Baseball is funny.
When your team loses, you can’t seem to see how they could ever win again. That’s where Astros fans were after Saturday night, dropping the first two games in umimpressive fashion to the Angels.
When your team wins, you can’t fathom how they could ever lose again. That’s where Astros fans are now after two dominating wins over the Red Sox.
We went from “I hope we can beat the Angels” to “Sweep them Sox” rather quickly.
Well today is April Fool’s Day, so pump the brakes for a second. A day after the Astros threw their 2025 Cy Young finalist at the Red Sox, today the Red Sox get to do the same thing.
Garret Crochet is a stud. He pitched like a stud in 2025, leading the AL in innings pitched and strikeouts. He pitched like one in the season opener, throwing 6 innings of 8 strikeout 3 hit shutout ball.
The good news? He’s a lefty, and the Astros have no shortage of right handers who can hit lefties. They also have one of the greatest left handed hitters of all time against lefties in Yordan Alvarez.
Not only do the Astros hit lefties, they hit Crochet specifically. Here’s how the current Astros have fared against Crochet in their careers:
| Name | Hits | AB | AVG | OPS |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Smith | 1 | 1 | 1.000 | 3.000 |
| Paredes | 2 | 3 | .667 | 2.334 |
| Alvarez | 2 | 3 | .667 | 1.667 |
| Pena | 4 | 8 | .500 | 1.000 |
| Walker | 1 | 2 | .500 | 1.500 |
| Altuve | 3 | 7 | .429 | 1.000 |
| Vazquez | 2 | 5 | .400 | .900 |
| Allen | 1 | 3 | .333 | .933 |
| Correa | 2 | 7 | .286 | .572 |
| Meyers | 1 | 5 | .200 | .600 |
| Diaz | 0 | 6 | .000 | .143 |
Sure these are small sample sizes, but collectively, we can see that the Astros hitters are not pushovers for Garrett Crochet. With the exception of Yainer Diaz and the Astros who have yet to face Crochet (Matthews and Loperfido), everyone has found decent success in their limited histories, and Diaz probably won’t be playing today anyways, as today is a day game after a night game he caught.
That’s not to say it will be easy. Nothing is easy against a pitcher of Crochet’s caliber, but I’d still keep the broom where we can find it.
The Astros send Mike Burrows to the hill for his second start of the season.
Update: Carlos Narvaez has been scratched from the Red Sox lineup.
The game will be broadcast at 1:10 p.m. CT on SCHN with radio coverage on KBME 790 AM.
We hope you will join us and the rest of the Launch Angle community for the game! The turnout has been fantastic on the TLA Discord Server for the game threads.
Here is a sample from yesterday’s in-game discourse:
Join us again for today’s game. Just join the Discord server using this link: https://launch-angle.com/discord .
If you’ve participated in gamethreads on other Astros sites in the past, you will probably see a lot of familiar names. Chat, lurk, do whatever! (But please say “hi”, so we know you’re not a bot.)
Feature photo from @astros on X, Source Link.
Hey, I used the link in this Launch Angle post to get to Discord & it knocked me off Discord. Sent me through a verfication process that, after I was verified, wouldn’t take me to the Astros-related content. How do I get back in ?
Addendum: Got back on discord eventually, but it was a pain in the ass. Maybe I just did something wrong, but I’ll be careful about using the link from this site to access discord. It treated me like a brand new member.
I’m not sure what happened. When i click on that link it just brings me into my Discord app and lets me know I’m already a member of the server. Are you doing this on desktop or mobile?