The Launch Angle

Well, the Houston Astros are headed in the right direction. After starting the spring with 2 one-run losses, they agreed to kiss their sister with a 6-6 tie on Tuesday against the Mets, and yesterday, they entered the win column with a 4-1 victory over the Marlins.

Supposedly.

I mean, it wasn’t televised, so who can say for sure? Here we are, trying to get some good looks at our guys in action, and nobody turned on the cameras. It sounded like Hunter Brown had a nice spring debut on the radio. It read like he had a good outing with 1 hit, no walks, and 2 strikeouts over two innings in the box score. But as much as I love analytics, I want the eye test. Or at least the possibility of the eye test, if all these games weren’t in the middle of the day, the same time when I’m at work where they block MLB.tv video streaming.

Well, this is the best I can do for you. I asked Grok to have a courtroom sketch artist depict what happened in yesterday’s Astros-Marlins game:

That’s a very Jim Abbott-y glove arm Hunter has there. But who am I to question “Official Artist”?

Anyways, on to today. Today is a new day, and it’s time for eyes on new addition to the Houston Astros. Our first look at Mike Burrows on Monday was promising. Our first look at Kai-Wei Teng on Tuesday was downright impressive. and today Astros fans get their first look at prize free agent pitcher Tatsuya Imai.

Cody Poage wrote about Imai last month. I highly recommend you give it a read.

Imai will start for the Astros against the Mets. Carlos Correa and Christian Walker figure to make an appearance in the lineup too, per Matt Kawahara . Here’s a nice clip of Imai pitching to Correa from Friday practice:

That’s as much as you get to see, because once again, the revolution is not being broadcast! The Astros actually have TWO split squad games today: Imai and Correa taking on the Mets in West Palm Beach, and another set of Astros will be playing the Cardinals in Jupiter, Florida. We will see neither! Just radio for both, and for the Cardinals game, there will only be the Cardinals radio broadcast.

I guess there’s the ear test, but that only seems to work for Amy Adams in Trouble with the Curve.

Here is the full Astros starting lineups:

And here is the Mets starting lineup. Nolan Maclean takes the mound for New York:

And the Cardinals:

That’s a lot of imagining to do. But come join your fellow TLA readers anyways in listening and picturing what Imai’s pitching must look like.

UPDATE: Hey, there is video! It’s fully fleshed out broadcast, more like a wide angle single camera feed of the whole field accompanied by Robert Ford’s and Steve Sparks’ radio broadcast, but hey there’s moving pixels!

Link is here: https://www.mlb.com/astros/video/spring-training-hou-nym-194591

You can post in the comments here on this page or you can join the Launch Angle’s discord server. Just use this link to join: https://discord.gg/DKXDJw9qF. For those of you who have participated in gamethreads at other site(s) in the past, you’ll probably recognize some familiar names and fellow Astros fans. Here is a sample of the Discord server gamethread from Sunday’s game:

Hope to see you here or there! Go Stros!