The Launch Angle

Our resident Mario Kart expert is Theo Gerome, who last year sat down to write a review of Mario Kart World, and ended up with a near 10,000 word opus on the franchise. My knowledge of the Mario Kart games isn’t that deep, but I do know they feature “rubber-banding”, a game mechanic where if the player falls far behind in the race, the AI opponents will actively slow down and perform worse, so that you have a chance to catch up.

So far, that’s what the 2026 season has been: a game of Mario Kart. Before the sweep of the Cubs, the Astros were 11 games below .500 at 20-31. That’s a .392 winning percentage. The Astros were struggling to stay north of .400, let alone .500. A .392 winning percentage a third of the way through the season is usually a hole you can’t climb out of.

The Mets are 9 games below .500 and find themselves 13.5 game our of their division. The Giants are also 9 games below and .500 are 11 games out of theirs. Heck, the Blue Jays are just 3 games below .500 and are 10.5 games back of the Rays.

It’s a different picture in the AL West though. The Astros, after a 3-game weekend sweep of the Cubs, even though they’re still 8 games below .500, are just 4.5 games behind the 27-26 Athletics, thanks to the Padres take 2 of 3 games against the A’s.

Everyone else in the AL West seems to cooperating with this “slow down so that the Astros can catch up” plan too. The Mariners dropped 2 of 3 to Kansas City this weekend. The Rangers were swept by the Angels, the only team in the division with a worse record than the Astros.

This is a manageable position. The wild card picture is even closer. The 26-27 Twins hold the third wild card spot right now, 3.5 games ahead of the Astros. A .491 winning percentage is good enough to make the postseason right now!

At this point, all you need for hope is the feeling that every day you have a reasonable shot at coming away with a win. That feeling is strong after 3 wins in a row. Like I’ve said before, When your team loses, you can’t seem to see how they could ever win again. When your team wins, you can’t fathom how they could ever lose again.

Right now, Astros certainly feel they have a shot at winning every Spencer Arrighetti start. Even Kai-Wei Teng and Peter Lambert starts, are competitive. Mike Burrows hasn’t gotten the results Astros fans have hoped for, but the peripheral metrics still carry promise heading into each of his starts. As for today’s starter, Tastuya Imai, well, he’s gottasettle down and figure this out at some point, right?

With this AL West, all you need is a chance each game.

The other part of “rubber banding” in Mario Kart is that when you are in the back of the race, the game gives you much better and stronger power-ups to assist you in catching up. Well, Hunter Brown just struck out five batters in 2 scoreless innings in his first rehab outing at Corpus Christi. Josh Hader struck out two in his scoreless inning of rehab. Those seem like some pretty strong power-ups coming the Astros’ way.

Tastuya Imai squares off against Kumar Rocker in the first game of a 4 game series against the Rangers at White Castle, I mean Globe Life Field. (Sorry, I just assumed it was a White Castle, because “Kumar” was there. Or maybe I thought it was a “White Castle”, because they installed a statue of a segregationist and rolled out an all-white lineup on Opening Day.)

Imai wasn’t great but pitched better his last time out. Rocker, the third-year right hander is 2-4 on the year in 9 games (8 starts), with a 1.378 WHIP and a 4.0 BB/9 and 7.4 K/9.

This post will be updated with starting lineups as they are made available.

The game will be broadcast at 6:05 p.m. CT on SCHN with radio coverage on KBME 790 AM.

Hope is back!

I’ll end with a meme that’s been making its rounds in the TLA Discord Gamethreads:

We hope you will join us and the rest of the Launch Angle community for the game! The turnout has been amazing on the TLA Discord Server for the game threads, even during this trying season. I’d tell you misery loves company, but even with the Astros losing, it’s still been pretty fun in the gamethreads.

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 by mhatter106.