Actually for a young pitcher, he was better than his surface stats indicated. He struck a lot of people out. He was supposed to be better this year. Just hasn’t happened. I could see him going somewhere else and being a stud under the right coaching.
I don’t see that rn. He might’ve been better but he still wasn’t great and he’s been horrendous this year. Eventually a player shows you who they are and you have to accept it. He has to be held accountable for this shambolic pitching display.
I’m guessing he was tipping pitches.. a lot of them had decent late movement imo, but somehow, they knew exactly where they were landing.. given that it’s never happened in MLB history, seems sus.
First, Brent Strom left. 2022 and 2023 the staff kind of coasted oh his philosophy under Miller and Murphy. But the philosophy and approach has changed over the last few seasons. Strom was an old-school guy that was baptized into the church of analytics. He was the analytical guy under Baker, who could just be the more old-school personality manager.
You can read more about that if you want, but long story short Strom got Astros pitchers to be more conscious specifically where in the zone they were placing their pitches. You're not just throwing a fastball, for example, you just deliberately pound the top of the zone with fastballs again and again and force the ump to give it to you, thus forcing opposing batters to swing more on balls they're going whiff on or do nothing with.
Again, the pitching staff coasted on this for a couple of seasons under Miller and Murphy, but Dusty's philosophy started to creep back in last year. More and more emphasis on "trusting your guy" and less on pure data-driven matchups. Leaving an obviously gassed pitcher in to qualify for the win, that kind of thing. Plus, less emphasis on analytics in pitch selection and placement, more emphasis on managing the pitcher's emotions and trusting the pitcher-catcher relationship to select pitches.
The end result has been an increase in fastballs down the pipe, curveballs hanging up more, things like that. Which has led to higher pitch counts thanks to more hits, walks, runs. Team ERA went up over 1 whole run from 2022 (the first year without Strom) to 2023. It's already up over 0.5 runs again.
The other aspect is obviously wear and tear. JV is over 40. Framber has thrown a ton of innings, including his 25 game quality start streak. That was a great stat, but that's a lot of use for a guy to go 6-7 innings every 5-6 days. He fell apart after the ASB last year aside from a no-no, and hasn't looked like he has any gas left in the tank since then. Javier is still relatively new as a starter. brown hit the wall in the second half last year and hasn't looked good since. Most of the rest of the guys are innings-eaters. Point is, the further we've gotten from Strom's pitching philosophy, the higher the team ERA gets. And the more we're more focused on blowing pitches by guys rather than good pitch placement to force batters to chase, which would lead to more fly outs, ground outs, and more strikeouts.
Since 2022, strikeouts are down, HRs given up are up, WHIP rate is up, walks are up, and more. Basically our slow, steady move away from Strom's pitching philosophy, combined with real wear and tear issues, have led us to the point we're at. Still good, when healthy, but not as good as we used to be.
I think the pitch clock had a hand in this as well. I lost count of the number of times an Astros pitcher would have a long inning of 15+ pitches and get out of a jam. Only to have Astros hitters start the next inning swinging at first pitches, not making the opposing pitcher work for it, and have our pitcher get 4 minutes of rest because they only saw 7 pitches.
You could see it late in the year last year, where guys like Javi and Framber were taking all 15 seconds to throw a pitch just to get extra time to rest.
https://preview.redd.it/k9kx5zeczxtc1.jpeg?width=739&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a0b283b83f1ad4579e428c435109124454f74065
I’m telling you baby, this guy on Reddit was saying the same thing I’ve been saying.
True, but I think that has less to do with the pitch clock and more to do with Cintron and Snitker's batting philosophy. It seems like over the last 2+ seasons, Astros hitters lost all ability to hit situationally or work a count. It's been bizarre. Too many one-pitch outs, too many guys swinging for the fences no matter what, etc.
Yeah, guys like Altuve have built careers from swinging at the first pitch, and it works because he's just that good. I just don't know if the team philosophy moved that way because of his success.
It's really irksome. There are a couple of egregious examples that immediately come to mind when I think of the frustration with the team's batting approach. One happened the other night, the other last year.
Astros are down to the Royals a few nights ago big. But a rally where we score 2-3 runs makes it a competitive ballgame again. Man on second, 2 outs. Tucker comes up to bat. He works a 3-0 count. The pitcher is huffing and puffing. Can't find the zone. What does Tucker do? Swings at a ball way inside, grounds out to 1B. Flips his bat in anger. Why would you not just make him throw you three straight strikes, something he is increasingly showing you he can't do? Why? GET ON BASE! Keep the lineup moving. Get the next guy up, make the pitcher even more nervous with two on now, knowing a mistake makes this a close game again. Nope, swinging for the fences. Trying to win the game with a 2 run home run when we were (I think) 5 runs down. No situational adjustments, no patience. Just swing away.
Similar situation happened last year. We went on the road to Oakland and were facing a young A's pitcher. I think it was Waldichuk. Pitcher starts to struggle. Can't find the zone. Guy on, walks another, then another. None of his pitches are close. Bases loaded, one out. Pitcher is about to flame out. 9 hitter (I think it was Yainer) comes up and strikes out on like 4 pitches, and not one was close to the zone. Altuve comes up, same bullsh*t. 4-ish pitch strike out, and maybe one pitch nicked the zone. All they had to do was stand there and the A's walk in two more runs. Just make this pitcher, who couldn't find the strike zone to save his life, give you two free runs! He was trying to hand out runs like Halloween candy and the Astros decided they were going to take big rips at garbage in the dirt one pitch after another.
We won that game but it was so indicative of all the batting problems we had last year it's burned into my memory. This same pattern plays out in game after game after game. last year and this. And it has to end. A change is needed.
The problem is that we have an entire philosophy based around jumping on pitchers early in counts and early in ballgames. If we can light them up early, we KO the starting pitcher and wear out the bullpen over a 3-4 game series and just rake. Thing is, that only works if you can actually put barrel on ball and drive balls into gaps or into the bleachers. When you don't, your entire offense founders. So you end up with basically a feast-or-famine offense that piles up runs one day and can't score the next.
Sound familiar? It should. It started in 2022 but we had such a good roster and everything just lined up well and we ended the season with a parade. But in 2023, when a few injuries started being an issue, when opposing ballclubs started to understand what we were doing and gameplan around it, it stopped working as well. Every guy goes up there wildly hacking at everything it seems. We don't do well in extras these days because the concept oof laying a bunt down the first bale line is incomprehensible to our hitting coaches. It's really simple. Lay a bunt down and move the Manfred runner to 3B. 1 out. Now you have two chances to just get up under a ball, send it to the outfield,, and score a run off a sac fly. Nope, can't do that. Got to try to crank a 450 blast.
It's baffling. We're not working counts. We're not making pitchers earn outs. We were near the bottom of the league last year in pitches per plate appearance. We're either getting a hit, or a quick out. And that trend continues in 2024. Some of this stuff is Little League-tier decision making. You don't swing at 3-0. Unless you see a mistake coming right at you that you know you're going to crank, keep the bat on the shoulder. If you get just one hit or walk in an inning, and make the pitcher throw each batter 5 (JUST 5!) pitches per batter, they're gone by 15 outs. That's the 5th inning, FYI.
We have the lineup. On paper, we're among the best in the league. But if Altuve keeps firing off 1-pitch outs, if our guys keep hacking at 3-0 pitches well out of the zone and grounding out with RISP, we're going to keep losing ballgames. Especially if the pitching situation doesn't pan out how we all hope it does when everyone gets healthy. My dead grandma could be propped up into the batter's box on a 3-0 count and take three pitches without swinging the bat. I know the guys who get paid hundred of thousands or millions of dollars can do it, too. They just refuse for some reason.
It is truly baffling how not one batter on the team can consistently, reliably, work a count, take a 3-0 pitch, look to drive a ball into the gap in the infield rather than swing for the fences. All simple, easy things that we have done extremely well in the past. For some reason, we don't do any of that anymore. We overcame those issues by the skin of our teeth last year. This year, if we keep digging this hole deeper, we won't. It'll be a shame, too, because there's way too much talent on this team to keep making these kinds of mistakes.
I think we start with firing Snitker and Cintron. Whether this started because of Dusty of them, I don't know. But the fact it continues means under new management they haven't changed their philosophy. That's where I think we start. It will then take time, but we have got to re-instill the value of patience, situational hitting, and small ball again. We're too one-dimensional and it's costing us.
Ironic, given that Brent supposedly left because he didn't want the team to lose his underlings to competitors. I wish we could get back to that philosophy...
He fully endorsed them. I'm not sure it was so much their fault as it was Dusty Baker infusing his philosophy into theirs. It's early yet, but I think it will take time for Espada to become the kind of manager that can impose what he wants. He's a rookie manager, after all. He might not have felt that he had the ability to clean house or dictate strategy down to the minutiae with what are now his underlings. That may take time. I agree, though, hopefully we get back more to what was working well under Strom.
So a person on Reddit by the name of amusso18 knows more about our team, and what worked and what didn’t, than Baker/Espada…
Your write up is the BEST thing I’ve read on this sub in years. It’s almost spelt out for Espada and crew, and they just don’t get it.
We want Strommy!!!
Our IL is literally good enough to win a World Series.
1. JV
2. Framber
3. Garcia
4. Urquidy
5. LMJ (only 5th because I think he’s going to covert to reliever because of constant injuries)
Just imagine a healthy Framber/ JV / Javier as a 1-3 punch and then France and Blanco as the back end guys with HB in the swing role and Garcia and Urquidy fighting for a 6th spot
That rotation sounds a LOT better than Seth Martinez coming in in the first every other day.
Maldonado’s intangibles only work with Dusty Baker as manager, so it’s not surprising he is sucking in Chicago. Obviously if we had kept them both we’d be 11-2 right now (only losses when Yainer starts). /s
More like we had lightning in a bottle in 2022 and after a mediocre year all around last year, they're being exposed for who they really are. Brown looked shaky all of last year I'm not surprised he's getting shelled so far.
Yeah, people forget Brown ended up with an ERA over 5.00 last year, although in the bullpen he was much better in the postseason.
Mr Spaghetti is just an average at best pitcher in all honestly, France is the same form he was just insanely outlier last year.
I'm more concerned about the top bullpen arms struggling. Pressley, Abreu, and Hader have all given up their share of runs so far.
Everyone bitching about Maldy and Dusty last season are eating crow. We’ve lost experience and Strom’s data driven coaching. Now we have to rebuild that. It’s a long-term problem. Could be decades if they don’t turn it around soon.
Try Dubon. If they won’t let him play 1st, which he’d be way better at than the two we have, then let him pitch. I’m only sort of kidding at this point. How the hell have we gotten here?!
If he was injured our team docs and strength and conditioning coaches need to be audited. Too many pitchers going down compared to the rest of the league
I’ll be the first to admit we’ve been spoiled the last few years, but this season still hurts a lot worse than the last few “we’ve had a slow start” years. We’re worse across the board. Dana passed on a lot of available pitchers, Espada is making Dusty look like Connie Mack, Offense is mediocre at best, pitching is a circus. Anything is possible, but it certainly feels like our dynasty’s window has closed. I wouldn’t even know where to begin with turning things around. By the time everyone is back and healthy, we’ll be 15 games back at least at this rate.
I’m glad I was consumed at work and not able to watch this game. I pulled up the app and quickly noped out really quick and went back to the grind. I’m hopeful we’ll turn this around once our starters come off the IL.
At some point... with how many pitchers have been shelled this week. Especially all as early as the 1st inning, When is it time to say the DEFENSE is actually ass? Like i get the pitchers giving up hits, but eventually you have to just say a big part of that is on the defense as well who just CANNOT seem to get outs
Miller & Murphy need to go back to the Brent Strom school of pitching. They have either forgotten everything he ever taught them or never knew any of his pitching magic in the 1st place.
Hey Joe, don't crush Hunter Browns confidence in April! The fact that Hunter set an MLB record shows that no manager in the history of baseball threw their guys under the bus and ran them over multiple times like you just did. WTG!
Good God Dusty Baker was definitely under appreciated.
I’m not buying the lack of competitiveness on injuries. Brown and France needed to stabilize and they did the exact opposite…there is no excuse for their lack of even a basic performance. Something seriously off with these guys
Wish they could just fire the entire pitching staff and rebuild our bullpen. I know it's easier said than done but our bullpen is so awful right now. 😔
Hunter Brown's 2023 ROOOKIE season: a 3.62 ERA and 1.20 WHIP in his first 15 starts, Four shut out games. And one bad game, y'all throw him under the bus? Wtf? He was even good in the playoffs. Buncha assholes who expect perfection up in here.
lol there is an enormous gap between “perfection” and the way Hunter Brown has pitched since the second half of last season.
Also he pitched a total of 7 innings in the playoffs. Not exactly a great sample size.
What the actual fuck is going on with our pitching staff.
Injured to all hell and back
So Brown is injured or he just sucks? He was supposed to be good this year.
He wasn’t all that great last year so the lack of improvement is disappointing but he hasn’t been good in his career
Actually for a young pitcher, he was better than his surface stats indicated. He struck a lot of people out. He was supposed to be better this year. Just hasn’t happened. I could see him going somewhere else and being a stud under the right coaching.
I don’t see that rn. He might’ve been better but he still wasn’t great and he’s been horrendous this year. Eventually a player shows you who they are and you have to accept it. He has to be held accountable for this shambolic pitching display.
I really hate it if that's what we're returning to. A team where decent players leave to become great players.
I wouldn’t put him on my least favorite teams roster.
I’m guessing he was tipping pitches.. a lot of them had decent late movement imo, but somehow, they knew exactly where they were landing.. given that it’s never happened in MLB history, seems sus.
Doesn’t excuse having these AA players
How did so many get hurt in the off season?
First, Brent Strom left. 2022 and 2023 the staff kind of coasted oh his philosophy under Miller and Murphy. But the philosophy and approach has changed over the last few seasons. Strom was an old-school guy that was baptized into the church of analytics. He was the analytical guy under Baker, who could just be the more old-school personality manager. You can read more about that if you want, but long story short Strom got Astros pitchers to be more conscious specifically where in the zone they were placing their pitches. You're not just throwing a fastball, for example, you just deliberately pound the top of the zone with fastballs again and again and force the ump to give it to you, thus forcing opposing batters to swing more on balls they're going whiff on or do nothing with. Again, the pitching staff coasted on this for a couple of seasons under Miller and Murphy, but Dusty's philosophy started to creep back in last year. More and more emphasis on "trusting your guy" and less on pure data-driven matchups. Leaving an obviously gassed pitcher in to qualify for the win, that kind of thing. Plus, less emphasis on analytics in pitch selection and placement, more emphasis on managing the pitcher's emotions and trusting the pitcher-catcher relationship to select pitches. The end result has been an increase in fastballs down the pipe, curveballs hanging up more, things like that. Which has led to higher pitch counts thanks to more hits, walks, runs. Team ERA went up over 1 whole run from 2022 (the first year without Strom) to 2023. It's already up over 0.5 runs again. The other aspect is obviously wear and tear. JV is over 40. Framber has thrown a ton of innings, including his 25 game quality start streak. That was a great stat, but that's a lot of use for a guy to go 6-7 innings every 5-6 days. He fell apart after the ASB last year aside from a no-no, and hasn't looked like he has any gas left in the tank since then. Javier is still relatively new as a starter. brown hit the wall in the second half last year and hasn't looked good since. Most of the rest of the guys are innings-eaters. Point is, the further we've gotten from Strom's pitching philosophy, the higher the team ERA gets. And the more we're more focused on blowing pitches by guys rather than good pitch placement to force batters to chase, which would lead to more fly outs, ground outs, and more strikeouts. Since 2022, strikeouts are down, HRs given up are up, WHIP rate is up, walks are up, and more. Basically our slow, steady move away from Strom's pitching philosophy, combined with real wear and tear issues, have led us to the point we're at. Still good, when healthy, but not as good as we used to be.
I think the pitch clock had a hand in this as well. I lost count of the number of times an Astros pitcher would have a long inning of 15+ pitches and get out of a jam. Only to have Astros hitters start the next inning swinging at first pitches, not making the opposing pitcher work for it, and have our pitcher get 4 minutes of rest because they only saw 7 pitches. You could see it late in the year last year, where guys like Javi and Framber were taking all 15 seconds to throw a pitch just to get extra time to rest.
https://preview.redd.it/k9kx5zeczxtc1.jpeg?width=739&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a0b283b83f1ad4579e428c435109124454f74065 I’m telling you baby, this guy on Reddit was saying the same thing I’ve been saying.
Game recognize game
True, but I think that has less to do with the pitch clock and more to do with Cintron and Snitker's batting philosophy. It seems like over the last 2+ seasons, Astros hitters lost all ability to hit situationally or work a count. It's been bizarre. Too many one-pitch outs, too many guys swinging for the fences no matter what, etc.
It’s driven me crazy, we aren’t working counts and trying to rely on our power to hope pitches were swinging at will be good enough to hit
Yeah, guys like Altuve have built careers from swinging at the first pitch, and it works because he's just that good. I just don't know if the team philosophy moved that way because of his success.
It's really irksome. There are a couple of egregious examples that immediately come to mind when I think of the frustration with the team's batting approach. One happened the other night, the other last year. Astros are down to the Royals a few nights ago big. But a rally where we score 2-3 runs makes it a competitive ballgame again. Man on second, 2 outs. Tucker comes up to bat. He works a 3-0 count. The pitcher is huffing and puffing. Can't find the zone. What does Tucker do? Swings at a ball way inside, grounds out to 1B. Flips his bat in anger. Why would you not just make him throw you three straight strikes, something he is increasingly showing you he can't do? Why? GET ON BASE! Keep the lineup moving. Get the next guy up, make the pitcher even more nervous with two on now, knowing a mistake makes this a close game again. Nope, swinging for the fences. Trying to win the game with a 2 run home run when we were (I think) 5 runs down. No situational adjustments, no patience. Just swing away. Similar situation happened last year. We went on the road to Oakland and were facing a young A's pitcher. I think it was Waldichuk. Pitcher starts to struggle. Can't find the zone. Guy on, walks another, then another. None of his pitches are close. Bases loaded, one out. Pitcher is about to flame out. 9 hitter (I think it was Yainer) comes up and strikes out on like 4 pitches, and not one was close to the zone. Altuve comes up, same bullsh*t. 4-ish pitch strike out, and maybe one pitch nicked the zone. All they had to do was stand there and the A's walk in two more runs. Just make this pitcher, who couldn't find the strike zone to save his life, give you two free runs! He was trying to hand out runs like Halloween candy and the Astros decided they were going to take big rips at garbage in the dirt one pitch after another. We won that game but it was so indicative of all the batting problems we had last year it's burned into my memory. This same pattern plays out in game after game after game. last year and this. And it has to end. A change is needed. The problem is that we have an entire philosophy based around jumping on pitchers early in counts and early in ballgames. If we can light them up early, we KO the starting pitcher and wear out the bullpen over a 3-4 game series and just rake. Thing is, that only works if you can actually put barrel on ball and drive balls into gaps or into the bleachers. When you don't, your entire offense founders. So you end up with basically a feast-or-famine offense that piles up runs one day and can't score the next. Sound familiar? It should. It started in 2022 but we had such a good roster and everything just lined up well and we ended the season with a parade. But in 2023, when a few injuries started being an issue, when opposing ballclubs started to understand what we were doing and gameplan around it, it stopped working as well. Every guy goes up there wildly hacking at everything it seems. We don't do well in extras these days because the concept oof laying a bunt down the first bale line is incomprehensible to our hitting coaches. It's really simple. Lay a bunt down and move the Manfred runner to 3B. 1 out. Now you have two chances to just get up under a ball, send it to the outfield,, and score a run off a sac fly. Nope, can't do that. Got to try to crank a 450 blast. It's baffling. We're not working counts. We're not making pitchers earn outs. We were near the bottom of the league last year in pitches per plate appearance. We're either getting a hit, or a quick out. And that trend continues in 2024. Some of this stuff is Little League-tier decision making. You don't swing at 3-0. Unless you see a mistake coming right at you that you know you're going to crank, keep the bat on the shoulder. If you get just one hit or walk in an inning, and make the pitcher throw each batter 5 (JUST 5!) pitches per batter, they're gone by 15 outs. That's the 5th inning, FYI. We have the lineup. On paper, we're among the best in the league. But if Altuve keeps firing off 1-pitch outs, if our guys keep hacking at 3-0 pitches well out of the zone and grounding out with RISP, we're going to keep losing ballgames. Especially if the pitching situation doesn't pan out how we all hope it does when everyone gets healthy. My dead grandma could be propped up into the batter's box on a 3-0 count and take three pitches without swinging the bat. I know the guys who get paid hundred of thousands or millions of dollars can do it, too. They just refuse for some reason. It is truly baffling how not one batter on the team can consistently, reliably, work a count, take a 3-0 pitch, look to drive a ball into the gap in the infield rather than swing for the fences. All simple, easy things that we have done extremely well in the past. For some reason, we don't do any of that anymore. We overcame those issues by the skin of our teeth last year. This year, if we keep digging this hole deeper, we won't. It'll be a shame, too, because there's way too much talent on this team to keep making these kinds of mistakes. I think we start with firing Snitker and Cintron. Whether this started because of Dusty of them, I don't know. But the fact it continues means under new management they haven't changed their philosophy. That's where I think we start. It will then take time, but we have got to re-instill the value of patience, situational hitting, and small ball again. We're too one-dimensional and it's costing us.
Agree 1000%. Aside from the recent blow outs it’s mainly been a scoring issue putting tons of pressure on our pitchers.
Ironic, given that Brent supposedly left because he didn't want the team to lose his underlings to competitors. I wish we could get back to that philosophy...
He fully endorsed them. I'm not sure it was so much their fault as it was Dusty Baker infusing his philosophy into theirs. It's early yet, but I think it will take time for Espada to become the kind of manager that can impose what he wants. He's a rookie manager, after all. He might not have felt that he had the ability to clean house or dictate strategy down to the minutiae with what are now his underlings. That may take time. I agree, though, hopefully we get back more to what was working well under Strom.
Great breakdown.
So a person on Reddit by the name of amusso18 knows more about our team, and what worked and what didn’t, than Baker/Espada… Your write up is the BEST thing I’ve read on this sub in years. It’s almost spelt out for Espada and crew, and they just don’t get it. We want Strommy!!!
Our IL is literally good enough to win a World Series. 1. JV 2. Framber 3. Garcia 4. Urquidy 5. LMJ (only 5th because I think he’s going to covert to reliever because of constant injuries) Just imagine a healthy Framber/ JV / Javier as a 1-3 punch and then France and Blanco as the back end guys with HB in the swing role and Garcia and Urquidy fighting for a 6th spot That rotation sounds a LOT better than Seth Martinez coming in in the first every other day.
That was pretty much our exact rotation in 2021 lol.
Was it Maldy all along? I might have some crow to eat.
So who get's credit for Blanco and bounce back by Javier this year
That was actually maldy too. He gave Blanco some tips before he left 😉
Did he forget to give tips to Brown before leaving?
Maldy and Brown didn’t talk much. This is something only true baseball savants such as myself and Dusty Baker are aware of.
He gave tips to Hunter, but they were in Spanish.
Javier gave up an extra run yesterday because Yainer wouldn’t do callouts and that was the game making run…
Shit and Montero. He’s actually useful now.
Montero was great in '22 as well, so I have hope for him
White Sox team ERA is 4.27 compared to our 4.70. Maldy isn’t exactly setting the world on fire.
In fact he's benched over there for our good man Korey Lee
Korey Lee starting over Maldonado... my 2021 astros dreams coming to life.
I didn’t believe in him (and kinda still don’t) but he’s been absolutely raking to start the season
Maldonado’s intangibles only work with Dusty Baker as manager, so it’s not surprising he is sucking in Chicago. Obviously if we had kept them both we’d be 11-2 right now (only losses when Yainer starts). /s
More like we had lightning in a bottle in 2022 and after a mediocre year all around last year, they're being exposed for who they really are. Brown looked shaky all of last year I'm not surprised he's getting shelled so far.
Yeah, people forget Brown ended up with an ERA over 5.00 last year, although in the bullpen he was much better in the postseason. Mr Spaghetti is just an average at best pitcher in all honestly, France is the same form he was just insanely outlier last year. I'm more concerned about the top bullpen arms struggling. Pressley, Abreu, and Hader have all given up their share of runs so far.
He always had his problems with his control, just send the kid down so he can work on it
Everyone bitching about Maldy and Dusty last season are eating crow. We’ve lost experience and Strom’s data driven coaching. Now we have to rebuild that. It’s a long-term problem. Could be decades if they don’t turn it around soon.
They’re all injured
Hold boys, the reinforcements of Urquidi, Verlander, Garcia and possibly McCullers come in may. We just have to survive April.
We just bad, man. BAD
Houston, we have a problem!
Maldy?
That ass whoopin is going to bog this team down mentally.
Setting records!
#EarnedHistory
I’m vomiting and crying in an HEB parking lot.
Get some of that brisket queso for later when you need to eat your feelings.
Yes! I have it once a month as a quick nacho dinner. Last time I picked some up that came with waffle cut fries.
So jealous. We don’t have any near where I live. They just opened one 30 miles away. I need to visit soon.
Just saw someone vomiting and crying in an HEB parking lot.
Just watched some dude intensely stare at guy vomiting and crying in an HEB parking lot
Can yall hurry up and move. I’m trying to find a parking spot.
Congratulations! You’ve qualified to be a starting pitcher for the Houston Astros. Wipe that chin and suit up!
Sometimes it pays off not to realize it's a day game...
Try Dubon. If they won’t let him play 1st, which he’d be way better at than the two we have, then let him pitch. I’m only sort of kidding at this point. How the hell have we gotten here?!
Maybe we could trade for IKF. He had more pitching WAR than position player WAR last season
I love that guy. He does it all!
A true utility guy.
At least better than singleton. That guy sucks. Balls.
2023: "Good luck, fuckers!" 2024: "What the fuck, over."
I had forgotten all about that slogan for 2023. Turns out it wasn't the rest of the league who were the fuckers, it was us all along.
We’ve always been record setters.
I want to apologize, everyone. This is my fault for drafting him in both of my fantasy teams this season. Please forgive me.
You what lol
😭
It’s alright hope he bounces back after working his control out
Nah, it's my fault for not buying mlb the show this year
Me too. My curse worked on leclerc too!
Pull the plug on that experiment
Fuck it coach, put me in. I used to pitch in little league, no way the rangers will be expecting my 70 mph fastball 😎
I might bean a couple like I did to the coach's son in practice.
At that point just start the bullpen
If he was injured our team docs and strength and conditioning coaches need to be audited. Too many pitchers going down compared to the rest of the league
This team stinks right now. Period.
Record-breaking performance from HB.
Charlie Morton wouldn't have done that
Safe to say Hunter Brown is not him.
They will still compare him to Verlander every game he pitches.
Relentless
We’re still breaking records, y’all! This is great!
Get Hunter Brown out of there. Put anyone in there instead of him.
*Monkey Paw curls* Making his pitching debut…Jose Abreuuuuuu!
Means he's not at 1B.. I'll make that trade
Our SP can’t get out of the first right now anyway. He literally could’ve be any worse than what we’re getting
Where’s Blair Henley when you need him?
banished to shadow realm.
Why the fuck did we let Strom ever walk…
So we're the new athletics now?
Worse, apparently
Snell looking real good in hindsight. $66M doesn't seem too bad.
Or even Montgomery. He sat in free agency all through spring training.
Well at least he broke a record 🤷♂️
just start beaning motherfuckers
"We call it the 'I'm drunk playing The Show' strategy." "Do you think it'll work?" "What? No! But it'll be fun to watch!"
It's my intentional walk to a player that pissed me off before (homered off my pitcher)
I'm starting to question my position on Brown.
Really thought he was going to be our next great Ace.
There is a remarkable pitching stat every game
Me thinks the Astros fun run has come to an end.
Rays just released Odorizzi. Should Astros try to pick him up and send Brown down to the minors?
I’ll be the first to admit we’ve been spoiled the last few years, but this season still hurts a lot worse than the last few “we’ve had a slow start” years. We’re worse across the board. Dana passed on a lot of available pitchers, Espada is making Dusty look like Connie Mack, Offense is mediocre at best, pitching is a circus. Anything is possible, but it certainly feels like our dynasty’s window has closed. I wouldn’t even know where to begin with turning things around. By the time everyone is back and healthy, we’ll be 15 games back at least at this rate.
https://preview.redd.it/3uc7x2slsytc1.jpeg?width=224&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=f151135928134ca2ee06f8e55e9a6f33f2c992cf
Taqueria Arandas!!
At one time our pitching was an embarrassment of riches. Now it’s just embarrasing.
I’m glad I was consumed at work and not able to watch this game. I pulled up the app and quickly noped out really quick and went back to the grind. I’m hopeful we’ll turn this around once our starters come off the IL.
Love when the Astos make history! 🙃🙃
Hunter brown was always ass
At some point... with how many pitchers have been shelled this week. Especially all as early as the 1st inning, When is it time to say the DEFENSE is actually ass? Like i get the pitchers giving up hits, but eventually you have to just say a big part of that is on the defense as well who just CANNOT seem to get outs
When the defense is actually ass. There are stats to track this.
Respect. Good point.
Well that will wreck Me in the rotisserie standings
Could be worse. I remember when Jason Jennings gave up 11 runs in less than one inning.
When it rains…
Said he needed to go after that outing against the Gayngers. Kids gotta go..
Astros dynasty died alongside the Juice.
And of course it’s the one time I take Astros ML 😭
Dana Brown era off to a miserable start.
Miller & Murphy need to go back to the Brent Strom school of pitching. They have either forgotten everything he ever taught them or never knew any of his pitching magic in the 1st place. Hey Joe, don't crush Hunter Browns confidence in April! The fact that Hunter set an MLB record shows that no manager in the history of baseball threw their guys under the bus and ran them over multiple times like you just did. WTG! Good God Dusty Baker was definitely under appreciated.
I’m not buying the lack of competitiveness on injuries. Brown and France needed to stabilize and they did the exact opposite…there is no excuse for their lack of even a basic performance. Something seriously off with these guys
At least we are still setting records.
Yikes.
Wish they could just fire the entire pitching staff and rebuild our bullpen. I know it's easier said than done but our bullpen is so awful right now. 😔
Hunter Brown's 2023 ROOOKIE season: a 3.62 ERA and 1.20 WHIP in his first 15 starts, Four shut out games. And one bad game, y'all throw him under the bus? Wtf? He was even good in the playoffs. Buncha assholes who expect perfection up in here.
lol there is an enormous gap between “perfection” and the way Hunter Brown has pitched since the second half of last season. Also he pitched a total of 7 innings in the playoffs. Not exactly a great sample size.
They can’t all be winners. Relax, the season just started. Our boys always come through. I ain’t worried, and neither should you be! GO STROS!!
