The Astros have lots on their plate after a difficult couple of weeks in the public eye, but they have on-field issues at hand as well. Now that the manager and GM are in place, the focus can soon return to the field. Justin Verlander and Zack Greinke make for an enviable top of the rotation, but there’s uncertainty beyond their veteran aces, writes MLB.com’s Brian McTaggart.
Lance McCullers Jr. will return from elbow surgery to man the third spot in the rotation, and after his strong performance in the postseason, Jose Urquidy has a good chance of claiming one of the two remaining slots. But with a new GM and manager stepping in, there’s a potential clean slate working against the otherwise favored.
A host of candidates are on hand to push Urquidy and contend for the final rotation role. Brad Peacock and Austin Pruitt are the veterans with rotation experience on hand, with either one capable of taking turns in the rotation.
Beyond the vets, there are a host of young arms capable of proving their readiness and stepping into the rotation. Josh James, Bryan Abreu, Framber Valdez, Forrest Whitley, Austin Pruitt, Cy Sneed and Francis Martes. There’s more at stake in this arms race, as there are three to four bullpen spots available for those left out of the dugout.
Crash and burn, Houston Cheaters.
blogs.fangraphs.com/the-most-important-bangs-of-th…
Read this article when you have time to go through it thoroughly and watch the videos very carefully during a time when you have complete silence to watch them. Then look at the statistics at the end showing how much the trash can banging scheme benefited Bregman, Correa, Springer, and to a lesser extent Altuve. Freaking amazing how much these guys benefited from cheating
Rename the Astros the Trashstros! Lol
Asterisks
A-holes
or A-holes
You STILL lost no matter what you call them
you still cheated lol
Posted the same lame joke twice. Hilarious.
Cuban sandwiches are the bomb
Yes they are!
More like add another s after the A.
but, that’s been done since they first named it asstros
Best pitching coach in the MLB. The rotation will be fine.
I don’t know enough about the Astro’s pitching coach to have an opinion on how good he is. I always thought that it was their analytics system and general guidelines for their pitchers to throw more breaking balls that made them so successful. Either way, losing Cole is a huge loss. They should be fine during the season. In the playoffs this rotation doesn’t scare everyone anymore. They have 1 great ace, but in games 2 and 3 of a playoff series I can see Grienke and McCullers being consistently outpitched by guys like Strasburg and Corbin.
Their analytics dept. is strong but their pitching coach also delivers the info in a way that it easy to implement. He also knows his stuff too. I agree with your assessment though.
Getting outpitched by Corbin and Strasburg means they made the world series in 2020. I’m ok with that I guess.
The Trashstros should have their mascot dressed up as a trash can lol
Jomboy has a hoodie out with a Houston logo imposed over a trashcan.
Hilarious.
If their mascot wore a trashcan, it would look eerily similar to Oscar the Grouch.
They should and give the person inside the big trash can an ear piece so the front office can give the signs so he can bang his can to give away the pitch, Brilliant idea.
Astros can open the season with Urquidy and Peacock as the back end of the rotation with Whitley likely joining the team in may. See how things go at the deadline and try to make a trade and add another starter. Cheating or no cheating they still have a solid roster and are still the team to beat in the AL West.
i am all for beating them up. preferably, into a trashcan!
The Trashstros batters are going to have pretty good on base percentages due to being plunked all year long
Bad thing is the Houston cheating idiot batters will be higher.
*Cheating Houston idiot hitters obp will be higher
Hopefully Whitley’s troubles are behind him.
We need his attitude and arm this year
Anyway we can get Kopech as well.
Need to hit some people in the ribs at 100+ mph
Wow, an actual comment, and an intelligent one at that, about the actual article. I get that people are angry about what happened, but it is beginning to drown out any coherent discussion on actual baseball.
As a Reds fan I couldn’t agree more.The Astros cheated got busted and are paying a severe penalty move on
I gotta believe most of the posters here are stupid kids on the parents phone
the A’s are laughing at Houston in 2020. it won’t even be close.
This sets up as a rehab year for Whitley. Among his 2019 troubles was that he lost the ride & whatever cut/run he had on his fastball, perhaps even as an offshoot of doing unsmart things in the offseason like trying to throw a baseball on the run 110 mph into a net. He has also overused his changeup, & needs to work 1 of his breaking balls heavier into the pitch mix. I would assign him back to AA & force him to earn his way up to AAA. I doubt he is more than a late season strikeout RP for sake of 2020 MLB, as he’ll require 40-manning in the offseason & thus is in play. Perhaps by mid 2021 he & his repertoire could be made over enough for a MLB rotation trial.
What about Whitley makes you think its likely he joins the team in May lol?
He looked good in the Arizona Fall League .
We will see next month
Jake Marisnick is scratching his head saying, “so that’s why I kept hearing all that banging.”
Poor guy was never told.
Typo fix, Trashtros Rotation Status
“Verteran aces?” More like living-on-borrowed-time aces. If one or both of those old guys starts showing his age, the time line for the Astros impending implosion gets moved up a bit.
Keep holding your breath. When you pass out, there’ll be one more hater silenced.
It’s much easier when big league hitters know what pitch is coming. We’ll never know exactly how much it helped, but we can judge them more after this season.
I feel like this is stealing some of the thunder away from the Rocket City Trash Pandas, somehow. Nevertheless, F the Astros. Many capital F’s
How about, as a punishment, the catcher has to announce to the hitter every pitch an Astros pitcher throws this year? Sounds fair to me.
man it’s so easy to pile on to the Astros right now but honestly right or wrong what’s done is done. let’s just move on. not a stros fan but I think they are gonna show they are still a stacked club without all that other stuff.
“It’s ok to cheat if you were already stacked before you cheated”
Just own it
We turned 1 World Series into 6
Everyone going to hate us cause we bout that dirty down South life.
Trashtros
That’s right.
Going to make us famous with all your trolling
The Trashtros are already famous, after all they fair and square went from 100 loss poo team to high integrity World Series Champs.
Louisiana is so wack they have to like Texas sports teams because their backwoods swamp state can’t even support a major league team
lots of Braves fans, I’d say about 50 30 20 astros rangers braves
Dusty’s mouth is watering at the thought of ruining some arms.
U sound like a bunch of kids on the sand lot get over it and grow up
you think this is hard on you fans? wait til the astros play away games.
You really think you’re going to have that much of an influence scooter? Don’t flatter yourself. Professional ballplayers have put up with and ignored loud mouth brats like you their entire careers. You ain’t scary.
True, but this will be a difficult season for the Astros. This scandal will follow them wherever they go. They will be motivated to “prove” they can win without the cheating but that can lead to extra pressure. I can easily see them collapsing down the stretch if a couple of breaks go against them. And if they do win, there will be a loud chorus of people who will just assume they found a different way to cheat this time.
cheat-ken!
As a Nationals fan, the cheating didn’t prevent us from taking four games in Houston last season. I doubt we have the bats to get back to the post season this year, however I’ll take my 2019 WS knowing I can die in peace. At least I can say I was at the first WS game in Nationals history throwing back some beers with my best friend from DC – two rows behind their dugout as Mad Max faced Gerrit Cole.
Wow! If I remember correctly, you must’ve seen Gerrit Cole lose! What a strange and natural phenomenon that would have been at that time!
That’s because the Nats knew what Cole was throwing by the 5th inning. It should have been obvious they were tipped off for those who pay attention.
True, but why would he be tipping in that Game if he hadn’t been tipping prior to that game? He was pitching well. He didn’t need to change a thing.
maybe because he’s a human being and not a robot. every day is a new day.
It would be awesome to see Yu Darvish get some payback and bean a couple Astro hitters in the 1st inning. Lemme check the schedule…
I have been an Astros fan since 1973. I’m not sure, but I;m guessing I’m probably older than most of you on this comment thread, but that doesn’t matter.. I hate what the Astros did, and I always will. The Houston Astros are my favorite team, and they always will be.
I am not about to excuse what they did and neither should you. Cheating is cheating and it’s never a good thing. I’m not going to apologize either, because, as one of their fans, I had no part in what they did, but there’s an acidic taste in my mouth because of it.
Actions have consequences, and their escapades cost Hinch and Luhnow their jobs. I would like for the players to apologize, but I don’t think they will, and I don’t expect it, and you shouldn’t either.
I’ve heard lots of people say that this goes on throughout baseball at every level by a lot of teams, but I’m not about to say that because I don’t know, and frankly, that would be, at some level, an excuse, and there is none for cheating.
If the Astros get an asterisk next to their WS title for stealing signs, shouldn’t the Yankees have one next to the ones they won because Roger Clemens pitched while he was using steroids? Of course not.
It’s going to be a rough season in Houston for us fans and for Dusty Baker, James Click, et. al.
Everyone speculates that road games will be hell for the Astros. Maybe they will, we’ll wait and see.
Good luck to all of your teams. Go Astros!!
Respectfully,
SL
.
I sympathize with the position you are in but don’t mistake the cheating of a couple players here and a couple players there with what the Astros did. The entire team including the staff and much of the roster conspired to implement a systematic cheating scheme that successfully resulted in stealing a World Series title. There is really no comp for this at all.
For every Astros fan like you, there are 200 who jumped on the bandwagon in recent years….and most of them have been insufferably arrogant about their “smart” and “well run” team.
Completely tired of hearing about the Astros.
This is how it’s going to be for a long time. The Garbage Pail Kids are now legendary.
That’s my new favorite nickname. Love it. I hope teams have “Garbage Pail Kids” promo’s when the Assterisks visit.
Houston Astros…. the embarrassment of MLB.
actually now the embarrassment is becoming toxic fans
A lot of these comments, especially the ones where people try to be edgy and joke, are pretty cringey. It’s ok to talk about the article, people. Maybe the ability for users to comment should be turned off for Astros-related articles.
The jokes about the Astros are edgy? Your not going to garner much sympathy from many people. Few people care less and quite frankly I cannot blame them. Sorry but that’s just being honest.
the worlds smallest violin concerto being played by Astros fans everywhere
So everyone should be censored because you are cringing or because your feelings are hurt? No this is something that definitely needs to be talked about. You don’t get to sweep this under the carpet because you don’t like the reality of the situation
@beisbolista Well said!
Just as long as you stop making stuff up. Then you’re crossing a line.
I just saw new GM Click over at Lowe’s. He was purchasing some new trash can lids. When I asked him what he was doing, he said something about improving the Astros’ starting rotation.
I don’t understand why Bregman and his smug face didn’t do well all post season. Was his buzzer broken? Chirinos abd Altuve did well. But Bregman was not. Alvarez didn’t use a buzzer either. The Bregman thing puzzles me.
Sorry. Stupid phone. Site would not let me delete the extras.
For everyone constantly saying the Astros hitters are going to be getting constantly hit by pitches all season MLB is not going to allow full scale retaliation on the Astros. Pitchers are not going to get a free pass for hitting Astros batters intentionally, they will still get ejected, fined, and suspended based on the situation.
This is MLB, not monday night Raw.
i think any pitcher making more than league minimum would gladly accept a find for putting one in Bregman or Altuve’s ear hole. they’re lucky that JV is on their team, or else he’d be the first to throw at them.
I think the fans will be way worse than the pitchers
You don’t joke about endangering a player’s life by throwing at their head. Its a universal fear and risk held by every single player, and shame on you for not having the common decency to respect that.
Maybe….but, then again, they won’t know when the fastball is coming this season…..
Oh Really?. Vince McMahon wants to buy The Astros and rename them Triple A’s
outsoon hustros.
Watching some of the 2017 WS today and I was surprised at how much I was disappointed that such a great game like that couldn’t erase what happened earlier in the season. I was surprised by my disdain for it.
Signed,
Atlanta Braves fan.
McCullers probably on an innings limit of 100 or so.
jeez I hope not, but odds are you’re right. I’d guess 150 including postseason. Hopefully it’ll be by an extra day of rest through the season, rather than being shut down in August.
I think Whitley will be up to take some of those innings sooner than later, if he does better in AAA early on.
Also Urquidy was on an innings limit last year, not sure if he will be this year too.
Bulsinger is suing Astros! $31MM+ all to charity!