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2018 Houston Astros Season Thread


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40 minutes ago, Fozzz said:

Every pitcher in baseball has repeated fuck ups. 

Let’s zero in on a definition of “repeated.” To me, a volcano has “repeated” eruptions when there’s some separation between them. Giles, by contrast, has morphed into Kīlauea. 

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we're in great shape.  if giles repeats his 2017 regular season, we'll win a lot of close games.  if he slips, we have options and can trade for someone.  considering what happened last oct, i would be shocked if we didn't make a move for 1-2 relievers in july anyway.

like a lot of closers, he loses his shit when it's not a save situation.

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6 minutes ago, ERhine said:

The Giles negativity is going to get annoying this year. Let the guy pitch. If he's not cutting it I am sure Luhnow will make a move. Bitching every game is going to get old. No pitcher is perfect.

We got rid of teh gerg and dumpster fiers, so someone has to be our whipping boy

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So, my wife is from Fort Worth, and she has two younger brothers who are massive Ranger fans and still live up there. Let’s just say that owning your brothers-in-law in sports is very fun, especially when they have to pony up after your team wins a World Series. 

This is now a part of MMP outside of the center field gate. I saw it today for the first time. 

CPegYOI_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&f

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So, my wife is from Fort Worth, and she has two younger brothers who are massive Ranger fans and still live up there. Let’s just say that owning your brothers-in-law in sports is very fun, especially when they have to pony up after your team wins a World Series. 
This is now a part of MMP outside of the center field gate. I saw it today for the first time. 
CPegYOI_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium


You are my hero
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Giles was the 4th best closer last year in the regular season I think. 

Then we lit up Kimbrel, Chapman and Jansen in the playoffs. 

Juiced Gagne doesn’t exist anymore. Nor does That year Lidge didn’t blow a save for the Phillies?

Chill out 

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39 minutes ago, maninblack said:


Lost a bet

Well. To be fair, that is, in the strictest and most technical sense of the term, a man. And he is wearing, among other colors but mostly, the color black.

I mean... It's still a goddamned abomination, but ya know.

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9 hours ago, henrygandorf said:

yeah, can we at least wait until he actually blows a save?

He blew the shutout with virtually no pressure...except gasp! A baserunner.

 

It isn’t that he gave up a run either, except that the manner in which he did it is complete bullshit.  Winners don’t do the things he does, as often and in the untimely fashion in which he fucks up.

 

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I’m taking this from a post by Jason Marbach on Crawfish Boxes. But the upshot is, the hand-wringing over Giles is all out of proportion to his performance. It’s not backed up by data at all. 

 Giles is one of the five best "closers" in baseball. That’s a hill I’m comfortable dying on.

Consider this…among "closers" (defined loosely as guys who are currently closing games, or at least finished 2017 closing games) with a minimum 50 IP, Giles placed thusly in 2017:

  • 5th in FIP (behind Jansen, Kimbrel, Osuna, & Joakim Soria)
  • 8th in xFIP (Kimbrel, Jansen, Osuna, Brad Hand, Corey Knebel, Felipe Rivero, & Joakim Soria)
  • 8th in K/9 (Kimbrel, Knebel, Jansen, Aroldis Chapman, Cody Allen, Edwin Diaz, Wade Davis)
  • 4th in K% (Kimbrel, Jansen, Knebel)
  • 7th in SIERA (Kimbrel, Jansen, Osuna, Hand, Knebel, & Sean Doolittle)
  • 7th in ERA- (Kimbrel, Jansen, Felipe Rivero, Knebel, Hand, Wade Davis)
  • 5th in FIP- (Jansen, Kimbrel, Osuna, Soria)
  • 8th in xFIP- (Kimbrel, Jansen, Osuna, Hand, Knebel, Soria, Rivero)
  • 8th in RE24 (Kimbrel, Knebel, Hand, Jansen, Rivero, Raisel Iglesias, Wade Davis)
  • 11th in WPA (Jansen, Kimbrel, Knebel, Hand, Wade Davis, Rivero, Doolittle, Raisel Iglesias, Alex Colome, Arodys Vizcaino)

So he’s top 8 in every one of those categories except WPA, and he’s 11th there. Here’s the kicker, though…there are only two guys (Jansen and Kimbrel) who are ahead of him on every one of those lists. And there are only two more who are ahead of him on enough lists to merit consideration ahead of him overall: Roberto Osuna and Corey Knebel, who obviously had a career year last year that may or may not prove sustainable ultimately.

Speaking of longevity, I took these guys and plugged them all into the custom player splits and filtered from 2014 through today, to show the entire breadth of Giles’ MLB time. Want to know where he places in some rate stats among this crowd overall, since 2014?

4th in K%, 5th in K/9, 4th in FIP, and 3rd in xFIP.

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Giles is in postseason form. I don’t see why anyone’s complaining. I’m worried about the Altuve slump. This team is going to crush the AL and face the Yanks again in the ALCS, where the better pitching of the Astros will win out.

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Giles is in postseason form. I don’t see why anyone’s complaining. I’m worried about the Altuve slump.

I was going to post the same.
The .000 BA next to Altuve’s name is simply unacceptable.
Good thing Correa came through late with the oppo double or I’d be really concerned about that part of our lineup




(Sarcasm before some of you think otherwise)
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1 hour ago, formermav43 said:

I’m taking this from a post by Jason Marbach on Crawfish Boxes. But the upshot is, the hand-wringing over Giles is all out of proportion to his performance. It’s not backed up by data at all. 

 

 

Since the role of the traditional closer seems to be changing, I looked at where Giles ranked last year compared to all relievers with at least 50 IP (150 total pitchers). 

ERA: 16th (2.30); FIP: 11th (2.39); BB/9: 60th (3.02); GB%: 76th (44%); HR/9: 24th (0.57)

The walks are, I think, what drives people crazy. He simply walks too many hitters for a guy pitching in high-leverage situations. And the 3.02 BB/9 last year was down from 3.43 in 2016. (Jansen, by comparison, had 0.92; Kimbrel 1.83; Osuna 1.27; etc.)

I think people lose faith anecdotally in a "closer" who walks people. And then I think this is reinforced by his body language - he doesn't exactly appear confident out there, whether that's true or not. I think this is why the consensus on him among Astros fans lags behind how good the data suggests he actually is. 

That said, I do think there are better relievers on the club. I don't necessarily think Giles should be the default 9th inning guy. 

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11 minutes ago, Hank Chinaski said:

Since the role of the traditional closer seems to be changing, I looked at where Giles ranked last year compared to all relievers with at least 50 IP (150 total pitchers). 

ERA: 16th (2.30); FIP: 11th (2.39); BB/9: 60th (3.02); GB%: 76th (44%); HR/9: 24th (0.57)

The walks are, I think, what drives people crazy. He simply walks too many hitters for a guy pitching in high-leverage situations. And the 3.02 BB/9 last year was down from 3.43 in 2016. (Jansen, by comparison, had 0.92; Kimbrel 1.83; Osuna 1.27; etc.)

I think people lose faith anecdotally in a "closer" who walks people. And then I think this is reinforced by his body language - he doesn't exactly appear confident out there, whether that's true or not. I think this is why the consensus on him among Astros fans lags behind how good the data suggests he actually is. 

That said, I do think there are better relievers on the club. I don't necessarily think Giles should be the default 9th inning guy. 

I wanna know why 4-0, it wasn’t Joe Smith

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15 minutes ago, Hank Chinaski said:

Since the role of the traditional closer seems to be changing, I looked at where Giles ranked last year compared to all relievers with at least 50 IP (150 total pitchers). 

ERA: 16th (2.30); FIP: 11th (2.39); BB/9: 60th (3.02); GB%: 76th (44%); HR/9: 24th (0.57)

The walks are, I think, what drives people crazy. He simply walks too many hitters for a guy pitching in high-leverage situations. And the 3.02 BB/9 last year was down from 3.43 in 2016. (Jansen, by comparison, had 0.92; Kimbrel 1.83; Osuna 1.27; etc.)

I think people lose faith anecdotally in a "closer" who walks people. And then I think this is reinforced by his body language - he doesn't exactly appear confident out there, whether that's true or not. I think this is why the consensus on him among Astros fans lags behind how good the data suggests he actually is. 

That said, I do think there are better relievers on the club. I don't necessarily think Giles should be the default 9th inning guy. 

Even if there are better relievers on the club, as you point out, the role of the traditional closer is changing. Why should your best reliever be the default 9th inning guy? (You might not be arguing that necessarily, but I realize some of that lies behind the Giles hate.)

Peacock pitched 132 innings last year. Devenski had 80 something. It’s more logical and valuable to use those two guys like an Andrew Miller, whenever there is a high leverage situation and/or potentially for multiple innings, than to arbitrarily assign them to the 9th and pitch 60 innings like Giles. Especially when he has been as good as anyone not named Kimbrel or Jansen at pitching the 9th anyway.

Edited by formermav43
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One thing that is tough about judging relievers is that it's hard to obtain a big enough BIP sample to get a sense of their ability to suppress home runs on contact, which limits the usefulness of FIP.  With that limitation in mind, xFIP- for his major league career is probably the most holistic way to judge his performance, where he ranks 8th among all qualified relievers over that time period.  

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1 minute ago, formermav43 said:

Even if there are better relievers on the club, as you point out, the role of the traditional closer is changing. Why should your best reliever be the default 9th inning guy?

Peacock pitched 132 innings last year. Devenski had 80 something. It’s more logical and valuable to use those two guys like an Andrew Miller, whenever there is a high leverage situation and/or potentially for multiple innings, than to arbitrarily assign them to the 9th and pitch 60 innings like Giles. Especially when he has been as good as anyone not named Kimbrel or Jansen at pitching the 9th anyway.

Absolutely. And maybe that's where we are heading. Maybe Giles came in yesterday not because it was the 9th, but because there was a 4-run lead. 

But I think we will see him as the 9th-inning guy more often than not. Which I'm not necessarily criticizing. I think AJ knows what he's doing. 

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