So, this is going to be a really long season if the Astros’ pitching staff continues down this current path. In the last five games, we’ve seen opposing teams score 10, 7, 5, 9, and 9 runs. A grand total of 40 runs in five games, or an average of eight runs per game. Even with one of the game’s best lineups to start the season, it can only mitigate a struggling staff so much.
Growing pains with Tatsuya Imai were always going to be a thing. While the stuff can certainly play as it did against the A’s on April 4, you might also have starts where he can only get you through a lineup once. That was always the risk involved with signing Imai. But I don’t think anyone expected him to struggle as much as he did against the Mariners on Friday night.
Needless to say, Imai didn’t have his best command. It seems like the mound played a role in his performance. That said, this start was an absolute train wreck for him and the Astros. He and the team were actually fortunate that the deficit didn’t grow past three runs. But, even when Houston mounted a comeback with Christian Vázquez’s bases-clearing double to tie the game in the second inning, the concern immediately shifted to who could cover the rest of the game out of the bullpen. Imai only got one out, and Joe Espada still had an entire game to navigate.
Ultimately, the Astros used four pitchers besides Imai, with Steven Okert, Ryan Weiss, J.P. France, and Enyel De Los Santos making appearances. With no off-days incoming for a while, it became imperative to preserve the bullpen. While Weiss and France didn’t exactly help the cause, allowing six additional runs in five combined innings, they did help keep the rest of the bullpen fresh. Only time will tell if that actually matters in the near future.
The lineup tried to make this game interesting, even after Imai’s departure. Yordan Alvarez smoked a three-run shot in the eighth to at least make the game more interesting. Jeremy Peña was the tying run in the game in the ninth before grounding out to end the game. Alas, another comeback wasn’t meant to happen, at least for now. Now on a five-game losing streak, the Astros will need their pitching staff to step up in order to break it. Let’s see if that actually happens.
Sunshine pumpers: “there’s still 148 more games! 🌞”
Panic battalion: “there’s still 148 more games! 😩”
Imai said he has to adjust to 30 mounds. so is this going to be an issue every away start for him? bro, we’re cooked if so.
Pearson hasnt played.
Weiss 7.36 ERA
Imai 7.27 ER
Burrows 5.63 ERA
Dana Browns offseason moves have been complete trash and he deserves to be fired for that
Who would have guessed that Vasquez would be the best offseason addition?
Weiss, Burrows, and Imai (if healthy) all will definitely get better that their current results. The only question is whether it will matter when they do.
Vazquez has been a very pleasant surprise, offset by Diaz being a total disappointment.
Yeah, Diaz coming out of the gate just as bad as he went into the gate makes Vasquez look even better. Vasquez just has to hit within one or two spitting distances of league average to meet my expectations. Even if Vasquez can’t really hit, he at least knows how to work a count and how to put together a proper AB.
I don’t like the mound excuse. It was tolerable for a crappy first time out, but going back to it again is a cop-out.
MLB mounds are immaculate, and yes, while the style may be different than what is used in Japan, so what. I’ve seen pitchers adjust to the crappiest mounds in existence.
He better go find him some random HS mounds to figure out just how good he has it.
The good news is every team is figuring out what they have. The team atop the AL standings only has 2 more wins than the Astros.
The bad news is the Astros are also one those teams figuring out what they have, and the initial reviews of the pitching aren’t good.
Will it get better? Of course it will. That’s not the question. The question is will it get better enough?
There was some discussion on the Discord about the pitching coaching and the fact that this is the first season that the Josh Miller-Bill Murphy pitching coaching team is broken up, with Murphy going to PIT as their pitching coach’s and whether we should have retained Murphy instead of Miller.
I think it’s a leap at this point to suggest Murphy was the key. When strom left he said that that second wave of great pitchers from nowhere like Javier Garcia urquidy framber he had little to do with and that that was all miller and Murphy, but by most accounts, miller was the clear senior and Murphy was the junior going off of miller’s lead.
We were lucky enough to have both on board for so long. When other teams realized how awesome they were, there was no way to keep Murphy. He got offered a position as a senior pitching coach, and deservedly so. Astros couldn’t offer him that. Only way that could happen is to fire Miller and then give the job to Murphy, and what reasoning was there to assume that it was Murphy who should be retained and not Miller? Even now I still don’t think there’s adequate evidence of that. Yes the pitching has had a rough start, but it’s also only been 2 weeks of a 6 month long season.
I think if we see a lack of ability to improve these “out of nowhere” pitchers all season, the case that Murphy was critical and Katz is inadequate grows significantly. But if not it’s just a very unfortunately timed blip.
As you can see, the Pirates are 3d in MLB pitching and have a 8-5 record. And that’s not just Skenes (who started out the season with a 1st inning similar to Imai, except he last 2/3 inning and not 1/3 inning). The Pirates overall pitching has been strong. Murphy may not be the reason for the Astros’ pitching issues, but I would hazard a guess that he has been a good Pirates’ pitching coach so far.
This has truly been the inverse of last season’s start in terms of our pitching and hitting.
Last season our pitching was keeping us afloat in the beginning, and we were BEGGING for any semblance of offense (where our supposed run producers Walker, Yordan, and Yainer couldn’t buy offense with the money they had combined. Lol).
With the exception of Yainer….Yordan, Walker, Altuve, Correa, and Cam plus Paredes and Loperfido our offense is as in tune as it has been in maybe 5 years now…..but Than almighty our pitching is to put it in the nicest way possible….DIPLORABLE right now. We have no shot the second they thrown the first pitch of the first inning.
Somebody….ANYBODY….on this roster (or in the minor league roster) has to have SOME semblance of quality in them.
In post game interviews I was struck by Imai saying he would rely upon conversations with other Astros’ pitchers to find out how they made adjustments to pitching in a new environment. And I realize that the Astros no longer have a lot of veteran leaders among starting pitchers to provide that support. Maybe Hunter Brown, who is now injured and may or may not be with the team. Maybe LMJ. But most of these guys, like Burrows, Weiss, Blubaugh, etc., are themselves trying to figure things out.
If Imai is out, which we don’t know yet, the ceiling of this rotation is very low. Not because a team can’t survive with strong offense and a bunch of 4.5 ERA pitchers- at least enough to keep itself afloat- but because NONE of these arms have shown any length in their appearances, aside from one LMJ outing. Somebody has to be able to eat innings without taxing the BP every other start.
Having zero starters who can be counted on to deliver 5-7 innings every time makes the pitching staff incredibly vulnerable to spirals, where meaningless games are still burning out arms needed to win the next day, causing another loss, then another.
We have many swingmen to help alleviate this worst case scenario, but not only have most of them been only somewhat effective, they have been managed poorly, and our best depth options (Arrighetti, Alexander) have not even been called up yet.
TL;DR if Hunter Brown *and* Imai are both down for months, we absolutely could have one of the worst rotations in the league for a while. And the team can’t survive that.
Crane should fire himself along with Dana, but we know what will happen in that eventuality. And Brown will have done enough on his part to deserve it too.
Agree. Framber’s innings is one of the area where he’ll be missed most. I’ve not always agreed with everything Dusty, but his identifying Framber as a workhorse innings eater was one of the best things he did.