Houston Astros 2014 Season Thread

The streak comes to an end and a new one begins. Jose Altuve was shutout for the first time in a long time and he managed no hits in a thirteen inning game going 0-6 for the first time in his career. I am personally glad that Cleveland is gone and the four game set between them and Astros is over. Heartbreaking losses all in losing 3 or the 4 games they played. None more so than the blown gem by Scott Feldman who pitched 8+ innings allowing only one run. It was a 1-0 game and two outs away from a pretty impressive win for Feldman and the Astros but that's when the wheels totally fell off. In the thirteenth the Indians scored a run and that probably looked like a million runs to the hitting challenged Astros.

Jose's BA fell to .241 which is incredible it wasn't lower and he maintained a 9 point lead over an idle Victor Martinez in the race for the AL batting title.

Tonight the Astros are on the losing end of the stick again. It looked like the Astros were going to go down to the wire until a disastrous 4th inning derailed Brad Peacock and the Astros. It was 1-1 until back to back errors put two runners on base and home run by Mike Zunino opened the flood gates. 12 Indian hitters went to the plate and by the time the smoke cleared a 1-1 game became an 8-1 rout fueled by 2 3-run homers by Zunino and Kyle Seager off Peacock and reliever Jake Buchanan. Jose Altuve got back on his multi-hit game horse tonight. After 7 innings Jose is 3-3 with a run scored so at least there is something positive going on. Houston has come back to score 2 more runs so far but the most telling thing is the missed opportunities. Like for instance the bases-loaded-no-outs situation in the bottom of the third but strike outs by Dexter Fowler and Jason Castro and a flyout to center by Matt Dominguez ended the Astros threat and opened the door for the Indians to take control of the game.

As for Altuve, he's currently sitting at .343 and he was done for the night when Marc Krauss pinch hit for him in the seventh. Victor Martinez and the Tigers in the middle of a rout of their own as they began a series with rival Kansas City and so far the Tigers have had the best of it. So far into the bottom of the 8th Detroit is winning 10-0. Martinez night is over as he was replaced in the lineup by Don Kelly in the 8th but not before he went 2-4 on the night with an RBI and 2 runs scored. Martinez is now hitting .335 with nine games left. Houston and Altuve will have 8 games to go after tonight. 8 points seems like a lot but 8 games seems like a long time.

Last night was a big night for the Astros. Part of the pregame was a ceremony honoring Jose Altuve's breaking of Craig Biggio's single season hit total record. The record stool for 15 years after Biggio set it back in 1998 and now Altuve has broken that record with Biggio's blessing. Present at the ceremony was Biggio and a representative from the Minute Maid corporation were on hand to honor the diminutive second baseman for setting the new benchmark for hits in a season. Biggio and Altuve are the only two players in franchise history to have 200 hits or more in a season. The Minute Maid corporation, in honor of Altuve's record awarded him 211 bottles of Minute Maid orange juice, enough for Jose and his family for 4 years. Sort of a cheesy gift but the real disappointment was the lack of fans in attendance at the ballpark last night. Of course the gift referenced the 211th hit by Altuve which was the one to break Biggio's record. Jose has that number in his rearview mirror as he collected two more hits to extend that new record number to 218.

http://m.astros.mlb.com/news/article/95615546/second-baseman-jose-altuve-honored-for-setting-astros-single-season-hit-record

Another reason for the big night was the 10-1 thrashing of the Mariners. After losing the opener of the series Friday night 10-5 the Astros seemed to want to make a statement or maybe it was just the Astros breaking out of a team batting slump that included no home runs by anyone for over a week. Last night the Astros got 5 dingers from Chris Carter whose 2 run shot began the scoring as part of a 4 run inning to begin the game. A couple of batters later Alex Presley went yard to extend the Astros lead to 4-0 with a 2 run shot of his own. In the fourth inning Matt Dominguez and Carlos Corporan went back to back with solo home runs which gave the Astros a 7-1 lead at that point. In the 7th Jake Marisnick clocked a 3 run bomb to extend the Astros lead to what was final score of 10-1. This sets up a rubber game today that is quite important to the Mariners as they chase an AL Wild Card spot with just a week left in the season. Seattle is in contention with Oakland, Kansas City and Cleveland for the Wild Card spot in the playoffs and I'm sure Houston would love to play the spoiler role. They weren't able to do much to spoil Cleveland's chances as they lost 3 of 4 games earlier in the week. Hopefully, the Astros bats have come alive for one last push to the end of the season which end a week from today. Seven games in eight days, that all that's left for the 2014 season for Houston.

The last reason for Houston having a big night last night is that Dallas Keuchel was making what will probably be his last start of the season last night. He's been the starting pitching bell cow for the entire season. Scott Feldman had his moments, Jared Cosart was nipping at Keuchel's heels before being traded to Miami in August, Colin McHugh flashed but was inconsistent. It has been Keuchel who start after start took the ball and gave his team a chance to win almost every time out. He's tied for second in baseball and is No 1 in the AL for complete games with 5. He's tied with St Louis Adam Wainwright and one behind Clayton Kershaw both National Leaguers. Ironically, the Astros spent 6 weeks not giving Keuchel any run support including a complete game loss in early August. Despite pitching his ass off in August he was 0-6 for the month and even when he pitched with a lead the bullpen gave up runs that cost Keuchel victories. Realistically, with the way he pitched in August and early September Keuchel should have had 15 wins on the season if not 18 at the outside. In his last start 6 days ago Keuchel got his first win since July 31st giving him 11 wins on the season. Last night he went out and dominated the Mariners despite have only "average stuff" according to Mariners manager Lloyd McClendon who, after Keuchel shutout the Mariners in Seattle earlier this summer. McClendon last night backed off -- a little -- by saying, "He had a good sinker. Listen, everybody was up in a huff last time about what I said. I wasn't trying to downplay the kid. He's got average stuff. He knows how to pitch. He doesn't have David Price-type of stuff." Sounds like sour grapes to me especially the way Keuchel has owned the Mariners this season. So, last night's 10-1 win was a good deal for Keuchel but maybe the most important milestone reached by Keuchel was he reaching his goal of pitching 200 innings for the Astros this season. With the last out in the 8th inning and after 120 pitches Keuchel reached his goal. He's proud of the accomplishment because it means he's done his job for the Astros and he's right. Keuchel has been the best of the Astros pitchers in the same way Jose Altuve has been the best of the position players. Keuchel is likely done for the season so his work is done but Altuve, well, he's still got an AL batting title to win. Currently he's sitting at .244 with his closest competition, Detroit's Victor Martinez, is sitting ten points behind at .334. Martinez is chasing a pennant with the Tigers so his motivation is clear for doing well the final 8 games of the Tigers season. Altuve is motivated too. Why? Because his pride, the fact that he's overcome all odds of making the big leagues despite his size and because he could become the only Astro to ever win a batting title in franchise history. Jose has made a point of breaking long standing records in Houston this season, this would be the cherry on top of the sundae of his 2014 season. Go Jose, go.

Houston notched their 69th win of the season yesterday with a win over the Seattle Mariners. Not only did Houston win the game they won the series 2 games to 1. The only series vs a contending team they failed at matching or beating recently was the with the Indians and relief pitching did them in and some very quiet bats. Against Seattle the bats have reawakened and even in their Friday night 10-5 loss Houston still banged out 13 hits. Yesterday the Astros upped that to 14 hits on the way to an 8-3 win. As usual, Jose Altuve added to his total of multi-hit games going 2-4 on the afternoon with 2 runs scored and an RBI. Four other Astros hitters had multi-hit games with Alex Presley going 3-5, Jake Marisnick 2-5, Gregorio Petit 2-5 and Jonathan Villar 2-3.

Colin McHugh got his eleventh win of the season going 6 innings giving up 3 runs on 4 hits with a walk and 6 K's. Kevin Chapman, Jose Veras and Tony Sipp combined for 3 shutout innings to close the door on the Mariners comeback hopes.

Interesting facts about Jose Altuve;

> With 2 more hits he ups his season total to 220 which gives him the most hits by a second baseman since 1936 when Detroit's Charlie Gehringer had 227. With six games left it could be that Altuve could have that mark before the season ends too!

> Altuve now has 68 multi-hit games for the season which is the most since Ichiro Suzuki had 69 in 2010. Odds are Jose will pass the 69 mark too.

> Altuve increased his league leading batting average to .345 yesterday. 2nd place in the batting average race is Victor Martinez who went 1-3 in Detroit's 5-2 loss to Kansas City. This dropped his average to .334, eleven points below Altuve. Houston has six games left in the season while Detroit has 7.

> With the game well in had manager Tom Lawless pulled Altuve out of the lineup making the substitution after the Astros had taken the field in the top of the 9th inning. Jose went to the dugout to a standing ovation by the 31,000 plus fans in the stadium giving Altuve a final salute by the home fans as yesterday was the final home game of the 2014 season. It is well deserved by Altuve who has stattered a bevy of long standing hitting records for the Astros franchise. There are a couple more milestones to reach for this season including a first ever batting title for an Astros hitter. I'm glad the stadium was more than 3/4 full and I'm glad Jose got the ovation he deserves for his play in 2014.

Think about this, Altuve has 68 multi-hit games out of the 156 they have played. That's 44% of the games played. 44. That means in nearly half of every game Houston has played Altuve has had more than one hit. That's with a weak lineup around him, that's with pitchers pitching around him to get to weaker hitters, that's going through streaks where Houston couldn't buy a win. Every day, thick or thin, Jose Altuve has been front and center. No matter what happens on the road in these last six games----well done Jose, well done.

http://m.mlb.com/hou/video/topic/8879000/v36480905/seahou-altuve-receives-ovation-upon-exit-in-9th/?c_id=hou

Just a reminder that with the series with the Texas Rangers beginning tonight and running through Wednesday night it will be televised locally by Fox Sports Southwest. I know the new fall shows begin tonight so set your DVR's for the one hour Big Bang Theory premiere, or the new Batman prequel Gotham or the new show appropriately slotted after BBT about a misfit group of geniuses helping the government stop terrorists call SCORPION. Or maybe you are sitting on pins and needles hoping to find out what is going on with The Black List season premiere. Maybe you like The Voice, I don't know (and in the case of The Voice I don't care. Is there anyone more annoying than Blake Shelton?) but set the DVR and watch the Astros. They are worth the time as they currently sit 14 games better than last season with a record setting 2nd baseman chasing the AL batting title. You get to watch up and coming pitcher Nick Tropeano make his 3rd MLB start. He is 1-1 so far and you get a glimpse of the Astros future.

If all this isn't enough, if Houston wins 4 of their last 6 games they will have won 72 games on the season making our very own Big T a freaking psychic! 3 games on 3 nights to watch a team we haven't been able to watch hardly at all this season. C'mon, grab your favorite beverages and munchies or better yet a pizza and check out the Astros one last time.

I don't know why Houston does this. Maybe it's to just confound me or make me mad. I don't know but the last two games proves you can't just assume anything. Houston has owned the Rangers up until Monday night but all that has changed and don't tell me that the Rangers have just played well. Poppycock! Houston's bats go to sleep way too often. It's happened all year. It's not the hits themselves, heck the Astros have 15 hits over the past two games. It's just that they can't hit when it counts. It's not the pitching either. I'm sorry but starting pitchers for the Rangers aren't the second coming of Cy Young. I'll give you Derek Holland but he's a September call up for crying out loud. He's 2-0 with a 1.31 ERA but c'mon now. Nick Martinez is 5-11 with a 4.61 ERA so he's nobody's staff ace. They gave up those 15 hits and the only thing you can say is they only gave up a walk apiece. Nick Tropeano did okay on Monday but he did himself in after Houston tied the game at 3 in 6th inning. He gave up a single run in the 7th and that's how that one ended, 4-3. Last night Houston couldn't even rumble, bumble or stumble across a run until the 9th when they squeezed out 1 but that wasn't enough because the Rangers won 2-1.

The worst thing? Jose Altuve has gone a paltry 1-8 in the last two games which isn't what you want to see when he's chasing a batting title. The gap between Altuve and Victor Martinez is just 8 points with Jose at .343 and Martinez at .335. The Astros now have 4 games left while Detroit has 5. Let's hope Jose gets back on track tonight in the Rangers series finale.

And the buzzer sounds and I'm sorry but you failed to answer the question, "What cellar dwelling MLB team swept their intrastate and division rivals in a three game series in late September?" Of course the answer is the Texas Rangers! Thank you for playing the game and here are some consolation prizes for you to enjoy!

Holy crap! Swept by the worst team in baseball. Losers of 6 out of the last seven ball games. Needless to say, but I'll say it anyway, Houston is not finishing the season the way we had hoped. In a perfect world they would have won 6 of their last 7 and followed that up by sweeping the Mets this weekend. That's how to finish a season, not with a whimper but a ka-pow giving fans a good feeling about their prospects for the 2015 season. But, it's the same thing that has dogged the team all year. Extended stretches of the season where Houston can buy hits but they can't buy a hit when it counts. Meaning they can't buy a run or two even with no-finance charge credit. I'm glad to see Houston get out of Arlington. I hope Arlington is the black hole for the Saints this weekend that it's been for the Astros! Houston gets to regroup a bit with a day off before heading into the Big Apple to finish their season with the Mets who are now just an afterthought in the NL playoff race.

Altuve watch: In the Rangers series finale Altuve went 1-3 with a walk and he is maintaining his .343 BA for the season. Detroit's Victor Martinez went 0-2 with a walk, a strike out and run scored. His BA dropped a point to .334 giving Jose a 9 point lead for the AL batting title. Houston has three games left to play and Detroit 4. Houston closes out their season against the Mets beginning Friday evening and Detroit stays home in a 4 game series with Minnesota. Detroit has clinched a wild card berth but they are looking to win the AL Central. They currently have a two game lead over Kansas City with Kansas City in a tight race for the division and the wild card with Oakland as both are tied with 86-72 records. Hopefully, the day off will give the Astros enough of a breather to finish the season strong. Hopefully, they will be trying for no other reason but to help Jose nail down that AL batting title. You hope the team isn't mailing it in for this last week and are just marking time until the season ends on Sunday. It's not likely, not the way they have battled all season. Currently stuck on 69 wins on the season you hope they can at least get to 70 wins. This would have Houston with a final tally of 70-92. That ain't exactly something to brag about until you stop and think that mark is 19 games better than last season. 19 games! That's a pretty impressive turnaround in one season.

Two things.

1. Houston won their 70th game of the season last night. That is a big considering where they've come from. First time siince 2010 Houston has won 70 or more games.

2. Altuve's chase for the AL batting title has come down to 2 games. Last night's win was sparked by --- wait for it --- Jose Altuve's RBI double in the sixth inning. He went 1-4 with an RBI and a run scored in Houston's series opener with the Mets. The final was 4-1 and Altuve's BA currently stands at .342. The only guy who can catch Altuve is Victor Martinez of the Detroit Tigers. They played a game on Thursday, which was an off day for Houston and Martinez went 3-4 with 2 RBIs and a run scored in the series opening win against Minnesota upping his BA to .337 which pulled him to within 5 points of Altuve. Last night Detroit dropped the game to the Twins with Martinez going 1-4 dropping his BA to .336.

Two games left and only 6 points seperating No1 Altuve and No2 Martinez. Let's go, Jose!

Okay. I get it. Nothing in this world is freaking easy but c'mon. Yesterday Jose Altuve had a 6 point lead for the AL batting title in his pocket. Trouble was there was a hole in his pocket.

Here's the deal;

Minnesota is at Detroit for the final home stand of the season. Detroit's Victor Martinez is the only player in contention for the batting title. He began the night hitting .336 and after going 1-2 with a walk Martinez was pulled for a pinch hitter, why I don't know unless with division rival Kansas City a loser last night prior to the end of the Tigers game. Maybe Brad Ausmus was preserving Martinez' batting average for one last push for the batting title in today's season finale. Regardless or what the reason is Martinez is sitting at .337

Houston is at New York to close out their season vs the Mets. Houston hit the 70 win mark the night before in a game that saw Altuve go 1-4 to maintain a .342 BA, six points ahead of Martinez. Houston struggled all night last night but carried a 1-0 lead into the ninth. Tom Lawless brought in Tony Sipp to close the game and it only took Sipp four batters and 9 pitches to blow the save. Sipp got leadoff hitter Eric Campbell to fly out to center for 1 out. Then, Eric Young, Jr triples into the gap in left-center. Batter #3 Daniel Murphy pops out to shallow left forcing Young to stay at third. Batting fourth in the inning was Lucas Duda who was 0-3 in the game promptly homered to right field bouncing the ball off the foul pole for walk off 2-run shot that jerked the rug right out from under the Astros. Sipp had been money up until September and since then you could flip a coin as to whether he'd be good or stink up the joint. The worst part of the night was the fact that Jose went 0-fer in 4 at-bats dropping his batting average to .340.

What's at stake;

Jose needs to get one freaking hit and the batting title is his. One, preferably two and it's a done deal. If he goes 0-fer again today and Martinez has a hot day and goes 3-4 or better Martinez will win the title. Hopefully, Jose can take the pressure of what's on the line for him. It would be great if he could get a hit right out of the box in the 1st inning. Get it done, take the pressure off and maybe stack another hit or two on top for good measure. 3 points seperates Altuve and Martinez. If you asked me Friday afternoon if I though Altuve was a lock to win the batting title I would've said, "You Bet!" but now I'm on pins and needles. I'm glad the Cowboys don't play until tonight because football is the last thing on my mind today.

Jose Altuve did it! He won the first batting title in the whole darn history of the franchise! He did it just like he did it all season by having his franchise record extending 69th multi-hit game. I hoped he would get his first hit early and he did. Not as early as I hoped because he was retired in his first at-bat but in his 2nd in the 3rd inning he got a ground rule double. In the fifth he legged out an infield single which scored a run giving him an RBI to tie the game at the time 2-2. The guy is just phenomenal. I glad it happened and it didn't even matter that Victor Martinez went 0-fer today because Jose didn't need the final game collapse by Martinez. He won it by hitting the ball. Class act all the way. Congratulations Jose you worked your behind off for this and you deserve it. Think about it. In a lineup with no protection around him he hits .341 for the season. Not only that he leads the AL in stolen bases and hits. This was a true super-human fete, make no mistake about it. Houston has a GEN-U-WINE star on its hands.

BTW, Houston won its 70th game of the season Friday improving upon their 2013 win total by 19 games. THAT is amazing as well. It was a good season and I'll give Big T credit, he predicted 72 wins and if the relief pitching staff hadn't been lame maybe Houston would have won more this past week. Still, a 19 game is a huge improvement and the Astros should be proud of themselves. They only had the 2nd best turnaround in 2013 as the Los Angeles Angels improved by 20 games and won the AL West in doing so. So, there is hope for the near future. Well done Houston.

Houston's season wasn't over more than 24 hours when they announced their new manager today. It's a hire that has many scratching their head. The Astros have hired former Diamondbacks manager AJ Hinch. It may be noted that Hinch's stint as manager in Arizona wasn't a stellar one that had a beat writer in Phoenix wondering what the heck Jeff Luhnow and the Astros saw in this guy. So, I am posting the article from Astros.com introducing Hinch to the media today including a video of the presser. I am also posting a link from Wiki so those of you who don't know him (like me) an idea of where this guy came from.

http://m.astros.mlb.com/news/article/96996878/astros-hand-managerial-reins-to-aj-hinch

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._J._Hinch

The Astros rebounded some from a really bad August to post a record of 11-13 for the month. It was a little disheartening to see the Astros lose 11 of their last 16 games of the season. It was similar to 2013 when Houston lost the last 15 games of the season. Jose Altuve kept breaking out the hits and multi-hit games as he passed Craig Biggio's single season hit record finishing with 225 hits on the season besting Biggio's 210 by 15 hits. He also passed Kevin Bass' record of 61 multi-hit games in a season adding on last game to that total in the season finale bringing his season total to 69. Add to that a first ever batting title by a Houston Astro and you could say Jose had a season for the books in 2014. He also led either all of baseball or the AL in total hits, stolen bases, batting average and several other categories. Altuve had a bit of a slump in 2013 which caused him to miss out on his second consecutive All Star game after he debuted in the summer classic in 2012. He made some adjustments to his hitting over the off season that he continued to work on during spring training and it resulted in a season for the ages.

Chris Carter had one whale of a summer leading the bigs in hitting up until a giant slump hit in September. After hitting .340 or better for much of July and August, September came around and Carter only managed a .228 average. He did cut down on his strike out rate from an epically bad 212 K's in 2013 to 187 this season. Still not great but the improvement in his walks and a new career high in home runs, 37 for the season. That was good enough to be 2nd in the AL to Baltimore's Nelson Cruz and tied for second in all of baseball with Miami's Giancarlo Stanton. Certainly, something to build on for 2015 and since he's eligible for arbitration he looks to be getting a little bump in his pay next season.

The starting pitching for the Astros this year has been above average. Quality start after quality start piled up for this pitching staff. The top four spots in the rotation should be wrapped up with Scott Feldman, Dallas Keuchel, Colin McHugh and Brett Oberholzer. The fifth spot should be a nice competition of current arms on the staff like Brad Peacock or another young arm like Mike Foltynewicz could claim the spot.

The Astros need more offense in 2015. While a nice fielding third baseman Matt Dominguez is no stick at the plate and he was among the league leaders in hitting into double plays. Alex Presley was okay as was Robbie Grossman but they were too inconsistent at the plate. Marwin Gonzalez proved to be a great utility man who could play every day and his .277 average on the season was right on time. As was the pick up of SS/Utility man Gregorio Petit who hit .278 for Houston. These guys are just marking time for Carlos Correa who could see the bigs sometime next summer. The Astros will need to negotiate with Dexter Fowler but he has been a good pickup and the Astros really missed him in the line up for about 6 weeks with a rib cage muscle pull. The call up of the Astros best prospect, George Springer, was a good move and he played pretty well until a pulled quad ended his season in late July. The second call up was Jon Singleton and after a brief period at the beginning he struggled for the duration of the season. He ended the season hitting .168 in just 95 games and 310 at-bats he had 134 K's and only 50 BB's. He struggled so badly that I honestly thought that the Astros should have sent him back to AAA OKC to regain some confidence. Maybe the big contract extension he received when he came up prevented him from being sent down. I don't know but he has a lot to prove next spring.

The final 70-92 record is 19 games better than 2013's all time low of 111 losses and the first time Houston had as many as 70 wins since 2010. There is definitely hope for the future. The Astros say they will be looking to upgrade their hitting and relief pitching. We shall see. If Houston improves by 19 games again next year they will end up 89-73 which would be good enough this season to be in the Wild Card playoff game. That's pretty heady stuff to think that Houston could actually make the playoffs next season. Pretty awesome to think they are no longer cellar dwellers.

This is my last post on this thread. It's been great sharing the Astros season with everyone. I look forward to 2015 for an improved Astros team and the expectation that the problems with their media coverage is ironed out so we can watch them once in a while.