The Houston Astros of the American League West

13 games up

now 30 games over .500 (57-27) & 16 games up in the standings

for reference, seattle in 2001 was 61-22 on the morning of july 5 and had a 20 game lead in the division (biggest division lead all year was the day before, up 21 games in the standings)

id put over/under at 105 wins

Down to see the Astros tonight. They lost, but I was amazed at the depth of their lineup. One starter had 8 HR, and Reddick came off the bench with 9; six other starters have between 10-15 HR, Correa has 17, and Springer has 25. They're right on track to finish the year with 10 players hitting between 15 to 40 or 45 home runs. Even including the steroid era, has that ever happened before? So it's not just that they project to hit 259 as a team, which'd be just shy of the 1997 Mariners' 264, it's how evenly they're distributed through the lineup.

1997 Mariners and 2000 Astros, to name two, had nine guys w/ 10 or more HR, wasn't able to find anything more specific. If someone has the BR Play Index it should be easy to find.

05 Rangers, 09 Yankees & 10 Blue Jays also had 9 players with 10+ but I could find any teams with 10x 10+ HRs.

As I mentioned, they have a legitimate shot to have 10 x 15+. Bregman sits 10th on the team, and he projects to 15 for the season. (And Evan Gattis isn't even included in the 10.)

five HRs in a 19-1 win

I think you can start looking at Altuve/Correa historically, at least single-season. These are the best post-war double-play combinations I can find, measured by WAR (and with the help of a couple of pieces linked to below--I also checked a few that weren't on either list, but I could easily have overlooked somebody). The bracketed number at the end is combined age.

1. Robinson/Reese – 16.6 (1949) (60)
2. Morgan/Concepcion – 14.9 (1975) (58)
3. Utley/Rollins – 13.9 (2007) (56)
4. Andrews/Petrocelli – 13.8 (1969) (51)
5. Alomar/Vizquel – 13.4 (1999) (63)
6. Whitaker/Trammel – 12.7 (1983) (51)
7. Herr/Smith – 12.0 (1985) (59)
8. Kent/Aurilia – 11.9 (2001) (62)

At least two of those are a little bogus: Petrocelli's and Aurilia's seasons were way out of the norm for them (and Andrews wasn't anything special). Petrocelli/Andrews and Morgan/Concepcion were mostly one-man shows. Robinson and Reese had two or three other seasons that would make the list, but that was their best.

Going into today, through 88 games, Altuve and Correa had a combine WAR of 9.0 (perfectly split between the two), which would project to 16.6 for the season--both had huge days today, too. If nothing else, they're the best young DP combination since the war: their combined age is 49, lower than anybody on the list.

Used these as a general guide:

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/159424-the-top-10-double-play-combos-in-mlb-history
http://ca.complex.com/sports/2014/04/the-greatest-double-play-duos-in-mlb-history/

71 runs in their last 7 games, jeeez

What 62-30 teams do in their spare time.

http://m.mlb.com/cutfour/2017/07/17/242669496/carlos-beltrans-teammates-held-a-funeral-for-his-glove

I think you can start looking at Altuve/Correa historically, at least single-season

alas, Correa injury will sink the numbers

I guess Altuve will be the first guy I check every morning now. He's going to hit .650 the rest of the year and make a run at .400.

http://m.chron.com/sports/astros/article/Rays-Declaration-of-Unfriendliness-Astros-Orbit-11721828.php#photo-12945357

Altuve's historic July

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/jose-altuves-historic-july-and-his-mvp-momentum/

jOSE aLTUVE

― tupac, bach (J0rdan S.), Wednesday, July 20, 2011 2:25 PM (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DHix5xCV0AAk6Tw.jpg:small

I was looking at AL team stats and saw that Houston's *team* OPS+ is 131. This *has* to be historical ... the 1927 Yankees' OPS+ was "only" 127.

That Indians team that scored a thousand runs ('99) was only 111...that seems weird. '76 Reds were 120, '53 Dodgers (who scored 955 runs, almost 200 more than the next team) were 114.

http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/20488740/houston-astros-play-texas-rangers-series-tropicana-field-wake-harvey-flooding

supposedly the rangers refused to swap home series (the two teams are scheduled to play in arlington 9/25-27), which is pretty lame

We will be back at Minute Maid Park on Saturday with a doubleheader #ForHouston. pic.twitter.com/wKbfx64g5w

— #AstrosHarvey (@astros) August 30, 2017

One of the Mets' Saturday pitchers will be... Harvey

Verlander needs October. He is a Hall of Fame-bound pitcher. Rather than become inhibited or intimidated or diminished by a Hollywood moment, he thrives on it, brushing aside noise and tumult and historical realities to throw a baseball with fury and grace.

This is what the Astros got Thursday night. They found a tribal chief for their pitching staff. They brought to Houston a right-handed craftsman who can yet throw a fastball at 97 mph, with an equally devastating curve, as well as a change-up, not to mention two — two — different sliders that make him a five-pitch maestro.

The Astros will love him, all because the man possesses two exceedingly rare traits. He has championship pitches and a competitive demeanor to match.

Those of us who have watched him pitch this season have been awed, even by past Verlander standards. Not even four and five years ago, when he could hit 100-mph with his fastball and leave hitters to ponder a job-training course at their local community college, was Verlander more imposing than he has been in 2017.

It has to do with his skill set and with the savvy an athletically intellectual man has marshaled in this, his 13th big-league season.

There was a sense Wednesday at Colorado, as he spun more gold against the Rockies, that this was it for Verlander and the Tigers. That this had to be his finale. It made no sense — not even in professional sports, where rational thought often can be at a premium — that Verlander was not being chased by a team aware of what he would deliver now and in October.

http://www.detroitnews.com/story/sports/columnists/lynn-henning/2017/09/01/henning-verlander-deal-makes-sense-all-parties/105179472/

as a red sox fan this move is incredibly dispiriting

Altuve's still hitting over .400 on the road--no shot at the record, but every other name on the list is a long-gone immortal.

http://m.mlb.com/news/article/252486232/mlb-players-could-set-records-in-september/

Overshadowed by Kluber last night, but Verlander was just as awesome: 8 IP, 1 hit, 1 walk, 9 K, no runs, game score of 88 (Kluber's was 85).

I was looking at AL team stats and saw that Houston's *team* OPS+ is 131. This *has* to be historical ... the 1927 Yankees' OPS+ was "only" 127.

Well, they've fallen to 126.

One hit again (7.0 IP) for Verlander tonight; he's given up 11 in 28 innings since the trade.

Kosch
Astros have 63 hits the last 4 games...Can you do a post on the historicness (I made that word up) of their current wRC+ of 122?

Jeff Sullivan
Firstly, here's a post from July https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/the-astros-lineup-has-been-something-historic/

So the gap between the Astros and the next-best team -- after eliminating pitchers -- is 10 points. That's one of the larger gaps ever

By z-scores, the Astros are 2.8 standard deviations better than the mean

Only better lineup: the 1976 Reds, at +2.9 standard deviations

If the Astros can somehow lift their team wRC+ to 124 over the weekend, then they'd be the best ever, by this measure

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DMRmEH4W0AAM4Ld.jpg

from sports illustrated, 1966

i mean, you've read The Boys of Summer, right? A lot of strange stuff got said on the field, in the locker room and the press box, even after integration.

oh, i don't at all doubt that stuff was (and still is) said. more struck by the blithe reporting of it

AL MVP Jose Altuve nearing 5-year, 50-million extension (beginning 2020) with the Astroshttps://t.co/vY88Sx6c8u

— Brian McTaggart (@brianmctaggart) March 16, 2018

boras client signing an early extension = brave new world

Altuve and Correa are off to some kind of start.

are the Astros the only team w/ a perpetual thread?

Love Jeff Bagwell's stories but boy everything is special and the franchise is special and this player is special and that player is special and AJ is special and there is no commentary on the actual game and McCullers has been fantastic.

Let's check in with our old buddy Ken Giles! pic.twitter.com/wNWDNmIZE3

— Joe Giglio (@JoeGiglioSports) May 2, 2018

lollll

Astros are already running six games behind their Pythagorean record: 34-11 on paper, 28-17 when they actually play the games. They've outscored their opponents 210-116, almost 2-1. They've only lost once by more than four runs; they've won 13 times by 4+, including wins of 10-0, 10-1, 11-0, 8-0, and 16-2. Yankees and Red Sox, meanwhile, are both a game or two better than their Pythagorean records.

James
Justin Verlander

Jeff Sullivan
Fun fact, building off of that:
Last year the Indians set the all-time record with 31.7 pitching WAR
This year the Astros are on pace for 37.8
They're on pace to beat the record by 19%
lol

Charlie Morton and Gerrit Cole are just on fire. Got to hope they don't peak early this year or catch the injury bug.

That Verlander/Cole combo has been vv unfair to other teams. Morton has been great. And Keuchel hasn’t been at Cy Young level but he’s been extremely good.

http://www.mlb.com/news/astros-rotation-could-rank-among-best-ever/c-277542622

Putting aside how laughably premature this is, you judge greatest-evers not by one season but a cluster of seasons. The Astros have one guy headed for the HOF, another guy who's won a Cy Young, and a Few Starters Having Good Seasons. You can't compare that to the core of the '90s Braves teams, the Orioles at the beginning of the '70s, the Indians of the early '50s, etc.

Throw in the Mets and A's of the early '70s, and also the Phillies for a couple of years after they brought Halladay over.

well if the boundaries of the conversation is which pitching staff was most dominant over the course of one season...

yes, and you're very seldom going to see a staff together as long as Maddux-Glavine-Smoltz cuz, uh, everything's different.

Even when looking at a single season, I'm still inclined to take a step back and look at the pitchers you're talking about. Maybe one day we'll view Cole and McCullers as career stars, but they're far from that now; Morton's a journeyman. That Phillies staff only peaked for one year, but you had Halladay, Lee, Hamels, and Oswalt all together in the same place.

Morton and Cole had good moments with the Pirates but they were also pretty inconsistent. This is way beyond what they did there. No way they can keep this up, but still that is a heck of a start and adding in Morton's playoff heroics on top, quite impressive.