Happens every 24 years, like clockwork.
It appears so.
But! Fuck it! They won the WS two years ago. This is all bonus baseball.
Pitching regularly helps one-inning relievers stay sharp. When you go four or five days between appearances, you might be a bit rusty with your command to start your outing. Considering high-leverage relievers come in tight games often times against good hitters, that can be the difference between a clean inning and allowing runs.
It’s the players fault they aren’t performing, but some of Espada’s decisions haven’t helped them, either.
It’s like any craft. The longer you go without doing it, you get rusty and it takes some time to find your groove again.
I get that. But we all have to confront similar issues in our own professions. They aren’t special.
You either know how to stay sharp or you don’t.
The Astros have to go 78-49 the rest of the way just to get to 90 wins.
Brown can say what he wants to publicly, but this team is going into sell mode. The only question is when.
No one is asking for special treatment. But, there is a reason managers across baseball get their high-leverage relievers work every three days or so, even if there is no lead or close game for them to protect.
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This trio has sucked regardless of when they’ve pitched. It’s impossible to explain why and they’d likely agree. But they have sucked ass.
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I’ll add… when a bullpen blows a comeback like they did the day before yesterday. That has major ramifications on how the team performs.
This bullpen has been inexcusably bad. And had they not been, this team would be in contention.
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Caminiti, Wagner, Biggio and Reynolds all missed significant time.
They were 80-82 in 76. I don’t think they’ll make that this year.
We’ll always have Mexico City.
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At least the HEB telenovela inspired ad with Altuve, Breggy, McCullers and JP is entertaining.
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I’ll reiterate… Aubreu, Pressly, and Hader are not helpless lemmings. They’ve had time off. They’ve had stretches where they’re not needed. I don’t believe they don’t know how to handle that. It’s part of the job ffs.
Hitters have slumps. It happens. But three arms of this caliber all shitting the bed at once? I don’t get it. (I did want to pick a game where they weren’t involved to address this)
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We were spoiled with a great pitching coach in Brent Strom for nearly the entire run of recent success. I think no longer having him is beginning to show. I also think Espada simply isn’t a very good manager yet.
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The Astros over the last few years have taken a bunch of unforced Ls in the personnel department, and it’s really come home to roost this year.
The crazy Montero contract, overpaying for J. Abreu, letting basically the entire middle of the bullpen walk and only signing Hader instead, not bolstering the starting pitching AT ALL despite knowing how thin it was.
None of this explains why so many otherwise competent hitters are fucking terrible so far, but the front office has really had a bunch of dumb unforced errors the last few yeras.
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Not just in player moves. There was a huge talent drain in the front office, not all of which needed to happen.
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The knee bone is connected to the …
I’ve been thinking a lot about how not very long ago the Astros would routinely go out and acquire mediocre pitchers with some interesting measureable and turn them into very good pitchers or sometimes even better. That no longer happens. In fact, the opposite is happening, they go get superstars and they fall far short of their expected performance.
It’s unclear to me how much of this is front office, how much is coaching and how much is random.
The same thing is happening with their group of low investment, home grown pitchers that no one outside the organization thought much of when they were signed but became very productive members of the staff - many if not most of them are regressing.
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…knee discomfort
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I think you are (at best) drawing conclusions from a sample size (and sample period) that is far too small. Of course, you might just be blowing smoke. If you really want to make a claim like this, list the pitchers you include in your net and show how they are “regressing”.