FG on Fox: The Astros Might Not Suck
Entering Friday, the Houston Astros feature the longest winning streak in the majors — and a rookie slugger on a home-run tear.
Thursday’s 3-1 victory over the visiting Baltimore Orioles was the Astros’ sixth consecutive win. The streak started with the final two games of a four-game series in Seattle and included a three-game sweep in Kansas City. No, wait: Make that a clobbering of the Royals.
The Astros certainly earned their status as a punch line, losing 100-plus games in three consecutive campaigns. Before this season, the Astros had lost more games in the last three years than 15 different teams had lost in the last four.
The perception is that the Astros are an experiment, and the perception is that the experiment is a long ways from completion. The Astros still get no respect, and they had a miserable beginning to 2014. But don’t let the start and the history fool you. The Astros, 23-32 through Thursday, are actively shedding their losing reputation and are perhaps, no longer a punch line.
Read the rest on FoxSports.com.
Jeff made Lookout Landing a thing, but he does not still write there about the Mariners. He does write here, sometimes about the Mariners, but usually not.
They still suck, they are just hot at the moment. But there is some light showing in the tunnel.
Yeah, despite the title, it sounds like Cameron’s premise is really “The Astros Might Not Suck *As Much*”. They still have the third worst record in baseball at the moment, and they’re still projected to be the second-worst team the rest of the season.
That’s still very clearly in the ‘suck’ column, but it is significantly better than: 11 games behind the second-worst team (2013) , or 6 games behind the second-worst team (2012), or 7 games behind the second worst team (2011).
You might want to read the byline.
My bad.
Since this post they’ve won just 18 of 49, and only 10 of their last 35. They are very likely going to lose 100 games again – that’ll be the fourth year in a row (which is ridiculous).
They still suck!
Yeah they still suck. They won 6 in a row last year too as part of an 8-2 10 game stretch. Even happened at the end of May just like this one.
Was Dallas Keuchel as good last year as this year thus far? Collin McHugh? Was George Springer up last year? Did they have Dexter Fowler last year? They definitely are not as bad as last year.
Article isn’t titled “Astros might be better than last year”. Its titled “Astros might not suck”. So you and I are kind of both right.
True. Below .500 and improving since Spinger got going isn’t really the same as suck as in 100 loss bad.
They are better. Last year after the six-game winning streak, they were -88 in run differential (through 58 games). This year they’re at -38 through 55 games. Last year through 55 games they were 220-312 for a -92 and a record of 18-37. This year 23-32, 209 runs, 247 allowed.
I don’t think the article says anything about them contending this year, or even being ‘good’ overall this year. Only that the turnaround could be starting to show some life, and may be sooner than expected.
They won’t keep up this pace, but all the talk of not contending until 2018-2020 was likely far too pessimistic. Especially if they can keep pulling diamonds from the rough (Keuchel) in addition to the behemoth farm system.
The pitching coach Strom deserves a lot of the credit IMO.
They aren’t contending in the next 3 seasons.
Fangraphs should add Kate Upton links to the bottom of their articles, too.
We used to have a fellow named Brazen Reader whose username linked to photo galleries of revelers in Swedish nightclubs.
I realize this is a low bar, but the Astros have certainly done well against my Mariners. It’s been quite frustrating (not that we Mariners fans don’t have plenty of other sources of frustration…).
It’s also worth noting that the Astros do get systematically underrated by fangraphs’ version of WAR as UZR still ignores all plays effected by defensive shifts and the Astros have notably been the most shift-happy team in the majors and with good results (http://houston.astros.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20140511&content_id=75111788¬ebook_id=75111880&c_id=hou).
Defense is still probably the Astros’ biggest weakness, but it’s definitely not as bad as their ludicrous -24.7 UZR/150 for the season, 5 runs worse than any single season team UZR/150 there has ever been (hey 2005 Yankees). Even by DRS, which does somewhat acknowledge shifts, we can see the Astros numbers jump all the way to -15 which is about half as bad as their dismal -32.9 UZR, but probably still not enough of a jump to properly correct for their apparently lead-leaguing runs-saved-by-shifts numbers.
Considering how totally not terribly their pitching and offense is, it’s a very significant difference between evaluating the Astros at worst defense there’s been in a long time and just normal bad defense.
Considering they’ve played like a PCL team for the last four and a half years, it’s about time they stopped sucking.
I’m offended.