The Launch Angle

Winning is fun. Does winning cause fun, or does fun lead to winning?

Probably a little bit of both. When you feel good, you play good, and it’s natural to want to keep that energy going.

Christian Vazquez found this Astros cowboy hat, bought it, and slapped it on Yordan Alvarez after he socked his 7th long ball of the year.

Is this gonna be something they do regularly now? It looks like it, according to Matt Young of the Houston Chronicle.

Keep the energy. Keep the fun. Keep winning.

Because they sure weren’t having any fun when they were losing.

I don’t want to attach our failures to just injuries. Our failures are because we’re playing shitty baseball, simple as that … We’re a good club playing bad baseball. – Carlos Correa (Source: Houston Chronicle)

Gimmicky home run celebrations aren’t new. In the earlier part of this contention window (of which we are trying to determine is still open or not), there were plenty of them. The “stare”. “Hugs for Homers”. The “back to back” with Alex Bregman and Alvarez, that made them look like local news anchors in an eyewitness news promo. Even briefly, the Astros bobsled team. (You may notice Bregman seems to be a recurring figure in these.) They were an important part of a younger team that better played as one by celebrating as one.

Other teams also had their own gimmicks the media was latching onto. The Mariners’ trident celebration. The Blue Jay’s home run jacket. The Red Sox’ laundry cart ride, which they even did for a 7th inning solo shot that made a 7-0 ALCS game 5 7-1.

The Astros stopped. They didn’t need the gimmicks anymore. Even Bregman. They had been there, done that, and knew exactly what they needed to do and how to do it during the course of a season. They would celebrate when it was time to celebrate.

Early into this season, the 2026 Astros did not seem like a team that had been there, done that. Only Jose Altuve, Carlos Correa, Yordan Alvarez, and Lance Mccullers remained from those teams that partook in gimmicky celebrations.

So maybe it’s time to do it again. To find themselves again. Bring on the cowboy hat.

Hopefully, they will do better than the 2022 Angels, who also thought a cowboy hat would bring them a special year. It did not, but I trust the city of Houston will handle a cowboy hat better than Anaheim.

Cowboy up!

Having won the first two games of the 3 games series against the Rockies, the Astros look to make it a sweep tonight. With 4 starting pitchers now on the IL (Cody Bolton was placed on the IL yesterday), Ryan Weiss becomes the ninth starting pitcher for the Astros this yeah, in only the 20th game of the season.

For comparison, the 2018 Astros used 9 starting pitchers the whole season, and 2 of them were Brad Peacock and Chris Devenski who served as openers.

The Rockies start Juan Mejia, in an opener role, before second year right hander Chase Dollander takes the ball for a bulk of the innings.

Starting lineups are as follows:

The game will be broadcast at 7:10 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.

Join us again for today’s game. Just join the Discord server using this link: https://launch-angle.com/discord .

For more detailed instructions, please see the Guide to the Launch Angle.

If you’ve participated in game threads 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