Looking at Yainer’s stats his growth and improvement has been great. Someone worked with that kid. His slugging is awesome. His Hits to SO is impressive for a catcher. Didn’t look at his arm but assume it’s strong. I’m an old-school baseball guy. I think you have to excel at both sides to play. And if Yainer can hit in the majors then I’m ready. Its not fair to our starters to ask them to carry you all season and then give them .230 hitting in the playoffs and ask them to win every game by a run. Put the sticks in!!!
I think the yankees will be fine once the playoffs start. The Astros went through a similar stretch last season and I think they went through the same in 2017, if I’m not mistaken. On another note, I’m hoping that the bullpen figures it out once the playoffs start and that it’s just fatigue but I just don’t think we have a good enough one to win it all. I thought they should have gone out and grabbed another ‘Graveman type’ of arm.
Maybe they will bring Dirden up in September. I temper my optimism to a low expectation because we’ve all seen prospects perform well in the minors only to fail in the majors. However, unless Meyers turns it on soon, we have little to lose to see what Dirden can do for the team. The downside for fans is Astros management is slow to bring up prospects.
Atlanta has better pitching than the Astros and we all know what good pitching can do for a team in the post season. The Astros may be the best team in the AL, but unless they can come up with an answer to Atlanta or LA pitching it’ll be the same net result we experienced last year.
Can’t really disagree with anything you said there….
In regards to Dirden we haven’t had one in quite awhile that put up those kind of numbers…… I think he will compare quite favorably to any of the trio currently playing CF.
Kori Lee might be a good piece in a trade as well…… Yainer IMO has surpassed him…. Berryhill is about to come back and Salazar has really surprised……Lee and one of our SP’s could fetch a really good OF in the off season.
I would not want to play the Braves again in the series. Very good pitching and everyone in their lineup can leave the yard. Pitching duels are usually decided by HRs in the playoffs.
It’s mostly subjective, but I’ve seen enough of Urquidy to make him my #3 pitcher with Javier #4. It’s up to McCullars and Garcia to bump into the top four lineup. As we all know, you have to earn your spot.
Nothing against McCullars or Garcia. Plenty of time left for either one of them to make their move to the #4 spot. Either one or both would be a boost to the bullpen.
The ALCS and WS have a 2-3-2 format but the difference is the ALCS has one day off between games 2 and 3 and no days off for the balance of the series and the WS has two days off.
This would indicate to me that the ALCS might require 5 starters whereas the WS only needs four. The additional day off means more rest for Verlander and Valdez.
This is all predicated on no injuries between now and the playoffs and the Astros winning the Divisional series.
If the Astros are eliminated in the Divisional series, then there will be a lot of second guessing and it would spell the end of Dusty Baker. He was given a one year contract for a reason.
It’s possible he’ll be gone after the season is over regardless of the outcome. Hopefully he’ll go out as a WS championship manager.
Yeah, I’m ready for Dusty to retire. Promote Espada or hopefully a miracle happens and Hinch comes back. Heck, get the gang back together by bringing in Luhnow too. lol
I don’t know the back office game like some on here. lunhow was good at getting a young pitcher thrown in on deals on the back side. I’m a big fan of always taking one AA or better pitcher in every deal. If they’re a lefty then even better. Lunhow’s window of evaluation was greater so I’m not ready to throw Click out yet. I thought the Mancini trade was alright. But it didn’t appear there was much effort put into the CF situation. Maybe there was and we didn’t hear about it. Glad we didn’t fall for the Washington trap and throw the franchise away for a high-priced rental. The more I see Myers, Inc. in the lineup the more I sense he missed his shot at fixing that. I’m also with the poster who said he thought Click knew Brantley was done before the deadline. Or if he didn’t he probably had a strong GM’s intuition about it.