The Houston Astros of the American League West

watching that might feel like raucously shouting for blood at the colosseum

ha, from that article: "As usual, the Red Sox and Yankees are totally getting shafted by not being broadcast in prime time. Man."

THE YANKEES AND RED SOX ARE IN EVERY NATIONALLY BROADCAST GAME EVER

The Bad News Bears in Switching Leagues xp

Writer is having a li'l fun there, dawg.

didn't know that El Presidente was their bullpen coach.

omg a 3-1/3 inning save! What year is it?

and...bedard will still take his turn in the rotation.

of course he'll probably tear his labrum, but i really do think the astros are not going to be as awful as people think they're going to be.

struck out 43x in 3 games vs TEX

brETT wALLACE iS 1/14 wITH 11 sTrIKEOUTS

'stros bust out for 16 runs, everyone in the lineup gets a hit except brett wallace 0-4, 4ks

1/21 17ks O_O

a 2-game winning streak, and only 9 Ks tonight.

oUcH

eRiK BeDaRD pitching for HOusTOn	HOU	OAK
C Crisp walked.	0	0
D Norris walked, C Crisp to second.	0	0
C Young walked, C Crisp to third, D Norris to second.	0	0
J Lowrie struck out looking.	0	0
C Crisp scored, D Norris to third, C Young to second on wild pitch by E Bedard.	0	1
J Donaldson walked.	0	1
B Moss singled to right, D Norris and C Young scored, J Donaldson to third.	0	3
N Freiman homered to left, J Donaldson and B Moss scored.	0	6
P Clemens relieved E Bedard.	0	6
M Taylor flied out to center.	0	6

These guys aren't very good

Unreal is that two games in a row where the SP didn't make it out of inning 1? or I guess 2 out of 3? Vicious... this team makes my heart hurt.

Pitchers IP H R ER BB SO HR PC-ST ERA
P Humber 0.1 8 8 8 1 0 1 30-18 6.63
D Keuchel 1.1 5 6 3 2 1 0 52-30 3.86
Totals 1.2 13 14 11 3 1 1 82-48

i don't know how anyone could pick any team other than Houston for the worst in the AL (perhaps all of baseball ever).
― Porto for Pyros (The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall), Thursday, March 28, 2013 12:18 PM (3 weeks ago)

and into the 13th they go in a quest for win # 9

(I really don't think they're as bad as that Tiger team that lost 118 or whatever)

At least they're middle of the pack in runs scored? That's a thing, right?

All they have to do is not lose 19 runs a game and that might translate to ASTROS SUCCESS

2003 Tigers through 40: 9-31, -79 DIFF
2013 Astros through 40: 10-30, -90 DIFF

http://www.bestsportsphotos.com/images/PF/05PenaCarlos02.jpg

http://www.posters.ws/images/842591/carlos_pena_2004_studio_plus_photofile.jpg

smdh

Paredes does not like second basemen.

http://www.baseballnation.com/2013/5/17/4342322/jimmy-paredes-houston-astros-collisions-right-field

So if they continue at this pace and finish with -360 DIFF, would that be some kind of record?

Some Historically Bad Team! They're already just ten wins short of the '62 Mets.

Worst run differentials via Yahoo Answers:

For a season:
1899 Cleveland Spiders 529 runs scored, 1252 runs allowed (-723)

Since 1900:
1932 Red Sox, 566 runs scored, 915 runs allowed (-349)

Recently:
2003 Tigers, 591 runs scored, 928 runs allowed (-337)

(Mets were -331)

alright alright. i might be wrong on this one, so sue me.

I guess what they really needed is to get out of the NL since that's where all the good teams are.

Really nice MLB debut by Jarred Cosart today.

What is an Oberholtzer?

it is bavarian dialect for 'former brave'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFeBp1PDKyg

fwiw the astros' top six farm teams all made their league playoffs, and their system overall had a .569 regular season winning pct (second-best behind the giants)

doesn't necessarily mean anything, especially at the higher levels, but it doesn't hurt either

http://www.sbnation.com/mlb/2013/9/17/4740812/astros-tv-record-houston-csn-angels

The Nielsen rating -- 0.04 -- represents an average of roughly 915 households or about 1,000 viewers, which is 567 times fewer viewers than tuned in for the Texans-Titans game the next day.

That's very much like an old Bob & Ray radio bit... "And among women 18-35, your rating was... zero."

anyway:

MIA 55-95 _
HOU 51-99 4

Houston has 4 ties?!

hockeyhead :)

;p

an average of roughly 915 households or about 1,000 viewers

damn, Houstonians not reproducing much these days.

houston the world capitol of sad men watching baseball alone in their underwear iirc

they all worked for Enron.

Chance to play spoiler here vs Reds!

...and down 4-0 already

12 straight losses

Alyson Footer @alysonfooter
According to superfan @DeLongTweets, tonight's game is record for highest attendance after 100th loss. Previous: 26,209 vs Rockies 9/24/11.

because yankees

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/63/Hannes_Arch_Kirchheim_3.jpg/450px-Hannes_Arch_Kirchheim_3.jpg

btw I don't think we ever linked this: "most profitable ever" is bullshit.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2013/08/29/erroneous-story-claiming-houston-astros-most-profitable-ever-a-massive-strikeout/

What is the record for length of losing streak to end the season?

Fantastic:

http://espn.go.com/blog/sweetspot/post/_/id/41008/the-year-in-happy-astros-quotes

Favorite post-loss quote:

@brianmctaggart
Porter on base running gaffes: "I'm done with conversations."

Verlander looked cooked 2-3 years ago.

looks like he's rebounded for real. his velocity has gotten back to where it used to be basically. that usually helps

The Astros have allowed 126 runs through 50 games, which are the fewest in the Major Leagues since 1920 (live ball era). The previous record of 128 was set by the Indians in 1968.

— Brian McTaggart (@brianmctaggart) May 23, 2018

Kevin:
Are the Astros lack of luck unprecedented? Don’t think I’ve seen a team 7 games worse than their pythag this early in the season before.

Jay Jaffe:
I don’t have any historical data to support or refute that, but their 4-12 record in one-run games and the Mariners’ 18-9 record in same is the big reason why Seattle is a game ahead in the AL West despite a run differential that’s nearly 100 runs smaller (+118 to +21)

um, it's not "luck" when you have a shitty bullpen

huh, I guess their bullpen doesn't suck. retracted

Released 25 years ago today.

lol, wrong thread.

(aside from some sporadic sketchiness from Giles, the Astros bullpen is awesome fwiw... they have 2 legit starters stashed in there in case of emergency).

Keuchel has been poor to outright terrible for the last month+.

Fresno manager Rodney Linares, Fresno hitting coach Darryl Robinson, Buies Creek manager Morgan Ensberg and Corpus Christi developmental coach Mycal Jones aren't being retained by the Astros for 2019.

— Brian McTaggart (@brianmctaggart) September 18, 2018

these teams all did very well this year and linares in particular seems to be a rising managerial star?

for an organization that's been so successful over the last few years, luhnow seems to can a lot of people -- think he's fired a bunch of scouts as well

your cheatin' Stros

https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-astros-were-caught-doing-something/

How Many Kemps

Reddick with the #astros catch of the year pic.twitter.com/fAxRevByLI

— Houston Sports Talk Podcast (@HSTPodcast) May 10, 2019

It's early and this won't last and all of the qualifiers you choose to apply here, however, were one so inclined you could look at the best-ever wRC+ leaderboards and..

129 -- @astros, 2019
126 -- NYY, 1927
124 -- NYY, 1930 & 31
122 -- @astros, 2017
120 -- CIN, 1976 (+3 others)

— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) May 10, 2019

How stacked is this Astros team? If the top six Astros weren’t allowed to bat and instead of replacing them with minor leaguers, the team filled in the missing plate appearances with the remaining players’ 2019 lines, the team would project to score roughly 4.5 runs a game after accounting for park factors. With the team’s great pitching (3.53 runs per game allowed), their Pythagorean winning percentage would be .611. The hobbled Astros would have the fifth-best Pythagorean winning percentage in baseball. Want it in BaseRuns? That still works out to a .610 expected winning percentage, fourth-best in baseball.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/the-astros-are-ludicrous/

it's Yordan Alvarez

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/26934612/astros-call-minor-league-hr-leader-alvarez

Houston's offense:

https://www.mlb.com/news/astros-have-historically-good-offense-in-2019

Most hitters with at least a 130 OPS+ in 250+ PA
1) 2019 Astros: 7
2-T) 1993 Tigers: 6
2-T) 1987 Tigers: 6
16 teams tied with 5, including 2019 Yankees

(The seven: Altuve, Brantley, Bregman, Gurriel, Springer, Correa, and Alvarez.)

team wRC+ is now 124, tied for second-best ever behind the '27 yankees

(Had no recollection of that '93 Tigers team as being especially noteworthy, and when you look at them, it's somewhat misleading in that they had a bunch of guys just clear the 130+ mark--two guys were at exactly 130+, and their leader was at 138+. The Astros, by contrast, have four guys in the 130-139 range, Springer at 148+, Bregman at 159+, and Alvarez at 174+ in half-a-season.)

Winning 11-0 after three tonight; they've outscored the Mariners and A's 32-1 over 12 innings.

two home runs for this year's AL rookie of the year!

alvarez the second player ever to reach houston’s top deck in right

i’ll buy you a beer if you can guess the first

Albert Pujols off Brad Lidge. I'll take a pilsner please.

that was in left

The only other player to do so prior to Alvarez was former Met Jeromy Burnitz back in 2000.

(yes i cheated)

dang Jeromy Burnitz hit 315 home runs.

i'm trying to imagine where that puts him on the alltime list. In the 60s or 70s?

lol, i should've known: 130th

No guarantee at all that they'll win everything--the best team on paper rarely does--but with that offense + Verlander/Cole/Greinke (Miley would be the #1 starter for more than a few teams), and Osuna (good enough), they look '70 Orioles/'75 Reds/'98 Yankees good right now.

Run diff:

The #Astros have had quite the spike in recent days 👀👀👀 pic.twitter.com/CCL1gD3IAk

— Daren Willman (@darenw) September 10, 2019

howbout the '54 Indians?

'84 Tigers and '86 Mets, for sure. I don't know...I'm probably contradicting myself, but to be included in this group, winning the Series seems important.