Houston Astros 2014 Season Thread

[KABrother88]

Cosart was never going to be a top tier starter. He has the physical stuff to be but when you throw 100 pitches in the fifth inning every game... He just never had the control and I don't think he ever will. I think the reaction by Jon Mayo and Duke was perfect when they heard what the Astros were receiving. Here it is.

 

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article/hou/astros-send-jarred-cosart-to-marlins-for-prospects?ymd=20140731&content_id=87320460&vkey=news_hou

 

Don't get me wrong I wasn't suggesting Cosart would be a front of the line starter...expected more of a 4-5 possibly a 3. He's battled command issues his whole professional career which has always driven his pitch count up but he seemed to be decent at being able to get ground balls when he needed them to force a double play. Another thing that may or may not have play a part in the deal is the issue Sunday with Mark Appel...if you're not familiar with what happened basically Appel stopped in Houston on his way to AA Corpus Christi from A+ Lancaster (he has a home in Houston). While there he threw a bullpen session with Astros Pitching Coach Brent Strom while Astro players were warming up for an afternoon game...apparently one or more players weren't too happy with it and voiced displeasure...multiple rumors I saw linked Cosart back to the comments. So long story short he could have just fallen out of favor with the FO and they decided to part ways with him.

 

I guess it's clear Houston doesn't expect Correa to out grow SS now that they have Moran and Ruiz in the Minors while still having a young Dominguez in the Majors...although I could see Moran possibly moving to LF at some point if his glove lags

[KABrother88]

Looks like Mike Foltynewicz is going to be called up today...righthander with an EXPLOSIVE FB...he does have command issues like Cosart but Folty has long been viewed as key piece ro the future. So far this year at AAA he has an ERA of 5.08 (yikes) with 102 Ks in 102 innings...but 52 walks...that being said he has moments where he dominates and shows how much talent he has...like his May 30th outing where he went 7.2 IP with 10 Ks and 0 BB allowing 1 run...then has outings like on July 7th where he gives up 7 runs in 3 innings while walking 6. He's still just 22 years old so hes still developing but hopefully he has some success initially and builds some confidence

[Big T]

I can't wait to see him on the mound! He has long been one of my favorite prospects in the Astros system.

[eagle eye]

Folty's 1st appearance was on Saturday night and he pitched 2/3 of an inning and did very well. I'm sure he'll see more work in the future but the bullpen got a rest on Sunday because of a complete game by Scott Feldman in a 6-1 Astros win over Toronto that also gave the Astros a 3-1 series win. It was a good win and Feldman pitched the best he has since May when the Astros were on a torrid streak in which they dominated their opponents.

 

So, how did the Astros fare in July. My first impression was that the team had trouble overcoming a rash of injuries to key players. Dexter Fowler hasn't played in like forever, or so it seems and George Springer has been in and out of the lineup with a pesky knee and Alex Pressley and............you get the idea. The last couple of weeks has seen the emergence of Chris Carter. The strikeouts are down and he's actually hitting in the clutch. Carter may have finished the last 10 days of the month as the best hitter on the team this side of Jose Altuve. Speaking of Altuve, the dog days of summer haven't cooled off Jose at the plate. Still hitting .340-ish with at least one or two multi-hit games a week. I've seen where opposing pitchers are actually giving him intentional walks to avoid taking a chance he'll sting them with his bat. Altuve is 2nd in the whole MLB in batting average at .339 just behind leader Troy Tulowitzki's .340. He's the MLB leader in hits (155), he's #1 in the AL in stolen bases and tied for #2 overall. The Dodgers Devaris Gordon leads the bigs with 51 steals and Altuve is tied with Cincy's Billy Hamilton at 43. Altuve has been solid in the field as well. To end his July in style Dallas Keuchel tossed his fourth complete game of the year vs the A's. With a little perspective, Scott Feldman's complete game on Sunday was his third---in his career. Houston did struggle and part of that struggle was with the bullpen. They ended July by blowing leads and losing two games the Astros should have won. Houston ended July with an 8-17 record and an overall record of 44-65. July was the worst since Houston went 9-19 in April which leaves them 22 games under .500. On the bright side July saw Houston leave the AL West cellar on the strength of a sweep of the Rangers on July 7-9 and they haven't been in the cellar since. Fortunately, Texas sucked worse than Houston in July.

 

With the onset of August Houston at least starts off on the right foot winning it's first 3 games of the month including Feldman's complete game on Sunday. Dallas Keuchel takes the hill tonight vs the Phillies and Kyle Kendrick in Philly. BTW Keuchel has been better on the road than at home so this should be interesting to see how does in his first start since his complete game against the A's on July 30th.

 

George Springer is going to Quad Cities for a rehab stint before returning to Houston. I'm a bit surprised he's going all the way back to A ball for the rehab assignment. He suffered a quad strain and I guess that's the best place to do your rehab assignment for that injury. He is expected to come off the 15 day DL next weekend vs the Rangers.

 

Domingo Santana is back in the bigs to replace Jesus Guzman who was put on the 15 day DL with back spasms. In his first call up in early July Santana lasted all of four games. He failed to reach base and he struck out 11 times in 13 at-bats. Hopefully, his second trip to the bigs is better than the first. So far, though, Santana has yet to play in a game.

Edited August 5, 2014 by eagle eye

[eagle eye]

I thought that last night's heartbreaking loss in 15 innings to the Phillies would set the stage for a big rebound night for the Astros. Yeah, that 2-1 loss was probably a bitter pill to swallow but, to their credit, Houston usually comes back strong after such setbacks. Not tonight, at least not so far. After 1-2/3 innings Brad Peacock has taken up right where he left off when he was sent down to AAA a couple of weeks ago. That is to say he sucked then and tonight he's already allowed 5 earned runs on 5 hits and 3 walks. One and a third innings.

It's such a shame Dallas Keuchel goes 7 innings allowing one run on a Ryan Howard homer in the 2nd. In his last 3 starts he has allowed 2 earned runs with a .078 ERA. Brad Peacock, well, let's just say he's hasn't been that good. By contrast, Philly pitchers have allowed just two runs in 17 innings. It's still early so Houston could turn things around but the Astros are not very good when trailing by 4 or more runs. Houston did score in the top of the 1st on a leadoff hit by Jose Altuve and a steal of second base. A hit by Chris Carter moved Altuve to 3rd and a fielder's choice by Jon Singleton plated Altuve. I shudder to think what would become of this team if Altuve was lost for the rest of the season. You can't see it but I'm typing with my right hand while I knock on every piece of wood within arms reach.

[eagle eye]

Brad Peacock and Bo Porter will tell you that Peacock is going through growing pains. I'm sorry, what? The fact that Houston traded Jarred Cosart and are left with Peacock is not such a great trade IMO. Peacock's plus is that he is only 26......but wait.........Cosart is 24. Cosart seemed to have turned a bit of a corner and was pitching pretty well and his 9 wins was second on the team behind Dallas Keuchel's 10 wins. Maybe the prospects Houston got will be worth giving up on Cosart but so far the highest rated guy, Jake Marisnick has been what he was in Miami the past year and a half, a weak hitting center fielder with zip for power. In 148 games played in Miami he earned 9 total walks. 9. But on the bright side he did strike out 146 times. Seems like his K/BB ratio is a little off kilter. Is this a rare mistake by GM Jeff Luhnow? I suppose only time will tell but right now I think the deal stinks. I would have been much happier if Peacock was the one traded.

[eagle eye]

The Astros have won the series with the Rangers and it doesn't even matter what happens today. Mark it in the books. The Rangers domination of the Astros, for the time being, is over. Now, the Astros have Rangers ace Yu Darvish's number. Darvish didn't even last 5 innings before poor performance and a high pitch count ran him from the game. In 4+ innings Darvish gave up 6 runs, 5 earned and he threw 113 pitches.

With Jose Altuve out due to pain in his neck Robbie Grossman of all people was in Altuve's lead off spot and his first at-bat forcing Darvish to throw him 11 pitches before finally walking Grossman to set the table for a 2 run 1st inning was a thing of beauty. Who'da thunk it, that Grossman was capable of an AB like that.

Do you know how hard it is to alter your batting average by this time of the season? An 0-fer night may only lower your BA a couple of one thousandths. Same with a 4-4 night. By August you have logged so many AB's that a good or bad night or two just doesn't make much of a dent. That's what makes the recent surge by Chris Carter so incredible. In the last 30 days he's hit .318 and so far in August he's hitting a blistering .394. One month ago on August 8th after the second game of the series vs these same Rangers Carter was hitting .194 and that was kind of a high water mark for his BA in 2014. His average is now .229 which is 7 points higher than his career average of .222. You have to wonder if Vernon Christopher Carter is seeing the same hitting coach as Jose Altuve. If he is I hope he starts taking Jon Singleton with him.

Dexter Fowler could be back in the lineup any day now. His first game of his rehab assignment in OKC saw him DH and go 2-3 with an RBI on Friday and last night he went 1-3 with a run scored in a RedHawks win over Iowa. Fowler has been out of the lineup since June 27th with a right intercostal strain. If he has no ill effects from playing back-to-back games at OKC he could be back in the lineup as early as Monday vs the Twins.

Alex Presley may be going out for a rehab assignment of his own very soon. Since going out a month ago after straining an oblique muscle swinging a bat Presley had to be patient and nurse the injury along. Last night before the game with the Rangers Presley took normal batting practice with the team. He said he felt a little sore but he thought it was because of inactivity rather than the injury. If he really has no problems after today he could go on a rehab assignment the first of this week and return to the big club by next weekend.

George Springer is still wondering when he will be back. He tweaked his injured quad in his rehab assignment at Quad Cities so he is wanting to make sure the issue is completely healed before going all out again. He said that his game is built on his speed and he's not taking any chances by coming back too soon and causing a serious problem with that quad.

Dallas Keuchel will take the hill today to try and help the Astros nail down a sweep of the Rangers. He will be looking to extend his recent dominant streak on the mound which includes a complete game and 7 strong innings against the Phillies earlier this week that saw him get a no-decision in a 15 inning Astros loss. He'll be shooting for win #11 on the season and I hope he gets it.

[dacards]

Moran is the key for this deal not Marisnick. If they both turn out to be good then the Astros got a steal. Marisnick is likely to become a decent 4th or bench fielder at some point. The only reason he is getting so much time right now is because he is young and and Fowler and Springer are out. Hopefully Springer's back today.

[eagle eye]

The hope that Houston could complete the sweep of the Rangers sort of swirled down the bowl in the middle innings. Dallas Keuchel wasn't his usual self and that's evidenced by two wild pitches he uncorked in those middle innings and both cost him a run. The Rangers trotted out a AAA caliber pitcher and our guys made him look like Tom Glavine. It was nice to see the Astros on TV over the weekend and I was flipping channels all weekend going between NFL games and the Astros.

 

BTW, in bankruptcy court this past week there was some headway made to make the Astros and I'm sure the Rockets are part of the deal as well much more accessible to local TV providers. It won't help this year but all indications are that Directv and I believe Time Warner have been included in a deal that expands local coverage of the Astros and Rockets from 40% to around 70% with deals expected to include other pay TV providers that number could rise significantly. Unfortunately, the wheels of justice spin slowly most of the time. Speculation was that the deal won't be finalized for about 70 days which means Astros baseball will be over but, on the bright side, Rockets fans may finally get to see a product this is worth seeing and get excited about. It also means as the Astros get better the opportunity to watch that progression will increase too. That's not a bad thing.

[eagle eye]

Okay, an update on previous post. The Houston Chronicle said that DirecTV and AT&T have purchased what's left of the ComCast Sportsnet network. There is no time frame in the article but it clarifies some information regarding the Astros and Rockets exposure in the Houston market.

 

http://blog.chron.com/ultimateastros/2014/08/06/att-directv-to-take-over-comcast-sportsnet-houston/

 

Another big mistake I made in my previous post was that Time Warner was the other party involved because I posted a note on this thread a few months ago that Time Warner was merging with ComCast and they would all be one big happy family later this year. So, it would be foolish as heck for TW to undercut their new mother with this sports deal. My bad. When I'm wrong I say I'm wrong. Truth is my last post about this subject was off memory and it bothered me enough I had to look it up.

[eagle eye]

The Astros are 1-1 in the current series against Minnesota. They lost Monday by a score of 4-2. Brad Peacock had a gritty performance throwing 113 pitches in 5 innings of work but he only surrendered 2 runs of which only 1 was earned. Josh Fields continues his rough streak by losing the game in the ninth giving up two earned runs on 1 hit and 2 walks. The Astros defense looked like little leaguers at times highlighted by Domingo Santana inexplicably holding onto the ball instead of throwing it into the cutoff man on a single. Santana's error cost Houston a run. Santana admitted after the game that he "just panicked" and he couldn't throw the ball. Rookies, what are ya gonna do?

 

Yesterday Houston bounced back to thump the Twins 10-4 behind strong pitching from Colin McHugh who won his first game since June 3rd. Chris Carter got a franchise tying 6th multi-homer game with two HR's which resulted in 5 RBI's. Since July 3, Carter is hitting .325 and leads the Majors with a .756 slugging percentage and a 1.138 OPS, in addition to the home runs. He has 15 HR's since July 1st which leads the majors in that time frame. Jose Altuve had yet another multi-hit game going 3-5 with 2 RBI's and 2 runs scored. Another guy hitting his stride is Jake Marisnick. Almost since the day after I bitched about him being a bust in the Jarred Cosart deal he's hit .400 in his last nine games and he went 2-4 yesterday with a HR to lead off the 3rd inning.

 

Houston will get CF Dexter Fowler back today. He has a 4 game rehab stint in OKC and is ready to return to the lineup for the first time since June 26th after suffering a right intercostal strain. In his four games Fowler was 3-10 at the plate and he had no medical issues at all. He'll slide back into his CF slot with newcomer Jake Marisnick sliding over to LF.

 

It will be at least 2 more weeks before George Springer will be back in the lineup because of a setback he suffered last week. He underwent and MRI and team doctors prescribed 2 more weeks of rest.

 

Alex Presley is on rehab assignement in short season Quad Cities. In his first game he went 0-3 but had no issues with his strained oblique muscle following the game.

 

Last but not least, if Houston beats Minnesota today they will match their win total of 2013 of 51 games. This may not seem significant right now but if you think about it with 6 weeks left in the season the Astros will improve 10 to 15 games over last season. That ain't nuthin to sneeze at pardner. The Astros have been beset by injuries over the summer but the excellence of Jose Altuve and the recent surge by Chris Carter the offense has been able to tread water. After a dismal July the Astros are currently above .500 for the month of August. If you think about the wasted quality starts and blown leads by the bullpen you could see that Houston is not a bad team that needs some consistency at the plate and in the bullpen but there is hope on the horizon. Not only that but the Astros, despite a truly horrendous month of July is still ahead of intrastate rival Texas in 4th place in the AL West. Robbie Grossman has even had a resurgence of sorts since he was put into the leadoff spot in the lineup when Altuve missed a day with a sore neck. He has remained in the leadoff spot since Altuve's return and he's seeing better pitches because opposing pitchers don't want to put Grossman on with the AL batting leader Altuve coming to the plate. Shoot, everyone in the lineup except for Mark Krauss and Jon Singleton is hitting better. Lord, what to do with Singleton. The guy has a bad habit of swinging out of his shoes a lot which is resulting in marginal contact and a lot of K's. If he can just learn that a smooth swing will get him better results without losing his power he will be okay. Where's Altuve's batting coach, man, Singleton can sure use him.

[eagle eye]

Okay, follow me here and see if you agree. Today Bo Porter cost his team a win. Oh, Josh Fields helped with a simply awful 8th inning. A single, a double and walk loaded the bases and Kenny Vargas hits a 2-run single to extend the Twins lead to 3-0 and all this and Fields had not recorded an out yet. And that's part of my problem. I'll explain in a sec. Bo Porter has shown, to me at least, on many occasions that he is not a very good manager. I've ranted about this before but I have a laundry list of things from today's game that sort of back up my feeling. Under the letter head "How Bo Porter Blew Today's Game" I submit these items for your consideration.

 

1. Dexter Fowler came back today for his first big league game since June 26th and Porter sticks him in the clean up spot in the lineup. WTF???!!! Why not put him third and have Chris Carter bat fourth. It protects Fowler and maybe forces Twins pitcher Kyle Gibson to give Fowler better looks because Altuve and Carter are protecting him in the batting order. One of many bad decisions Porter has made setting his lineups this season.

2. Why pull Brett Oberholzer after seven innings? The guy pitched 7 strong innings of one run ball and that run came on a Joe Mauer solo HR in the 6th. Obie had thrown just 100 pitches and another 14 or 15 to finish the 8th would not have been a big deal. It was still a one run game and trotting out Fields time after time just to watch him suck is getting old.

3. Why take a guy like Matt Dominguez, who really pretty much sucks as hitter, and let him hit away with men on 1st and 2nd with nobody out in a 1-0 game? BTW Dominguez is among the lead leaders in grounding into double plays and Bo Porter has got to know this. Why not let Dominguez bunt the runners over taking away the double play and getting two runners in scoring position? On deck was a suddenly hot Jake Marisnick followed by .264 hitter Marwin Gonzalez. If Twins pitcher Gibson walks Marisnick to get the double play ball back on the table I would rather take my chances with Gonzalez more than I would Dominguez. Also, the Astros were not getting to Gibson who was mowing down Astros left and right. Through 6 innings he had only thrown 60 pitches. He fell apart in the 7th and 8th a bit but playing small ball would have put some pressure on Gibson and tied the game.

 

As for Fields, the guy can throw a 97 mph fastball but he keeps leaving it places that hurt him. He is in real danger of losing his confidence and for a pitcher that's a bad thing. IMO he needs to go down to AAA and work on some control issues. It's not that he's walking a lot of batters, but he is, but he's not spotting his pitches very well. This isn't a Bo Porter issue it's a Jeff Luhnow issue. Foltynewicz had a bad outing on Tuesday but it was a blowout game and the team could absorb a slightly rough outing. Porter keeps putting Fields in these tight games and he keeps blowing them.

The Astros are going on the road for 10 games in 11 days beginning tomorrow with a 4 game series against the Red Sox. At least I can go to bed early for a few days.

Edited August 14, 2014 by eagle eye

[Big T]

The Astros just equaled their entire win total of last year with a 5-3 extra inning win against the BoSox. Marisnik is really starting to excite me guys. He has been at the top of the Marlins minor league charts for a while but never put it together in the Majors. Right now he is playing superb defense and swinging the bat in clutch situations. He drove in the two runs in the top of the 10th tonight to get the win for our Stros.

[eagle eye]

The Astros just equaled their entire win total of last year with a 5-3 extra inning win against the BoSox. Marisnik is really starting to excite me guys. He has been at the top of the Marlins minor league charts for a while but never put it together in the Majors. Right now he is playing superb defense and swinging the bat in clutch situations. He drove in the two runs in the top of the 10th tonight to get the win for our Stros.

 

I totally agree Big T. The Astros hitting coach must have a way to get the light to come on for some players. If you look at the total turnaround Jose Altuve has gone through and also with the emergence (finally) of Chris Carter and now Marisnick. I just wish he could push the right buttons on Jon Singleton who doesn't seem to be getting any better.

Speaking of Carter, call be crazy, but he is looking a little like Mark McGwire when he swings? He's under control, he isn't over swinging like he had been and he's trusting his power. All that is translating into a pretty good hitter. Since July 1st he's statistically the best slugging hitter in the AL and maybe the bigs period. If Carter can continue on the path he's been on the past month and a half he could turn out to be a really nice .270-.280 hitter with 30+ HR's. He will be one to watch over the last 6 weeks of the season. If he keeps it up he could in for a bit of a pay raise this off season. Now, understand two things 1) I'm not saying Carter is now or will be in the future as good as Mark McGwire was but the effortlessness of Carter's power and just his swing reminds of McGwire. That's all. 2) I'm not saying Carter will build his BA up to .270 this season. Too many AB's have gone by and too few are left in the season for him to reach that plateau but he could end up around .240 and that would be a career benchmark for Carter.

 

I bitch about Bo Porter's crappy managing enough that I have to give the man credit for a move that saved the game and ended up allowing the Astros to win last night. After Chris Carter singled to start the 8th and Dexter Fowler singled to move Carter to 2nd Porter pulled Carter and put in speedy Gregorio Petit to pinch run. This was a bit of a gutsy move because Carter was 2-4 on the night and has been the best hitter on the club the past month. But, the Astros were down 3-2 at the time with time running out in the game. It looked the move was moot because both Jason Castro and Jon Singleton struck out putting the Astros down to their last out with Matt Dominguez up to bat and it looked like Dominguez had failed to come through again with a slow ground ball to shortstop Xander Bogaerts. The guy that saved the day was Dexter Fowler who was off like a rocket at the crack of the bat and he beat the throw from Bogaerts to second base. The other guy who was off like a rocket was Petit who never slowed down rounding third and he beat the throw home from Dustin Pedroia. The call at 2nd was challenged by the Red Sox and the safe call was upheld. The key to Houston tying the game was Porter's move to put Petit in to run for Carter otherwise the tying run would not have scored and in all likelihood Houston would've lost 3-2.

 

The biggest thing about last night's win besides what Big T pointed out was that it was the first Astros win at Fenway. Prior to last night the Stros were 0-8 in Boston. But to Big T's post about Houston equaling their 2013 win total. This is a big deal because every win from now on raises the bar of expectations for 2015. This will be the first time in 4 years the Astros have gotten better in the W/L column. For the past three years the Astros have gotten worse. In 2011 Houston had it's first 100 loss season in their 50th anniversary season recording 106 L's. In 2012 the Astros followed with 107 L's and last year they set a new low of 111 losses. Now it's guaranteed that Houston will improve on that record as they sit at 51-72. If Houston plays .500 ball the rest of the 39 games left in the season, which is basically what they've played the last month, they will end up going 19-20 which gives them a final record of 70-92 which is a 19 game improvement over the worst season in franchise history. People, I would have taken 10 games better and ran with it. This is totally possible too considering the starting pitching continues to be excellent and the offense should get better now with Dexter Fowler back, Alex Presley not far behind and hopefully George Springer soon after. Who knows what September call ups will do. I would bet a guy like Kris Bryant will get a chance to move Matt Dominguez out of the 3rd base slot. Dominguez has shown what he is and he's not getting any better at the plate. He's a good defensive player but it would be nice to have someone who can hit better than .230-ish. What last night means is better days are coming.

Edited August 16, 2014 by eagle eye

[KABrother88]

Who knows what September call ups will do. I would bet a guy like Kris Bryant will get a chance to move Matt Dominguez out of the 3rd base slot.

 

If only we had Bryant lol...thinking of Colin Moran there EE?

 

Interesting fact I just saw on SportsCenter...last night was the 15th consecutive loss on August 15th for the Red Sox. Why is that date significant? Well it's the birthday for Red Sox fanatic Ben Affleck...in fact he tweeted yesterday that if they lost again yesterday that he would become a Yankee fan...well...your move Ben.

[eagle eye]

If only we had Bryant lol...thinking of Colin Moran there EE?

 

Interesting fact I just saw on SportsCenter...last night was the 15th consecutive loss on August 15th for the Red Sox. Why is that date significant? Well it's the birthday for Red Sox fanatic Ben Affleck...in fact he tweeted yesterday that if they lost again yesterday that he would become a Yankee fan...well...your move Ben.

 

Yep. My bad on that note. So, the Astros web site made a big deal about Dominguez getting a day off after 140 straight games. Trouble is, a day off won't help. I don't mean to be negative but Dominguez is a guy who will play better than average defense and hit into double plays on a regular basis and drive in a run on occasion even though it may be more about teammates hustle than his skill with the bat.

 

Speaking of negativity, remind me again why we traded the second leading starting pitcher on the staff in Jarred Cosart and kept a slug like Brad Peacock. Scott Feldman and Dallas Keuchel would kill for run support like Peacock got last night. Six runs would have won both pitchers 4-6 more games. Keuchel has had to toss 4 complete games to keep the bullpen from blowing the slim leads he had. Peacock enjoyed a 5-1 lead and a 6-3 lead before a disastrous 5th inning derailed the whole night for the Astros. A ridiculous error by Jon Singleton didn't help matters any but make no mistake, this was on Peacock. Pitching like he did last night got him sent down to AAA. I hope Marisnick and the Moran better be good because right now Houston is feeling the loss of Cosart. I know it's really too early to judge the trade but Peacock's continued poor performances are getting hard to take. He threw 96 pitches in 4-1/3 innings before the Red Sox chased him from the game. Peacock's ineptitude is almost as hard to take as that of Josh Fields. He is definitely a liability at this point. Peacock and Fields are not guys who should be in Houston's future if things keep going like they are.

[Big T]

I've been watching the Astros on wiziwig.tv I had a friend tell me about this site a couple of days back and I have been using it since he told me about it. So far it's been great and I haven't had any problems with viruses or anything like that. I thought I would go ahead and tell y'all about it so y'all could check it out if y'all liked. Hopefully they will get the TV crap worked out but until then we have a way to watch our Stros! You can also find the site by googling free mlb games live streaming. It's not just MLB but any and every sport. My only draw back so far is that they only use the home broadcast.

[Big T]

Oh, and make sure you have Ad Block downloaded.

[eagle eye]

Thanks for the info Big T! As for today Houston made hay while the sun shone by bombing the Red Sox 8-1 largely due to a grand-freaking-slam by Jose Altuve. He capped a 6 run 2nd inning. Dexter Fowler added a solo shot in the 3rd and Jon Singleton added even more insurance with a solo shot in the 9th. Colin McHugh earned his second win in a row upping his season record to 6-9. The win today earned a series split with Boston which isn't bad and evened their record for August at 8-8. Today's win is +1 over their win total of last season. They are also 3-1/2 games ahead of the Rangers in 4th place in the AL West.

[Big T]

I watched a little bit of the Ranger's game today. There was maybe 10,000 people in that stadium. I just had to sit back and chuckle a bit. Not only that but is it just me or have all of the Rangers hats vanished around here locally? Somebody must be stealing them from all of the "long time, non-band wagon" fans. Very strange.

[eagle eye]

I've been talking about how much of a phenomenon Chris Carter has become and over the last week he has done nothing to dispel anyone's opinion about him. In fact the folks a MLB headquarters have taken notice and awarded Carter the American League Player of the Week. He is the second Astros player to win this award this season with Dallas Keuchel being the first (betcha you thought Altuve was the other!). Here's the article about the award for Astros.com. You may gag on how good the stats Carter has been putting up.

 

http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article/hou/improving-chris-carter-turning-into-a-force-for-astros?ymd=20140818&content_id=90257182&vkey=news_hou

[Big T]

Chris Freaking Carter! Three run bomb to beat the Bronx Bombers! Typical Carter kind of night, 1-5 with several K's and a bomb.

[eagle eye]

Chris Freaking Carter! Three run bomb to beat the Bronx Bombers! Typical Carter kind of night, 1-5 with several K's and a bomb.

 

Not only that but he hit his 30th HR of the season which is a career high and it makes him the first Astro to hit 30 or more HR's since 2007 when Lance Berkman hit 34 and Carlos Lee hit 32.

Edited August 20, 2014 by eagle eye

[eagle eye]

The Astros beat the Yankees again behind the pitching of Scott Feldman (7-9) and in a way the Astros aren't accustomed to winning. The Astros have sort of lived and died by the long ball but last night, with exception of a triple by Dexter Fowler, the Stros got it done with singles. They had one big inning where they scored 4 times and it was on a walk and 4 singles with one out in the 7th inning. The 4 runs erased a 2-1 deficit and gave the Astros the lead for good. The win without a home run ups their record for such games to 11-39 on the season. The 5-2 win also clinches the season series win over the Yankees with a game left to play today. The bullpen did their jobs last night too with Kevin Chapman, Josh Fields (WTF!) and Jose Veras (who got the save) combined to give up ZERO runs on 2 hits in 2-1/3 innings of work. The bottom 1/3 and the top 4 hitters got the Astros all the hits and runs the Astros needed to clinch this series win for Houston who is now 4-2 in this road trip with a game left vs New York and a 3 game set against Cleveland before they come home and face the A's.

 

Wins over 2013 - +3

[eagle eye]

Did you ever get the feeling that Dallas Keuchel would like to line up the whole batting order and kick 'em in the nads? Earlier this month he goes 7 strong and gives up one run that ends up being a 15 inning loss. Last game he pitched against the Bosox and goes seven strong giving up only 3 runs but the Astros only had 2 when Keuchel left the game. For the Astros sake they came back and won with Tony friggin' Sipp getting the win. Sheesh. Last night Keuchel pitched another complete game of the season, his 5th, but he gets tagged with the loss because the offense took the night off. So in his last three starts Keuchel has given up 7 runs in 23 innings of work and ended up with a loss and 2 no-decisions. In the last two games Houston has scored 7 and 5 runs, both Astros wins, and if they score 5 Houston wins 5-3. But nooooooooooohohooooooo. The Astros were shut out making 8-12 Brandon McCarthy look like the reincarnation of Cy Young in a 3-0 shutout loss today. I would want the whole nine man batting order to line up while I did my best Randy Bullock impression on nine crotches. Keuchel has been stuck on 10 wins since the beginning of August. It's a shame the way Houston fails to take advantage of Keuchel's superb pitching by failing to give him any run support. I'm sure a good nad kicking would make him feel better. Edited August 23, 2014 by eagle eye