Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 672: How Real Are the Astros?

Episode Date: May 7, 2015

Ben and Sam banter about Bryce Harper and Mike Trout and dissect several stats about the Astros’ season so far.

All around me is such a reality Optical illusions as far as my eyes can see It's a holding of faith of the ultimate reality Good morning and welcome to episode 672 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus, presented by The Play Index, BaseballReference.com. I am Ben Lindberg of Grantland, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectus. Hi. Howdy. Anything to say?

Nothing. No, nothing today. Well, I guess this podcast is over, because it depends on us saying things. I'll ask you something. Okay, nothing today. Well, I guess this podcast is over because it depends on us saying things. I'll ask you something. Okay, please do. So as of right now, as of this moment, Bryce Harper has 1.5 wars and Mike Trout has 1.8 wars. By warp, it's 1.8 to 2 with Trout has the narrow edge. And I just was thinking about this because of our bets, Bogart's discussion. Those two are another pair that will forever be linked as prospects.

And there was always this debate about who you would take more. And while we were talking about Bogart's and bets, I was kind of thinking to myself, I wonder when it was that that quit being a debate. And I went to a wedding in June of Trout's rookie year. And at that point, Trout was the best player in baseball. And Harper had been up for about a month and a half or so. And my aunt asked me which one was better. And I was just beginning work on that Trout feature that I did for ESPN, mag that summer and the answer was it seemed like like three months earlier I I think we had probably talked about it or no we hadn't we hadn't recorded

a podcast yet but uh we could have debated it and it would have been I don't know probably 50 50 in either direction but by that point it felt like that I was really going out on a limb by saying Harper I still thought Harper even at that point and I would say that three weeks or a month later. I think before that season, probably Harper would have won that debate, right? Because Trout was coming off his not-so-good first 150 plate appearances or whatever it was. And maybe we would have let that influence us too much. And we hadn't really seen him be great yet in the major leagues at least and harper pretty much hit right away after he came up right and he was harper so well but harper hadn't come

up yet well yeah before that season and trout had been so phenomenal in the minors i mean definitely a better player than i'm probably don't know, maybe the best minor league player I've seen since I've started covering baseball. And so it was close. I think Harper probably would have won, but not unanimously by any means. That year with the prospect rankings, I think that usually Harper would be above Trout, but with the obligatory, you can flip these guys, there's really no difference. And then both of them were behind Matt Moore on a couple of the big ones. Maybe ours, maybe BP's, I can't remember. Maybe MLB.com's, I'm pretty sure, had Moore ahead of both of them.

Anyway, I forget where I was going. But three weeks later, I think it was over. At that point, Trout had such an insane June-July that it had become very hard to say anything was ever going to be better than Trout. We did talk that offseason about which was more impressive, Trout's best year ever for a 20-year-old or Harper's best year ever for a 19-year-old. It was still kind of worth discussing, but I guess maybe shortly after that or somewhere along the way, the issue quit being discussed, right? Nobody takes Harper now. Nobody. And nobody has for a couple of years over Trout. Fair? Yeah. Fair. Okay. So I wonder if Harper will ever have a better year than Trout. Uh-huh.

will ever have a better year than Trout. Uh-huh. And so this year, it's close. It's not, the season is not over. But what would you, what would you put, well, I don't know. I mean, I guess I'm not asking you anything. I guess I'm just noting that this is something that I'm now paying attention to

for reasons that aren't really clear to me. But like, no matter what, I think that there's about a 98% chance that Trout will end up being the better ball player and the better career. And the answer to that question two and a half, three years ago, the correct answer was Trout. But I do wonder if there will ever be a period in their careers where Harper will be better than Trout. And maybe one year isn't a fair test of that. Maybe one year it

doesn't stand in for true talent, even at any given time. But don't know i will say that if trout if harper if a healthy harper ever has a better year than a healthy trout uh then i will be comfortable saying that for that time at least uh he was better than trout and i wonder whether it will happen do you think it will happen i don't think that harper's true talent will surpass trout's at any point. I guess I would bet against that. So if you're saying that they're both healthy and nothing is hobbling them or anything, but they're both at their best at that time, and Harper is actually better, and it's not just like his defensive stats were better in one season or something. Although maybe at that point we'll have better defensive stats and that will actually mean more. But I would guess once you strip out the luck or do the best that you can to strip out the luck,

that Trout will always be better. But it wouldn't shock me. I mean, Harper seems to be making strides. He has put himself back in the discussion because we're now having that discussion it's not crazy okay all right that's what i wanted to say i mostly just wanted to note the wars all right go ahead okay so i wrote about the astros today and it was one of those deals where you come up with a topic and everyone agrees on the topic and then that team gets swept by the rangers and you're still writing this topic and you're not as enthusiastic about it as you were when you

started but which didn't used to be a problem so much because at bp i would kind of just wing it more or less whereas now i have editors and a schedule and things have to be planned in advance to some extent so you know the trick to that right you know you know the trick to this to how to get away with this i don't know what is it when you start writing and you start citing your evidence you just say as i write this the astros are whatever and then if if three days later your point is still true you you take out as i write this and update it with the more convincing numbers but if they get worse you leave it it's big bull and what i do it's pretty clever i don't know i think my editor might see through that and delete the as i write this i'm not sure maybe i'll try it anyway so i wrote i started writing about the astros the day after

their 10 game winning streak was broken and then they lost a couple more times and their record looks a little less impressive but they're still 18 and 10 and they've got a good run differential and they're still in first place in the aos by a pretty healthy margin and so i just tried to look for reasons why they have played well reasons why they're better and just sort of summarize their season in 10 stats that I thought were telling and I want to run through some of those and ask you whether you buy them or whether you think that they are a real reason to be optimistic about this team or any team in general. So I will combine a couple of them. So the first couple stats were about where the Astros pitchers have pitched, where their pitches have

been located, and the velocity of the balls that they have allowed hit, right? Because the Astros, at least coming into last night's game, Wednesday night's game, had something like the fourth best pitching staff so far in baseball. And the names of those pitchers are not necessarily all names of pitchers that you think would belong to the fourth best staff in baseball. So I was looking for reasons why they have survived having the slowest throwers in baseball. So they have, they've thrown the slowest fastballs, whether it's just four seamers or all fastballs lumped together, their fastball velocity is under 90 miles per hour. So they're, they are the worst at that. And yet they have allowed the

second slowest batted balls. And so that seems like something that would correlate to success and it has for them so far, but this is kind of our first season having this sort of batted ball velocity data and we don't necessarily know how consistent it is or what it means so i looked at where they throw their pitches and they throw their pitches more than any other team low and away like in the bottom and right most little square of the strike zone and a little bit outside of that and it's like two standard deviations above the the average percentage of pitches thrown in those zones and so there's some research that's been done by Noah Woodward who's written for BP he wrote an article about what the perfect fastball is and he found that fastball success varies by location so when you throw inside fastballs it's really good to

have fast fastballs for whatever reason like fast fastballs are much better on the inside part of the plate on the middle part of the plate everywhere except low and away and low and away there's like no difference like just having a pitch there doesn't matter if the fastball is slow slow fastballs are actually better in that area than fast fastballs it seems like why is that he found that it's because they get called for strikes at a higher rate i don't know why that would be exactly whether it's some kind of umpire perception thing like it's farther away from them and maybe it's hard for them to see a fast pitch something like that it could is it, yeah, and maybe is it conceivable,

because we're talking about the bottom edge of the strike zone basically, right? Yeah, bottom and away also. Yeah, so is it maybe conceivable that the pitch is kind of dropping more simply because it's slower? Yeah. A slightly higher tunnel coming out. Yeah, I think he found, I think he looked at movement

and it didn't make much of a difference. I think he looked at like sinking and rising or whatever and it was all sort of the same. So I don't know. That's what he found. But looking at thousands of pitches over a few seasons, that seemed to be the case. So anyway, the Astros throw slow.

That seems like a bad thing. and yet they throw on the corners and they have allowed you know batted balls at like 86.9 miles per hour which was the the second slowest of any team so does that do you do you buy that do you buy that like either that they can keep throwing balls there that throwing balls there is actually a solution to not throwing hard and that their batted ball speed allowed so far actually means something and you know tells you that they won't get hit hard i i i guess this is kind of like you're asking, is this a plan? Have they discovered a plan? Is it a plan?

And if it is a plan, can they keep executing the plan? So the lack of velocity being especially good in that area is intriguing. And so I would maybe go along with that as the plan. Otherwise, I would say that everybody in baseball knows that that's where you want to throw your pitch and it's an execution thing. I would say that they've executed very well, right? This feels like maybe they have players who have better command and maybe that's why they're executing. Maybe their pitchers have just been doing really well and that's why they're executing. I would say that it is like short-term encouraging that they have pitchers that are able to hit that spot.

It doesn't make me think that there's a book chapter to be written about this in the Astros' Moneyball book. But yeah, to me that's encouraging. And I would say that it is convincingly correlated to their batted ball speed. convincingly correlated to their batted ball speed. And I would probably say that it'll get worse because maybe they just won't be as good going forward. But it sounds like a skill, and it sounds like the Astros pitchers are demonstrating that skill. So I'd be happy about that.

When would you predict that the Astros Moneyball book will be written? Or when will it hit bookshelves? Because you know it's coming. Well, I think it's probably, it's already been written and it will come out shortly after they win the 2017 World Series, right? Right.

Or someone's working on it right now. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know how to answer that. I'm not ready to answer that. I don't know. I'm not sure. There's been a lot more. I don't know if this helps or hurts, but there's been a lot more written about the Astros than there typically is about a team that it's engaged in a process.

And so I guess that probably helps, right? Because then you have a lot of writers who have already shown proof of concept and can sell that to a publisher who doesn't, you know, who might not particularly care that this stuff has been known. He's trying to get into the airport bookstore market, which isn't reading every piece that appears in Sports Illustrated or ESPN The Mag or whatever. So, yeah, there's probably going to be a book. They have to win. I mean, I also don't like that. I'm still not you know i think the astros are in a pretty good position going forward uh but not not clearly better than a dozen other teams in baseball like to me the cubs are bulletproof the astros are a

team in a good spot okay the interesting thing because you said that you know everyone knows that low and away is a good thing but if you look at i mean it's low and away is good but there's also like that uh you know hard in soft away sort of thing i mean you know doing both you go in and you go out the astros don't really have hard so they can't really go hard in they're just kind of everything away and if you look at like what the pirates are doing they are getting like the same results with almost exactly the opposite approach like they both have really high ground ball rates they have like the top two ground ball rates in baseball and yet their location is diametrically opposite the the astros are the most away or outside throwing team, and the Pirates are the most inside

throwing team. And the Astros are the slowest throwing team, and the Pirates are the fastest throwing team. So it seems like they are kind of adapting to that. I don't know whether it's that they happen to have these pitchers and they're just making the best of what they have, or maybe, I don't know the astros decided that guys who throw hard or cost too much or they get hurt too much or whatever and they're doing some kind of undervalued thing but it seems like they have done those opposite things because hard fastballs are really good inside and slow fastballs are not so bad outside. And so they've each done the thing that they can do to maximize their pitching staff's traits.

So, okay, so the other big thing, and this is sort of related, is the BABIP or the defensive efficiency, however you want to put it. So as I wrote this article, I will try that line, the Astros had the fourth highest, fifth highest defensive efficiency in baseball, which is the percentage of balls in play that are converted into outs. And they had the biggest increase relative to 2014. And so there are a bunch of different explanations that you could have for this.

One is the shifts. They have shifted more than any other team, but they also shifted more than any other team last year. They're shifting slightly more this year than they were last year, but it's not a dramatic difference. Or it could be a difference in personnel, like Jake Marisnyk seems to be a really good center fielder, and last year they had Dexter Fowler,nyk seems to be a really good center fielder and last year they

had Dexter Fowler who seems not to be and it could be the batted ball thing that we just talked about they have allowed slower batted balls and maybe those are easier to field and that's why their fielders have had a better time of it but does that convince you how how much time do you need to believe that a team is better on defense and is that magnitude of defensive improvement in this smallish sample convincing and also springer springer played less than half the season last year yep and springer's a very good outfielder yeah although they've also've also had Jed Lowry, who's not particularly good. I know, but I'm saying that, and I was just about to say,

what is the breakdown for outfield and infield or for fly balls and grounders? Because I was, to me, the outfield, before I even saw them play a game, passed the eye test. And so this is, maybe this is just confirmation bias, but it would take me a lot less time to be convinced that the outfield defense was changing things dramatically for their pitchers.

But I'm floored by the I mean, to me, it seemed like a big issue that they had not only a lot of or some pitchers who were heavily reliant on infield defense. And it seemed like they had created a very poor defensive infield to me and so i'm actually very surprised at how well they've done and how well dallas keitel has done and it is possible that maybe they have just with a year of shift data they have not just maybe better shifts but maybe they have done a better job of you know the the mythical pitching to the shift pitching to the defense maybe they're able to do that it wouldn't put i wouldn't put it past them to have given you know been given all this data that they've been paying very close attention to having taken a step forward uh on that without us uh you know

without us knowing it you know being a step ahead us. But otherwise, I am surprised that the infield, well, I don't know, you can tell me. Is the infield BABF also good or is the ground ball BABF also good? Yes, I think it's actually even better relative to the rest of the league. The Astros, and this is updated, have allowed a 187 batting average on ground balls, which is way, way below league average. It's only the Royals have been better. Okay, well, if it's way, way below the league average, then that changes my date a little bit.

And without having done any research... The average is 237, so it's like 50 points. Okay, so without having done any research into what my answer actually should be, I will say July 9th. Is what? Did I ask you for a date what is showing how long it would take before i believe didn't you uh yeah yeah sort of so i will say that uh if they are still doing this well and on july 9th then i will believe that they have a very

good defensive infield otherwise i'm still skeptical okay well because they okay so they replaced dominguez who has a really good defensive reputation but not the best defensive stats or at least he didn't last year i don't think they replaced him with valbuena and they did have jed lowry but now jed lowry's out until roughly the date that you just named so they're gonna have Marwin Gonzalez and Jonathan Villar and I don't know Carlos Correa if they really want to be aggressive about it and Altuve and Carter or Singleton or whoever so it doesn't sound on paper like it should be a great defensive infield that is true and yet all the shifts and and the batted ball stuff right because you said you do kind of believe that right and so you would think and we

don't have the past seasons of data to say this really although maybe you could approximate it with some up some other sort of information but you would think that if a team consistently allows slower batted balls that that would benefit the infielders yeah you would which that if a team consistently allows slower batted balls that that would benefit the infielders yeah you would which would push the date back for believing their infield was good further are you asking me whether i think that is good or whether i yeah i don't care if it's the infield or the pitching or the shifts or what just the combination of everything july 9th of everything july 9th okay sticking with it okay let me see what their uh what their ground ball defense was like last year last year nah pretty much middle of the pack last year a little below average nothing special then okay next stat i guess will be the bullpen. So we've talked about bullpens and their consistency.

So last year, the Astros had a very, very bad bullpen, like the sixth or something worst bullpen of the wildcard era, looking at runs allowed with adjustments for park and year. So it was very, very bad. They brought back most of that bullpen, but they also signed Luke Gregerson and Pat Neshek and Joe Thatcher, and they claimed Will Harris. It seemed like it would clearly be a better bullpen.

But last year, or going into Wednesday night's game, their bullpen collectively had the same stat, you know, the same ERA minus, which is like a park-adjusted version adjusted version of era as aroldis chapman last year for cincinnati so their whole their whole bullpen for over a month has been better than aroldis chapman last season who was probably the best reliever in baseball so obviously i'm not asking whether you think that the whole bullpen will be as good as aroldis chapman but they are leading the majors in strikeout rate they are leading the majors inpen will be as good as a role as chapman but they are leading the

majors in strikeout rate they are leading the majors in walk rate in the good way fewer walks so do you buy that this new matt albers list bullpen is better significantly better even above average uh compared to last year's terrible bullpen yes Yes. So you buy that today. I do. Okay. Their base running runs heading into last night. Hang on just a second, Ben. I'll just go ahead and say, yeah, sure, I don't even know. But you'll tell me and I'll agree or I won't agree

that the base running runs are real. But you're using this as evidence of why they're in first place. The spread between the best and the worst base running run teams at this point has to be like six runs, right yeah it's small let's see well they're they're leading the league in leading the majors i think in stolen bases and in and they've had like an 85 success rate the the spread between best and worst base running right now is it's about 12 runs. Okay. So six runs above average, more or less.

Mm-hmm. All right. Okay. Considering that the spread between them and a 500 team is only 40 runs, that accounts for, you know, 14% of that. So I'll give it to you. Thank you. Okay.

So they've got Altuve and they've got Springer and Marisnyk has been really good this year. that so i'll give it to you thank you okay so they've got altuve and they've got springer and marisnik has been really good this year i don't even know if this is something that i have to ask like it seems like those guys should be good base runners right there's no no particular reason to doubt that no but there's reason to doubt that the numbers can capture that super quickly. I mean, base running stats feel, well, I mean, I don't know. This isn't totally comparable. But last year, I wrote a piece comparing Billy Hamilton and David Ortiz as base runners because I wanted to see whether you would rather have David Ortiz at second as the tying run

or Billy Hamilton at first as the tying run. It was originally an effectively wild email. Yeah, exactly. By, I want to say Trueblood, but maybe, no, Eric. I think it was Eric. Anyway, but what made that so fun is that at the time, midway through the season, Billy Hamilton was like one run better as a base runner than David Ortiz.

And partly that's because Billy Hamilton had been caught ceiling a lot. But partly it's that, you it's that you get credit for going first to third, but it doesn't really know what that ball looked like when you were going first to third. So, I don't know. I'm just somewhat hesitant to put a lot of stock in base running stats

at this point in the season. Yeah, I guess. Seems like a pretty good base running team. I don't know. I'm going to say no. I'm going to say not yet. If you had to ask me to bet on what their true talent level is,

I would regress most of the way to average, to medium. All right. And now this one is kind of interesting. So entering, again, Wednesday night's game, they were leading the American League in home runs. They had 41 home runs. I'm buying it. You're buying it.

Okay, so the interesting thing is they had a 15.8 home run per fly ball rate. And if you just looked at that, you might say that, you know, that is definitely going to regress. just looked at that you might say that you know that is definitely going to regress there's only been one team in the almost 15 years that we've had this kind of data that has sustained that kind of home run per fly ball rate over a full season the 2012 yankees so in that sense you would say it's not sustainable and if you look at home run tracker for instance a lot of something that a lot of people do when they're trying to see whether someone at home run tracker, for instance, a lot of something that a lot of people do when they're trying to see whether someone's home run rate is going to regress, they look at home run tracker and they look at how many of his home runs were classified as just enough, which means that they barely cleared the fence. And over 50% of the Astros

home runs were just enough, 22 of 41. And league average is like 35% of home runs is just enough. So in that sense, they've had a lot of home runs that just cleared a fence. Now it doesn't say what fence, I don't think. So I think if you hit a home run to dead center, 420 feet, and it just clears a 415 feet wall, I think's a just enough even though you know you hit it 80 feet farther than something down the line so that doesn't necessarily tell you but often a guy who's had a lot of just enoughs or a team that's had a lot of just enoughs might have been getting lucky but on the other hand the astros have hit the most fly balls in baseball and they're a team that you would think would hit for power they're you know strikeouts and homers kind of bunch and they have

again looking at their batted ball speed they have the second farthest distance average distance of line drives and fly balls and the third highest average speed of line drives and fly balls so you kind of have contrasting stuff like in the pre-stat cast era i probably would have looked at their home run per fly ball rate and they're just enough home runs and said they've been getting lucky and you know evan gaddis did hit a home run off of will Myers' glove that bounced off of Will Myers and over the wall. So that one was kind of lucky, but it was also to almost the deepest part of the park. So those things would tell you unsustainable, but they have hit the ball that hard. Like they have the second most homers and they've hit the ball the second farthest.

So do you buy that the Astros are going to be you know the best home run team in the american league or something close to that i do yeah i think i do i already did uh are you uh has i somebody has done the work to see whether uh we should regress just enough home runs but that uh the home run tracker i think so yeah the home run tracker site actually says that like on its glossary page if you click on that it says like a guy who's had a lot of just enough home runs might be a candidate to to regress or something and i i don't think it's true in every case right but i think there has been some some research that has shown that that's the case generally i would expect the astras a lot

of their just enough home runs to stop being just enough home runs that i would expect them to just be home runs and some of the not quite enough home runs i would expect some of those to become home runs and some of the just enough home runs to become pop-ups to second base because it's like a tiny difference between a pop-up second base and a home run so i'm going to say that i believe that the just enough aspect of this uh is a red herring and that they are a home run hitting team that has hit a lot of home runs uh and hit a lot of balls hard and will continue to yeah because there are different kinds of luck, right? There's the kind of luck where a team really has just hit a bunch of, you know, sort of weak balls, warning track five balls that it was windy that day or something. Or, you know, they just happened to hit the ball at a slightly different angle and it went out because the fence was one foot shorter in that location than it is somewhere else. And if it was that kind of thing, then you would say, well, they've been getting lucky.

And those home runs will stop being perfectly placed. And the wind will be blowing in. And they won't keep going out. But they've hit the ball really hard. But maybe it's not possible to keep hitting the ball that hard. Maybe they have deserved most of the home runs that they've had, but you can't stay locked in for a full season like that. Maybe pitchers see that you've hit so many home runs

and they stop throwing you strikes. Then you get more pitches outside and it's hard to hit them as well. I don't know. You just don't swing quite as effectively. So there are kind of different kinds of of luck in that sense if a guy hit i didn't see the will myers one the one off will myers glove what like was this like a jose canseco thing where it bounced 15 feet over the fence or was it like a foot from going over it was yeah it was close it was it i don't think it would have been out if he hadn't touched it,

but it wasn't a canseco. It was very close to a home run. If I saw a team whose hitters hit 10 home runs that scraped the edge of the wall, that literally scraped the edge of the wall, besides thinking, wow, like that, I might actually start to think they were magic. But if I saw a team that did that, and assuming that it's not like their backup shortstop who's hitting these,

but if they're legit home run hitters like Springer and Carter and Gattis, if 10 of their home runs were just enough, I would go, see, that guy hits the ball far. And to me that would be evidence that he's going to hit. Because getting really close to a home run probably correlates really strongly with the game. So I would not hold the just enough luck. Now, right, they could be on a hot streak. They could have been getting a lot of meatballs from lousy pitchers who were on cold streaks. So then you revert to what we know about them. And what we knew about them before the season ever began was that they were going to hit a lot of home runs.

And they have been hitting a lot of home runs. And I would expect them to continue. And even if you told me that if you took away all the preamble about being second in baseball and first in the AL and just asked me, you're going to hear it. You're going to listen to an ad and then you're going to listen to a highlight. You understand? Keep doing it. Let's listen to a highlight if you do it let's put the right has driven in five

for coming in that final game in oakland high-five policy goes up that ladder again at this point hearing the center field too i think i would like to league because of that home run. That's pretty good. All right.

That's a good play. All right. But if you had not told me where they were in the rankings and just asked me whether they were going to hit a lot of home runs, I would have said yes. So that's my answer. That's 99.3% of my answer is that I expect them to hit a lot of home runs because of who they have on their team. Okay.

And then lastly, they have obviously had some guys who've been better than we expected them to be, particularly Marisnyk, who I think, you know, is legitimately kind of good. And he, I think he's better than a fourth outfielder, which is what people sort of thought he was, or might be before this year. But Lowry was hitting incredibly well before he got hurt and Marisnyk and Colby Rasmus has been really good and I like that signing but I don't know if he's this good but they also have Gattis and Springer and Carter and those three guys combined and that was the Astros second fourth and fifth hitters on opening day had a combined negative 10 park-adjusted batting runs below average entering Wednesday's game. So the three guys who were expected to be, you know, some of their best hitters

have been 10 runs below average collectively. Obviously, Springer is on the concussion DL right now. But those other guys, does this make you optimistic that the Astros can keep playing well? Because, you know, whatever guys have been overperforming will be counterbalanced by the guys who've been underperforming? Or are you not really big fans of Springer, Gattis, and Carter for this year anyway? Generally, I don't like to play the this guy, this guy, and this guy game. Normally, I think that rosters are complicated. There's 25 guys.

Every single one of them is under or overperforming. And so I would say that I would consider whoever is doing well or whoever is not doing well to be a wash, and I would not make it change my prediction, particularly going forward. I will say that maybe there's some slight optimism because Marisnyk's, it felt like Marisnyk had kind of a wider possibility of futures than those other guys. Like those other guys feel pretty well established. I feel safe regressing them toward their career norms in a way that with Marisnyk, I think, yeah, no, he seems like a guy who had the potential to break out. I mean, he was a very good prospect with a very good pedigree. And you wouldn't have ruled out before this year

the possibility that he develops into an all-star. And so I would probably consider it slightly more telling or maybe slightly stickier that he is performing differently than we expect than the other guy's slumps. So maybe there's a tiny little bit of extra optimism there, but not a big deal. And there's also the fact that the AL West collectively, aside from the Astros, has a 420 winning percentage. And that is partially the Astros. The Astros are 14 and 8 against the AL West, but the AL West is still 39 and 51 against non-Astros teams. I mean, they don't have, there's not a winning team in that division or even a 500 team in that division other than the Astros. And that's a big part of the reason why they have a sizable lead and their playoff odds are way up from where they started

is because all of the teams that we thought were going to be decent or good have been kind of lousy so far. Are you buying that the AL West is just kind of a garbage division this year? No. No. Okay. All right. is just a kind of a garbage division this year no no okay all right so do you think the astros are any better than say a 500 team from this point forward keeping in mind that they do have correa who is probably the the best prospect in baseball right now right i don't know who you would put

above him considering he was what like number three heading into the year, and Bryant and Russell are in the major leagues now, and he is tearing up AA, and he's about to be in AAA. So they have him. They've got, I don't know, McCullers and Appel. I wouldn't count on either of them to help this year. But they also have the second lowest payroll in baseball, and it sounds like from their comments that they're willing to do things if they if they are in a position to do so it seems like they are because they kind of need starting

pitching and they have acknowledged that they need starting pitching so taking all that into account do you think that the esters are better than the see what they are on the playoff odds report 485 team for the rest of the year probably not like just as with marisnyk i think they had a a wider range of possible futures like their 90th and 10th percentile pagoda projections i would imagine cumulatively were higher than the average team so so i'd be a little bit less surprised to be surprised but But no, I don't think that I consider them a great team yet. I don't know anything, so I'm not ruling it out. God bless them if they are.

But no, I probably wouldn't bet on them to win more. I probably wouldn't bet on them to win more than half their games going forward. I thought they were close to 500 coming into the year. And I think they've i think they've improved my expectations enough factoring in moves that they might make that i would expect them to make i think i would say that they're a 500 team yeah the fact that they're competitive does just the fact that they're competitive does add another win or three, or maybe more, to their outlook going forward. Because if they were winning 76 games, then they wouldn't make those moves.

And if they're winning 86, they probably are. And right now, just with the wins that they've banked, and maybe some slight improvement to your forecast, they look a lot closer to 86. And so then you just sort of have to add two or three, because like you you said it probably brings Correa up sooner it probably means a trade or two or who knows maybe they go crazy at the deadline although I probably not so I had them winning 79 before the season uh started and uh

so they were already almost you know they were a 500 club so maybe I would bet on them to win more than half maybe I would maybe I I might win I might bet on them to win more than half. Maybe I would. I might bet on them to win more than half. I might. I might. I probably should. You've talked me into it. How much?

Good. I'm glad. How much what? How much are we betting? Oh, but we agree. That's usually the problem with our bets As we are on the same side of them Very little risk involved in this bet So I will bet you $30,000

Okay You're on Alright that is it for today then So we've got one more show tomorrow And you can hear it Same place earlier time And support our sponsor The Play Index

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