chw42

Altuve's single to lead off the inning is probably even more inexcusable. Teams shift on him about 20% of the time, which is above average for a RHH and this is how they position against him.

Bummer was 4th in MLB this year with the lowest shift rate among pitchers at 3.4%. He was at 5.3 in a really limited sample last year and 8.3 in 2019 when he was really good. For a guy who gives up pretty much nothing but grounders it really doesn't make a ton of sense to have him be at a disadvantage by not shifting correctly.

lol even if they're a fluke, if they somehow win 2 more games against LA, they're probably going to the World Series. Lightning in a bottle situations happen all the time.

I thought he got all this crap out of the way his rookie season. He honestly looked good last year and won a silver slugger. Hopefully he figures something out in the off-season cause his level of performance this year is not acceptable for a guy who is basically a DH.

I have to agree. A lot of the mistakes today were avoidable and that's what pisses me off the most. If we lose cause the other team was just that much better, I can accept that. What I have a hard time accepting is not executing in the parts of the game that don't require you to throw hard or hit the ball far.

Pretty sure Heuer would have easily gotten you Marte.

Probably cause they were looking for a double play. I'm not sure why you need to play double play depth there though. You can still get 2 if you play up the middle.

Not playing a lefty pull hitter like Alvarez up the middle is not what the analytics say.

Well at least we won't accept "we're resting our guys for October" next year. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

No cause while Hahn fucked up royally at the deadline by getting Kimbrel instead of a RFer, TLR is still gonna allow us to be badly behind the times in terms of analytics. We hit about the same amount of grounders up the middle as the Astros today and we ended up giving up hits on it every time cause our positioning put us nowhere near where the ball was hit. Meanwhile the Astros made numerous plays on the ones we hit.

I doubt any team will pay much for him and his $16 million contract after the piss poor 2nd half and the debacle that was today's performance. I'm afraid we're SOL.

Everything people have been bitching about with respect to this team all season reared its ugly head today. Bad positioning? Yes. TLR making an inexplicable move? Yes. TLR not using the bullpen correctly? Yes. Add all that in and you blow a game you were leading in half way through.

Not to mention he choked that save opportunity against the Red Sox. He looked decent against Toronto with a 3 run lead but couldn't save a 1 run game.

Remember when we were one of the better defensive teams in baseball last year? That was fun while it lasted. We were 9th in UZR last year while the Astros were 28th. Crazy what a difference a season can make.

Oh come on you're nitpicking an at bat when the game was basically out of reach? Did you forget that Jose isn't even close to 100% when he had the flu as recently as 2 days ago? Jose has showed up so far this series. He's not the reason why we're down 2-0.

Except one of those micro decisions directly led to 4 more runs scoring.

He pitched Bummer against 2 righties and a lefty who was 5 for 7 off him before that. That's 100% the wrong time to use him.

Lucas should have had the shortest leash imaginable. Instead Tony let him pitch to 3 hitters, 2 of them walked and the other one almost hit a 2 run shot off him. But La Russa didn't even have the bullpen up until after Brantley's fly out.

Hahaha omg then why the hell did you put him in? Why the hell have we been using him in that role all year? Jesus Christ this is so fucking sad. It's almost like he's saying I wasn't the one making the decisions.

The fact that nobody was even up in the bullpen to start the 5th was absolutely shocking.

That ball was also a rocket. Kimbrel doesn't get no blame here either. For someone who was supposed to stike out 35% of the guys he faced he allowed 2 liners to RF in a situation he's supposed to miss bats in.

TLR wasn't HOF quality in 2011 with his bullpen phone meltdown in game 6. That shit basically cost them a World Series game. He was too old 10 years ago.

It's that way because you made it that way, you dumb fuck. He basically turned a 5-4 game into a 9-4 game by putting Leury in RF. All so he could hit Cesar Hernandez to lead off an inning.

If you would have told me before the playoffs that Luis Robert would be 6 for 8 to open the series, I would have said we would be up 2-0 in the series.

Lucas had good stuff, but the command wasn't quite there after the first inning and the Astros just stopped swinging at his slider. He really should have come at them more in the zone. Those walks killed us today.