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2022 Houston Astros Thread


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8 minutes ago, PenelopeWitherspoon said:

Fuck Manfred and Fuck MLB.  The only additional game I will be able to watch is tomorrow.  I will be able to watch some of the Wednesday night game in the Centurion club, but with a flight at 10:05 PM, there will still be a lot of ball to play when I go to catch my flight.  Sigh.

I watched game 6 in 2019 on an airplane. Watched it on my iPad using the plane’s WiFi and the Fox Sports app. Safe travels.

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17 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

I didn’t think this was Asian but when I clicked on the link to see if this was what I thought it was it said Asian. I think it’s the first add I’ve ever clicked on. 
also- now I get to watch without the trick or treat, but son of a fucking bitch the fact that we’ve played 9 games in the last 28 days is absurd. 

 

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44 minutes ago, runthebone said:

I was pissed, but now, you know what, let's just space the games out so we face Nola and Wheeler for all 7 games.  Why not?  We aren't having problems with them, and it allows us to skip Verlander.

Keep up this sluggish schedule and the series MVP will be forever known as "Mr. December." 

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37 minutes ago, Wulaw Horn said:

I didn’t think this was Asian but when I clicked on the link to see if this was what I thought it was it said Asian. I think it’s the first add I’ve ever clicked on. 
also- now I get to watch without the trick or treat, but son of a fucking bitch the fact that we’ve played 9 games in the last 28 days is absurd. 

I mean, why wouldn’t you click on that link?

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1 hour ago, Victor Lazlo said:

I watched game 6 in 2019 on an airplane. Watched it on my iPad using the plane’s WiFi and the Fox Sports app. Safe travels.

Unfortunately, wifi on Swiss Airlines isn't the greatest and they charge you for data.  So, probably not an option.  Which is honestly bullshit.

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24 minutes ago, CycleTex87 said:

I’ve watched a few live sporting events on a flight now and then. It’s a great way to pass the time. If the Astros were playing I believe would pay whatever they wanted in order to watch it. Don’t know how it works over the Atlantic though. 

They charge you 60 bucks for 220 MB of data.  So to live stream a game...yeah, no.

Also, 8 PM start times do not work with Zurich and Egypt time zones.  Sucks to be me. 

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Missed this from over the weekend

good stuff here. Completely didn’t realize we got Javier, Urquidy and Valdez all within 2.5 weeks 

 

The Pitching Secret That Helped the Astros Become World Series Regulars

Houston’s knack for finding Latin American pitchers who had been passed over as teens has been a key to the team’s ability to reach a fourth Series in six years.


https://www.wsj.com/articles/houston-astros-world-series-pitching-11666926165?page=1

 

Spoiler

BY TIM BROWN
Houston On a quiet recent after- noon in the Bronx, an important baseball game just hours away, Houston Astros right- hander Jose Urquidy was in the bullpen, taming a curveball that
has a tendency to go its own way. One after another, the pitch wasn’t quite right, this time too short, this time too loopy, this time unfamiliar off his fingers.
He said nothing and kept throw- ing curveballs. Snap. Snap. Snap. The perfect one was in there some- where, he knew, because he had thrown enough of those, too. Fram- ber Valdez, a left-hander for the Astros, watched from nearby. Fi- nally he said, “Jose.”
Slow down, he said in Spanish. Slower with your arm, he said. Slower with your body. Everything is too fast. Urquidy nodded. The curveball requires patience. The next was perfect.
“He knows me,” Urquidy said. “They all know me. And I know them.”
Seven-and-a-half years ago, Urquidy signed with the Astros for $100,000. He was 19 then and pitching in Mexico. Sixteen days later, Valdez, then a 21-year-old in the Dominican Republic, signed for $10,000. On the same day, Cristian Javier, a 17-year-old Dominican, signed for $10,000. Two years later, Luis Garcia, a 20-year-old Venezue- lan, signed for $20,000.
“I think the organization saw something in us and brought us in,” Garcia said Thursday after- noon. “And it was fantastic. We still have like a family.”
As the Astros attempt to estab- lish dominion over a game that doesn’t wholly trust them and also can’t quite beat them, decisions made more than a half-decade ago, under different management, launching journeys for older, for- eign-born prospects with no sure destination has fueled four Ameri- can League pennants in six sea- sons.
From a franchise that appeared in one World Series in its first 55 years (and lost that, in 2005, to the Chicago White Sox), the Astros have become World Series regulars, in part because of an organiza- tional shift in the way they identi- fied, projected, pursued, signed and developed relatively older Latin American pitchers.
In particular, those four pitch- ers—Urquidy, Valdez, Javier and Garcia, and the $140,000 required to sign all four of them—in the past five seasons have cost the As- tros $13.2 million in salaries. In re- turn, the four have posted 1,485 regular-season innings, a 111-65 re- cord and a 3.43 ERA. In postsea- sons, they are 13-8 with a 3.95 ERA across 139 innings. In the World Series, Valdez is scheduled to start Game 2 and Javier is likely to start Game 4.
“The quantity is the uniqueness of it,” an international scout from an American League team said. “There are low-dollar guys all over the major leagues. But, four at the same time in the same place? I can’t think of it ever happening.”

Beyond those four—adhering to a philosophy adopted by former general manager Jeff Luhnow, his director of international scouting Oz Ocampo, the then-major league pitching coach Brent Strom and a host of scouts, coaches, trainers and administrators—the Astros used prospects who were signed and developed under similar meth- ods to acquire ace Justin Ver- lander, closer Ryan Pressly and for- mer catcher Brian McCann.
When the question is asked about the Astros and how they maintain relevance through a cheating scandal, the free-agency losses of outfielder George Springer, shortstop Carlos Correa and pitcher Gerrit Cole and an in- jury to Michael Brantley, the an- swer is pitching. The better answer is inexpensive pitching.
Traditionally, the international pitching market seeks 16-year-olds who throw hard for their age from long bodies that one day might be longer and thicker. The rest—pitch- ing mechanics, pitching feel, types of pitches—could be taught. That’s what minor-league coaches are for. With a nudge from Strom, the As- tros began to think otherwise. They sought young men already comfort- able in sound mechanics, who might not be built like prototypical pitchers, who were a bit more ma- ture physically and mentally.
Maybe that pitcher was 18. Or 19. Or 20.
“From an international stand- point we were really focusing on attributes that defined starters,” Ocampo said. “And so starting pitching was the key for us. There’s a lot of things that we looked at— the physical attributes, the athleti- cism, the strength, the physical projection, the movement patterns, how the body moved, what the de- livery looked like, looking at the
The Astros looked beyond normal metrics to examine each pitcher’s delivery.
overall repertoire. So fastball, cur- veball, changeup, a lot of the reper- toire and then the pitchability and the command of the pitcher, as well as the overall mental makeup.”
He said the Astros looked be- yond normal metrics, such as ve- locity and body type, to examine each pitcher’s delivery, arm motion and other body movements.
“You look at Framber, Javier, Garcia and Urquidy, these are not the prototypical starter frames that you look at, right?” Ocampo said.

Hired from the St. Louis Cardi- nals to become the Astros general manager in December 2011, Luh- now incorporated high-speed video and TrackMan radar systems, which display three-dimensional images of the baseball in motion, into what would become a new era in scouting. Unable to lug all the equipment into tiny Dominican Re- public or Venezuelan villages, he and his staff used the broader guidelines gathered from Track- Man—what makes a good fastball, how often a good curveball spins and at what angle, etc.—to inform what they saw on the high-speed video. They X-rayed prospects’ hands to determine if a player had reached his full height. Age mat- tered less than what a pitcher could do with a baseball,or might one day do with proper instruction and years to develop.
“So, you could identify a 15- year-old pitcher in the Dominican Republic who had movement on his fastball that was very similar to Justin Verlander’s strikeout pitch,” Luhnow said Thursday, “and you could say, ‘OK, this guy’s throwing 90s right now. He’s got good physi- cal projection. We think he’s going to eventually get to the high 90s. And the shape of his pitches is very similar to elite shapes in the big leagues.’ ”
That went for the 20-year-olds
as well.
Suddenly, the Astros were flush
with minor-league pitchers the As- tros believed had potential, and soon after that they were arriving in the big leagues with the sort of abilities the Astros’ model once predicted.
Luhnow was suspended and then fired in January 2020 as a result of the electronic sign-stealing scan- dal, though he maintains he neither had knowledge nor a hand in the scheme. Still, the developmental system he engineered remains. The players he and others chased into dusty fields across Latin America continue to arrive, continue to per- form.
“Framber’s a perfect example of that,” Luhnow said. “Because really the culture of Latin American scouting is that all the good ones get signed at 16, and then maybe there’s some spillover into the 17, 18. But by the time you’re 19 or 20, everybody’s had five chances to sign you and they’ve passed. So ob- viously...you’re not really a poten- tial prospect. But once we started to look more at the variables in- volved with the pitches, it became very clear to us that the age, age didn’t really matter.”
The Astros are back in the World Series. Valdez will be pitch- ing. And Luhnow, who still lives in Houston, will be watching.

 

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9 hours ago, CycleTex87 said:

Well that sucks. Get dinner and a glass of wine then crash.  When I used to fly back from Africa the flight left at 11:00 pm. I would take my ambien during boarding and be asleep before we pushed back. 

There is definitely an advantage to business class.  I’ll need the wine to sleep.

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I plan on sleeping on the plane.  That is the nice thing about that later flight (10:05 PM).  
Yup, flew to Switzerland earlier this month, 9pm departure outta Texas, woke up just before landing at Heathrow layover around lunch. Kicked any jet lag's ass on the plane itself.
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I changed planes in O'Hare on the way to Seattle in 2003 and Cubs fans onboard had already convinced the pilot to put the Cubs playoff broadcast on one of the inflight entertainment channels. I wasn't listening, but when the Cubs' fans reached for the ball and deflected Moises Alou's potential catch the entire plane went into an uproar with arms flailing, people jumping up, and screaming obscenities. I plugged my headphones in but we lost the broadcast shortly after. Didn't really figure out what happened until we got to Seattle.

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27 minutes ago, Saint Tacky said:

I changed planes in O'Hare on the way to Seattle in 2003 and Cubs fans onboard had already convinced the pilot to put the Cubs playoff broadcast on one of the inflight entertainment channels. I wasn't listening, but when the Cubs' fans reached for the ball and deflected Moises Alou's potential catch the entire plane went into an uproar with arms flailing, people jumping up, and screaming obscenities. I plugged my headphones in but we lost the broadcast shortly after. Didn't really figure out what happened until we got to Seattle.

As much as I hate to say it... Dusty wears that 8th inning for not having anyone near ready when Prior had obviously lost it for the night.  Bartman was an easy scapegoat when Dusty and Alex Gonzalez were the real culprits that night.

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3 minutes ago, Guadaloopy said:

As much as I hate to say it... Dusty wears that 8th inning for not having anyone near ready when Prior had obviously lost it for the night.  Bartman was an easy scapegoat when Dusty and Alex Gonzalez were the real culprits that night.

Well, the important thing is that Dusty learned his lesson...

 

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Fuck

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2 hours ago, runthebone said:

My point is that no one is arguing that the game should have been played last night in a downpour

The only thing we are arguing is that that piece of shit stadium, and all baseball stadiums that are located in the shithole that is the east coast of the Untied States, should have a god damn retractable roof on them.  

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