ace.
After two very good months of May (21-8) and June (16-9), the Astros continued their surge with another solid month with a 19-9 July. Thanks to going 6-1 against the second-place Seattle Mariners during the month, the team finished the month with a 12-game lead in the AL West, despite the 14-game winning streak the M’s had in July.
The Astros and their MLB brethren are about ten days from the trade deadline of August 2. (Why August 2? It must have had something to do with the lockout settlement). It is strange to have a team like the Astros that is only 2-1/2 games out of the top record in the MLB held by the Yankees and on a pace for their best season record with so many perceived holes.
In the comments to the last post – a good friend of the blog and our in-house island inn-keeper, uncleknuckle (previously known as Daveb) – mentioned that he didn’t think any of us thought this team would be this good. It is a good point.
Apologies to Bon Jovi for stealing the title of this post from a line from Living on a Prayer, but this year’s Astros team is doing much more than living on a prayer.
After a red-hot May that pushed the Astros into the lead in the AL West, they began June stumbling and bumbling a bit as they went 4-5 in the first 9 games.
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….
CHIPALATTA 