Another weekend where the Astros just needed to avoid being swept, and another weekend where they couldn’t do that, and now the Astros enter the final 6 games of the season out of playoff position. Can they still make it to October? Sure, but however many wins the Rangers get in their last 6 games, the Astros will need to get one more.
MLB.com’s Brian McTaggart noted that it was the bullpen’s performance that lost these games. By the strict definition of losing, I suppose that’s true. The bullpen blew leads given to them by the starting pitcher on Saturday and Sunday, and on Friday they took a 1 run game that was still within reach and put it out of reach.
Really though, this was still a starting pitching problem. Yes, a 1.72 ERA from your starters is great, but if these are your “best three starters”, you need to be getting more than 15.2 innings aggregate from them.
None of the three went beyond 5.1 innings. That’s how it’s been all season, and it’s caught up to them. Last month, I wrote about how great the bullpen had been, but that it was out of necessity. Starting pitching wasn’t covering innings, so the pen had to do it, and at a rate that the Astros have never seen before. The Astros have now throw 630.2 relief pitcher innings on the season. That’s the most the Astros have ever asked of their pen, and by a country mile. The previous franchise record was 581.1 IP in 2003.
At some point is this not the bullpen’s fault, when more is being put into their inbox than they can keep up with.
Back in early 2020, when spring training and the start of the MLB season was canceled due to the COVID pandemic, Cody, bilbos, Hammer, Theo and I conducted a small exercise to pass the time. We would draft 5 teams of the greatest Astros in franchise history, and have them compete against each other in a tournament simulated by Out of the Park 21. Each team had 9 position players for their defensive alignment and batting lineup. No pinch hitting or running. Each team had 6 pitchers. 3 had to be starting pitchers who would each throw innings 1-2, 3-4, and 5-6 respectively. The last 3 could be starting or relief and would pitch one inning each: 7, 8 and 9.
That was all well and good, except I neglected to consider extra innings. So one game, my team and Hammer’s team finished inning 9 tied 3-3, and my 9th inning pitcher, Turk Farrell, had to keep pitching against Hammer’s: Billy Wagner.
And keep pitching, and keep pitching, because the damn game went 15 innings. By inning 15, it was comical. Hard throwing Billy Wagner was throwing 60 mph pitches barely making it to the plate, and finished with a 190(!) pitch count. That 15th inning was not pretty. He allowed 9 runs.
Here is the box score of that game, and also a link to my recap (which remains the only recap I ever did at TCB or on this site, and it wasn’t even a real game)
Anyways, the point is that for most of this season, the Houston Astros bullpen has been Billy Wagner, but even Billy Wagner has a breaking point.
It should be noted that the bullpen meltdowns of the past weekend occurred right after the starter left, in innings 6 and 7. Cody mentioned it on Saturday, that’s where the Astros really miss Steven Okert.
The bullpen lost those games against the Braves, but they were set up to do so. You can only squeeze a rock for so long before there’s nothing left to squeeze out of it.
Astros @ Mariners Game Information and Gamethread Details
What’s done is done. I just spent a lot of words writing about what’s already happened, but this is supposed to be a preview, not a review, so let’s turn our eyes forward.
The Astros play their next two games in Seattle. The Mariners have completely dominated the Astros this season; the Astros are just 2-9 against them, and the 2 wins came in extra innings. At no point this season have the Astros ever had more runs than the Mariners after 9 innings.
Tonight would be a good time for it to happen for the first time.
Cristian Javier starts for the Astros. Javier has really turned it around in his last 3 starts, limiting the opponent to 1, 1 and 2 runs. His last time out, Javier went 5.1 IP, allowed just 2 runs, on 5 hits and 3 walks, with 2 strikeouts. It wasn’t as good as his prior two starts, but it should have been good enough to win. It wasn’t; the Astros couldn’t score any runs while Javier was pitching and he was saddled with the loss.
Logan Gilbert starts for the Mariners. The right hander is 12-10 on the season with a 3.69 ERA and a 1.06 WHIP. Gilbert is 6 strikeouts away from registering the second 200 K season of his career, which I’m sure is a milestone he is eyeing. His last time out, he limited the Angels to 2 runs in 6 innings, on 6 hits, 2 walks and 7 strikeouts, but took a 2-1 loss.
Gilbert has pitched once against Houston this year, on April 12, and was masterful, going 7 innings of one-run ball, allowing just 4 hits and 1 walk, while striking out 7.
The game will be broadcast at 8:40 p.m. CT on SCHN with radio coverage on KBME 790 AM. Yeah, it’s one of those late games.
This post will be updated with starting lineup as they are made available.
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.
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Feature photo from @astros on X, Source Link.
