The Houston Astros of the American League West

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.