Any way we slice it, Astros are dominating

Our way of keeping baseball standings has at least one thing in common with the official way: The Houston Astros are ahead, lopsidedly ahead, in every one of their divisions.

George Springer has five homers and 10 RBI on the Houston Astros' present road trip (Keith Allison/Creative Commons Attributon-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license).

The knock against the Houston Astros all year is that they haven't played any good teams. Which raises the question: What counts for a good team in the American League, besides the Astros?

The New York Yankees, you say. They lead the American League East. The Astros beat them three out of four at Yankee Stadium last month.

Who else? Anybody?

The Astros haven't played the Boston Red Sox, who have the third best record in the AL, behind the Astros and the Yankees.

There is one club that has their number. The Cleveland Indians, defending the AL pennant, have beaten the Astros in five of six meetings this year. The Astros are 41-11 against everyone else.

In August, the Astros will play three at home against the Washington Nationals, who are trouncing the National League East. But that's really about it when it comes to "good teams" still to play the Astros. Maybe the Red Sox are that kind of team, but maybe they aren't. Same with the Baltimore Orioles.

When we consider that the Astros play in the American League West, which doesn't have another .500 team and probably won't have one before the end of the year, it's not hard to imagine a run at 116 wins, which the Seattle Mariners reached in 2001.

But it is a lot easier to imagine than it is to achieve. At this point in their 2001 season, the Mariners were 46-12, nearing the end of a 15-game winning streak. The Astros are merely on an 11-game winning streak.

The last seven of those wins have come on a road trip during which the club is batting .326 (87-for-267). Jose Altuve is batting .484 on the road trip (15-for-31) and he has reached base now in 32 consecutive road games, going back to last Sept. 19.

George Springer is batting .457 (16-for-35) on the road trip with five homers and 10 RBI. Catcher Brian McCann had a mere one hit on the road trip before Monday, when he smashed a two-run homer in the fourth inning to give the Astros a 4-2 lead against the Kansas City Royals.

Ever heard of Yuli Gurriel? He hit a back-breaking three-run homer in the top of the ninth Monday night against Kansas City relief ace Kelvin Herrera. The Royals still had a little of a chance before then, but that homer gave the Astros a 7-3 lead. On the road trip, Gurriel is eight-for-18 (.444) with two homers and eight RBI.

The point of all this is that the Astros have it working, not just in the official Major League standings, but just about however you want to slice it. 

The way we slice it around here, we've got the Astros in three divisions, and they are dominating all of them. Last we checked, that wasn't quite so. The Astros were tied with the Texas Rangers on top of the Southwest Conference, 2 1/2 games ahead of the Arizona Diamondbacks in the West League South and one game ahead of the Dodgers in the South League West. Now, the Astros have leads of two, six and 4 1/2 games, respectively, in those competitions.

Here's a look at the conferences.

We can see that the Colorado Rockies have cooled down a little bit in the Northwest, where the Chicago Cubs have moved to within two games. In the Southeast, the Cincinnati Reds have come down a little after losing two of three at home against the Atlanta Braves last weekend.

We know Brandon Phillips didn't especially hurt the Reds in that series, and we also know that Jose Peraza homered for the Reds. But we're still going to say that, unquestionably, the dumbest off-season move for any club this year was the Reds giving the Braves Phillips, plus $13 million of the $14 million needed to pay him.

The Reds had tried for years to dump the salary, but Phillip refused to be traded. So, the Reds dumped the player and ate the salary, which defeated the whole purpose of trading him. In return for Phillips (who is from Stone Mountain, GA), the Reds received Andrew McKirahan and Carlos Purtuondo. Okay.

The Reds saved $1 million in the exchange, but when you consider that whoever took his roster spot was going to cost at least the big league minimum of $535,000, the savings becomes $465,000. For $465,000, the Reds removed Brandon Phillips from their lineup.

In his place, they're trying Peraza. At 23, Peraza may become a good player. If you're saving $13 million by playing him instead of Phillips, this year is a good time to find out. If you're only saving $465,000, it isn't. With Phillips in their mix, the Reds might have a good enough club to reach 85 wins and shoot for the playoffs. With Peraza in his place, they probably don't.

The metrics say that Phillips has a 0.6 WAR and Peraza is at 0.3, according to the reckoning on baseball-reference.com. The same metrics say that Peraza is 0.3 WAR to the good offensively, even though his OPS-plus is 64, which is really a minus, The only good offensive numbers for Peraza are his stolen bases, 14 for 16. Offensively, he's Billy Hamilton Lite.

More likely, in the rattle and hum of the Cincinnati offense, the Reds would be a couple games better right now with Phillips in their lineup. That would have them breaking even. More to the point, this trade probably will end up costing them a good amount of money. 

Figuring that the average paid admission runs $100 through the cash register between the ticket, parking, concessions and souvenirs, the Reds would make up the $465,000 they saved by putting an extra 4,650 people in their stadium, total, through the course of the season. Does a playoff contenting Reds club with Phillips in their lineup lure an extra 4,650 people to Great American Ball Park during the course of the season? It probably lures 20 times than many. 

We'll never know, but it could be that this deal costs the Reds about $10 million in lost revenues, and a chance to contend. In these days when 85 wins makes a playoff contender, no club should ever give up on the season before it starts. The Reds did that with the Phillips trade, and it could cost them a lot more than they saved.

Hey, though, the Reds are still right there with the Washington Nationals on top of the East Division in the South League. In the West Division, no one is with the Astros.

In the West League, it appears that the Astros are packing that South Division away. But the North Division race between the Colorado Rockies and the Minnesota Twins remains interesting and tight. We keep waiting for the Chicago Cubs to make a move, but they've actually lost a game against the lead since we last checked.

In the East League, we see the Indians and the Detroit Tigers so far are lightly scheduled in that North Division. That will change. Meanwhile, the Baltimore Orioles are stinking up the South League just a little, but they've opened up a two-game lead on the Nationals in the South Division of the East League.

Among the Northeast Conference clubs, the Tigers have slight leads in the stand-alone competition and in the East League North. But the Yankees are two games ahead of the Indians and the Tigers in the North League East. In the North League West, the Rockies are four games in front of a big scrum in the middle.

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West League: Astros still best in West

The Houston Astros remain the first-place team in the West League, though losing the first two games of this weekend's series in Seattle might signal their decline. But if this is decline, the Astros have so much young talent right now that their decline won't last for long.

Jose Altuve, 25, is an old hand on a thrilling, young Houston Astros club (Eric Enfermero/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license).

By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

We keep waiting for the Houston Astros to falter. Perhaps that has begun to happen, but it seems unlikely so long as they're playing in the West League.

Even in their bad days not so long ago, the Astros have done a little better against the western clubs. This year, they're really better against the western clubs.

Because of that, the Astros have a 2½-game lead in the West League, even after losing the first two games of this weekend's series on the road against the Seattle Mariners. The Astros are 40-30 across their Major League schedule. A month ago, they were 27-14, so we can see that they've cooled down a bit.

The Astros lost their magic when they left the west for three weeks starting on May 21. Among their misadventures during that time was a seven-game losing streak against the Baltimore Orioles, the Toronto Blue Jays and the Chicago White Sox.

But the Astros returned to the west on June 12 and proceeded to reel off six wins in their next seven games, including a five-game winning streak entering this weekend's Seattle series. With that, the Astros have continued improving their impressive performance in the West League, which they still lead with a 28-15 record. Against clubs not in the West League, obviously, the Astros are a little more like the club we've known for the last several years, holding a 12-15 record.

The Astros have put together three winning streaks of five games or more for the first time since 2008, which was the last time they had some kind of chance at entering the playoffs. One of those winning streaks this year was a 10-game effort April 24-May 3, all against West League competition. Another of those streaks, entirely against the West League, preceded Friday night's games.

The Astros have assembled 28 multi-homer games in 2015 and won 27 of them. Of those games, 20 of them (and 19 of the wins) have come against West League opponents. The only loss came Saturday night, when the Astros hit two homers in a 6-3 loss at Seattle.

As part of their development through the last couple of years, the Astros have, naturally, played a lot of games against western clubs. Last season, which ended 70-92 overall for the Astros, saw them go 38-42 against teams now in the West League. A year earlier, when the Astros bottomed out at 51-111, they were 28-52 against West League clubs (23-59 against everyone else).

Leading the AL West at this point in the season is nothing remarkable, of course. It would be remarkable if the Astros are there at the end of the year. One never knows until later, but could it be that this weekend's series in Seattle is a sign that the season is flipping for both clubs?

Whatever is the case, it's already remarkable to behold the sheer volume of young talent the Astros are bringing into their big league operation just during the last two seasons.

Last April, the Astros brought up outfielder George Springer, the 11th overall draft pick in 2011. In his first 130 big league games, Springer is a solid 130 OPS-plus hitter. At the trade deadline last year, they brought in Jake Marisnick from the Miami Marlins, so they now have a 24-year-old center fielder who is struggling a bit at the plate, but he's a plus defender (0.4 defensive WAR, per baseball-reference.com) and he's 11-for-15 in stolen base attempts.

On June 8, the Astros promoted shortstop Carlos Correa, the first overall pick in the 2012 draft. In his first 10 games, Correa notched 15 hits, the most hits within 10 Major League games in club history. Correa reached base safely in each of those games, which included three multi-hit games. Correa stole three bases Thursday in an 8-4 win at Colorado, becoming, at 20 years and 269 days, the third-youngest player in Major League history to steal three bases in a game — behind Rickey Henderson and Ty Cobb!

And two other players from that 2012 Astros draft preceded Correa to the big league club. Outfielder Preston Tucker, taken in the seventh round in 2012, is a powerful 24-year-old switch hitter with an OPS-plus of 126. The club selected his little brother, Kyle Tucker, fifth overall just now in the June draft. Then, there's 21-year-old right-handed starter Lance McCullers, the 41st overall pick in 2012. In his first six Major League starts this year, covering 36 innings, he struck out 40 hitters.

Before all of that, of course, the Astros already had All-Star second baseman Jose Altuve, reliable catcher Jason Castro and pitching ace Dallas Keuchel.

Quite a fascinating club. The Astros probably aren't as good right now as their performance in the West League would have us believe. Before long, though, they're likely to be better.

Astros still rotten, but no one's watching, anyway

We haven't seen a baseball team so poor for so long as the Houston Astros since the expansion New York Mets. Now, turns out, we're not seeing them. According to Nielsen, no one in the Houston area watched the Astros on television Sunday afternoon.

Jose Altuve is an interesting young player, but the Houston Astros have too few of them (Eric Enfermero/Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike Unported 3.0 license).


By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

The news came in Monday that the Houston Astros played a baseball game on Sunday afternoon and their Nielsen rating came in at 0.0. Dashes. Nothing. Out of 581 Nielsen sets in the Houston area, none of them were tuned to the Astros.

And if that news makes your head turn, it's really not stunning. The Astros have been absolutely terrible for three years now, their move to the American League this season has disappointed their fans, it is football season, football is king in Texas, Houston's NFL team is a playoff operation, and those Houston Texans were playing at the same time as the Astros.

The Houston Chronicle noted that a few sports bars showed the Astros on a television here and there, but sports bars aren't counted by Nielsen. About a sports bar in Houston that would show the Astros on a Sunday afternoon in late September when they're 42 games out and the Texans are playing for glory, all one can say is that such a place has the right idea about baseball and is strongly worthy of patronage. Try finding the Dodgers on a television set in Los Angeles when the Los Angeles Lakers are playing in the NBA. You've got a better chance of spotting Halle Berry in a flea market at Crenshaw and Washington.

So, the task here is not to demonstrate that Houstonians aren't sufficiently interested in baseball, but just to illustrate how badly the Astros have faltered. No one can be blamed for preferring to watch the Texans. We haven't seen a baseball team go so poorly as the Astros in 50 years, and such a team is difficult to endure.

The Astros, rebuilding from the bottom, won 56 games in 2011, a .345 winning percentage. When a team wins that little, it probably has put up with some young player mistakes, expecting improvement the next year. But the Astros won only 55 games in 2012. This year, the Astros have 51 wins so far, and it's unlikely that they will win 55.

The New York Mets began life in 1962 with 40 wins, and they didn’t win more than 53 games in their first four seasons. So, the Astros aren't that bad. But they are the worst to come along since then. The Astros weren't even this poor when they began life as the Colt .45s in 1962.

It could be, maybe, that the Astros actually are a little better now than they were a year ago, and their move to the tougher American League makes them look worse. Could argue about that. What can't be argued is that the Astros are making serious progress. They're not. Turns out, that 2011 team had very little young talent to speak of. The Astros still have Jose Altuve, Brett Wallace and Jordan Lyles from that group, and Chris Johnson has gone on to succeed with the Atlanta Braves. Meanwhile, the Astros turn over young players rapidly and consistently. They keep making themselves younger, but they never make themselves better.

Ran into Gerry Hunsicker at Dodger Stadium not long ago. He's a consultant now for the Dodgers. Starting from scratch in 1991, the Astros owned a nice group of young talent, and they just didn't put it together through the next few seasons. The Astros hired Hunsicker as general manager in 1995, and he was the man who figured it out. In Hunsicker's 10 years, the Astros won their division four times and went to the playoffs five times.

But the owner, Drayton McLane, really didn't understand player development, and the organization started getting fallow. Hunsicker resigned after the 2004 season. In 2005, an Astros team Hunsicker built went to the World Series. But that group already was gasping its last breath, and the organization was not developing its next generation of talent. The Astros kept trying to patch it together for five years after that at the big league level, until, finally, they had nothing left but to rebuild.

Major league teams rebuild all the time. Seldom, though, do we find an organization that not only has no major league talent, but also has no minor league talent. When the Astros began to rebuild, they had to rebuild the whole thing. They have been so depleted through the years that they basically are an expansion team, except without benefit of an expansion draft.

It really shows up when the Astros play serious competition. Against the 14 teams that have been real playoff contenders this month, the Astros are 17-69 in 2013. They can't even win one out of five. Against everyone else, the Astros are 34-37. But everyone else is not very good.

Asked about the Astros, Hunsicker just shook his head, a little bit sad. He knows what has happened there. Years of infrastructural neglect.

The Astros keep cycling in new, young players now, trading anyone with a little value as they try to stockpile prospects from other teams. They have some promising guys, like Altuve, Lyles, Matt Dominguez and L.J. Hoes, all of whom are 23 or younger. But the talent gap between the Astros and the big league contenders remains enormous.

And three years of losing two out of every three days becomes very tiring. So, given the Texans, Houston fans watch the Texans. Who can blame them?

Slo-mo Norris flusters Angels: Houston 3, Angels 1

The Angels sent 30 hitters at Houston starter Bud Norris Wednesday night at Minute Maid Park. Of those Angels hitters, 23 were in and out within three pitches. In the standings, the Angels still are better than the Astros, but, on the field, the Astros have beaten them twice in a row.

Houston pitcher Bud Norris had the Angels swinging quickly Wednesday night (Creative Commons photo).


By BILL PETERSON
Big Leagues in Los Angeles

The game: May 8, Los Angeles Angels at Houston Astros, American League. Los Angeles entered 11-21, fourth place AL West, 7 1/2 games behind Texas. Houston entered 9-24, fifth place AL West, 10 games behind Texas.

The pitchers: Los Angeles, Joe Blanton, right hander (0-5, 5.97). Houston, Bud Norris, right hander (3-3, 3.89).

The result: Houston 3, Los Angeles 1.

Summary: Bud Norris went to the ninth inning, allowing only one run for the win. The Astros won it with four extra-base hits and four double plays. Impatient Angels hitters went to the plate 30 times against Norris, and 16 were in and out within two pitches (23 were in and out within three).

The pitching: Joe Blanton tossed up his third straight quality start, but the Angels still are 0-7 when he's on the mound. The Astros took some good swings at Blanton in the third inning, when they hit three doubles and sent center fielder Mike Trout to the foot of Tal's Hill with a long out. The Astros aren't the worst offensive team in the AL (the Chicago White Sox are), but they do have the worst ratio of strikeouts (343, most in the AL) to walks (87, 13th of 15). So, Blanton struck out six and walked none in 6 2/3 innings, but that's hardly distinctive against the Astros.

Norris has career ERAs of 3.39 at Minute Maid Park and 5.41 on the road. He strikes out more than 25 percent of the right-handed hitters he faces (90 of 331 last year), but he nibbles against left-handed hitters, so they walk and homer against him with frequency. Put Norris in his home park against an Angels team that isn't known for its disciplined left-handed inning and one could almost predict Wednesday's result -- eight innings, nine hits and one walk, which came in the eighth inning. Angels manager Mike Scioscia likes to put the game into motion and Norris does not. He is one of the slowest workers in the game. There's always time for two or three TV replays between pitches when Norris is out there, so you don't really notice it unless you're watching him live. Antsy Angels hitters let the live audience off that hook Wednesday night.

The hitting: When Bud Norris goes into the ninth inning and the game is done in 2:30, you know the other team is swinging the bat. Norris left with one out in the ninth after throwing only 84 pitches. He almost couldn't get into a 2-0 count if he wanted to. Wednesday, Norris threw first pitch ball one to 10 hitters. Only one of those counts went to 2-0. Three times, Angels hitters fouled off the 1-0, they hit the 1-0 into outs three other times, another two were called strikes and one inning ended with a first-pitch ball when Mark Trumbo was thrown out trying to steal with Josh Hamilton batting. No hits on 1-0. The Angels struck Norris's first pitch eight times, cashing in four hits. All three Angels hits by left-handed batters -- including Hamilton's seventh-inning homer -- came on the first pitch. The only 2-0 count came in the first inning against Pujols, who hit the next pitch to left field for a double.

The base running: The Angels were the more aggressive base running team, but the Astros don't open up running opportunities by kicking the ball around. Twice, the Angels went from first to third on singles. The first time, in the fifth inning, Alberto Callaspo singled Howie Kendrick to third with one out on the first pitch, but Chris Iannetta followed by beating into an inning-ending double play on the first pitch. In the ninth, Angels down, 3-1, Trout took third on a single by Pujols with no one out. That proved to be Norris's last hitter in the game. The Houston reliever, Jose Veras, wriggled out with a strikeout and a double play.

Trumbo tried to steal second base with two out and Hamilton batting in the fourth. Trumbo was out easily. Angels manager Mike Scioscia said on MLB.com that Trumbo "misread" a sign, taking it to be a hit-and-run.

The fielding: The reason the Astros won't lose 120 games is because their interior defense is tight, and they've got some pluses in their outfield, as well. The Astros get out-hit and out-pitched, but they don't beat themselves with poor defense. Wednesday, they whipped out four double plays and made two nice catches in the outfield.

Angels fans watching their team try to play without shortstop Erick Aybar and catcher Chris Iannetta know what shabby interior defense looks like. In particular, the Angels just can't keep sending Hank Conger behind home plate unless he hits like Babe Ruth. Conger's defensive foibles in Tuesday's 7-6 loss at Houston are too numerous to document. Wednesday night, Conger caught the eighth inning and showed no signs of improvement. He was lucky when Jose Altuve bunted foul, because Conger's throw wasn't in time to get the unforced lead runner at third, anyway. Later in the inning, Houston's Trevor Crowe bunted back to Angels pitcher Dane De La Rosa, who flipped the ball to Conger at the plate. Conger's tag missed Jimmy Paredes, but home plate umpire Bill Welke ruled that Paredes missed the plate and called the runner out on Conger's belated tag. Replays showed that Welke missed the call and Parades really did touch the plate, so Conger dodged a bullet.

Angels center fielder Mike Trout made a fine running catch at the foot of Tal's Hill on Robbie Grossman's drive hit straight behind him. Trout made the catch over his shoulder with his back to the field. That catch kept a two-run Houston inning from being a lot worse. Trumbo, playing first base, made a nice leap into the air trying at Jimmy Parades line-drive double in the third, but the ball got past him.

Strategic moves: Houston manager Bo Porter wanted to be sure, above all else, that Norris didn't lose this game after going to the ninth with a 3-1 lead. When Pujols reached as the tying run with no one out in the ninth, Porter called on Jose Veras. Porter told the media postgame that removing Norris then guaranteed he would get no worse than a no-decision. The reliever struck out Trumbo with three curve balls, hit Hamilton with a pitch and induced a game-ending double-play grounder by Howie Kendrick.

What now: The Astros will still be in last place at the end of Thursday even if they beat the Angels to sweep the series, but just barely. The Astros now are 10-24, while the Angels are 11-22. The Angels are going with left hander Jason Vargas (1-3, 3.72), who has three straight quality starts. His last start is his best of the year, a three-hit complete game shutout for a 4-0 win at home against Baltimore on May 3. The Astros are sending out right hander Lucas Harrell (3-3, 5.03). Harrell was good in five of his first six starts, but the Tigers really tore into him last week, scoring eight times in 4 1/3 innings. That outing upped his ERA from 3.60 to 5.03. The Astros have three coming up at home against Texas during the weekend, while the Angels will go to Chicago and play another last place team, the White Sox, during the weekend.