April games count just as much as September games, but that doesn’t mean that April decisions are made the same way September ones are. With 5+ months of games ahead of you, your goals are different. Of course, one of them is to win, but you’re also looking to answer questions, because those answers are going to guide how you navigate the rest of the 150 games.
- What do we have on this team? Is this team a contender?
- Can Yordan Alvarez handle a larger left field workload?
- Is Jose Altuve still a serviceable second baseman?
- Who can we trust in the bullpen? What situations is each player suited for?
- Are Cam Smith and Joey Loperfido everyday players or best used in a platoon capacity?
- Can this starting rotation be relied upon to deliver quality innings night in and night out?
These are questions ideally you’d like to have answered in spring, but spring training is only so long, and there’s only so much evaluation you can make when the games don’t count.
Coming into a 3 game series against the Colorado Rockies, the Astros are trying to answer another question: Does this team have the starting pitching depth to weather an injury to its ace?
News came out yesterday that Hunter Brown was going on the IL for a strained shoulder. The Astros found themselves scrambling for a starting pitcher, as Brown was originally slated to pitch tonight’s game. Spencer Arrighetti, Jason Alexander, J.P. France and Colton Gordon are all starting pitcher options with major league experience in the system to fill in for Brown.
Tonight lines up with when Jason Alexander would normally start for the Space Cowboys, making him a logical option, but per Brian McTaggart, it is Cody Bolton who will get the nod for tonight’s game.
Whether this will be a full fledged start or simply a use of an opener in a bullpen game remains to be seen. Bolton last pitched on March 31 against the Red sox recording a 3 inning save during which he allowed only one run, by way of a solo home run. He starts on 5 days rest.
Bolton, a 28 year old right handed pitcher, is pitching for his fourth team in 4 years, with brief stints totaling 42 innings in Pittsburgh, Seattle and Cleveland before coming to Houston.
Bolton threw primarily four pitches: a four seamer and a sinker that average around 95 mph, as well as a cutter and a changeup that sit around 91 mph. Infrequently he will toss in a curveball that clocks in the low 80s. This graphic from Baseball Savant shows that on March 31, he wasn’t particularly good with control. Nonetheless, 34 of his 50 pitches went for strikes, as he elicited a number of swings even on pitches outside the zone.
Maybe this is a bullpen game and he’s just there to get the top of the order out as an opener, but he seems like the last man in the pen, so that would be an odd choice for that role. But he’s on the correct amount of rest, had a long(ish) outing last time, multiple pitches in his repertoire, and ended up with good outcomes.
Probably Bolton’s start is an attempt at answering another April question raised after his 3 inning save: What do we have in this guy and is it something we can use more down the line?
Hopefully tonight provides answers. Of course, then a new question must be considered: Can we trust these answers when the game is in Coors Field?
The Rockies trot out Ryan Feltner, a 29 year old righty, who threw 46 pitches and 3 scoreless innings in his first start of the season against Toronto.
This post will be updated with starting lineups as they are made available.
Update:
The game will be broadcast at 7:40 p.m. CT on SCHN with radio coverage on KBME 790 AM.
Coors Field in Denver is one of the best ballparks in the league. I took the feature photo 3 years ago, and I can say that everything about that ballpark is fantastic except for the baseball on the field, as the 3-6 Rockies look to avoid a 4th consecutive 100+ loss season. The food, the amenities, the views (seeing the Rockies in the distance in gorgeous), the kids entertainment options, the staff are all first rate.
Still expensive though, as all sporting events seem to be now. The Rockies were the worst team in the NL playing the worst team in the AL at the time, the A’s, and the tickets still were no bargain. That just seems to be the state of professional sports these days.
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. Yesterday, in the wild back and forth 4-hour game against the A’s, we had a new high of 34 participants, and 1700 comments (And I assure you only 1200 of them were about Nick Allen!)
Here’s an example from yesterday’s discourse, when things were good before they weren’t:
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 by mhatter106.
Coors Field is and always has been very pretty. The baseball there, not so much. I think the competitiveness of the team, as a small market, will be forever weakened beyond what it already is (bad ownership, anti-analytical stance, small market, bad pitching environment, etc) by the fact that people continue to show up for awful baseball because everything besides the play on the field is so damn appealing.
The Astros suffer when they underestimate their opponents. We did even when we won 100 games per season on a regular basis. Hopefully the team plays with some gravity here, because the Rox are at home, and while they’re a terrible team, they are not going to roll over completely.
There’s a lot of things working against the Rockies as a franchise, as you listed, but I wonder if the altitude is just too large a factor to overcome. Even if you had good ownership and a good front office, you have a franchise where the team has to play half its games in an environment substantially different from a physics standpoint from the other half of its games. It’s hard to attract players to that type of situation, its hard even to develop players in that kind of situation.
I know they’ve had postseason appearances and even a pennant, but that feels like the exception. They’ll always be competing uphill.
The Rockies fan’s deserve a lot better than what their front office has given them. Having said that, I hope we curb stomp them tonight. Bolton could be an opener for Weiss, but he did throw around 50’ish pitches last outing so we will see. Go Stros
not thrilled with Bolton starting but hopefully the offense continues dominating and whoever is pitching wont matter.