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You have to put yourself in position for luck.

With Hinch, both offensively and defensively, we screw the pooch and never give luck a chance. When you constantly pull guys based on lefty righty, shift all over the place, and refuse to let players like White and Tucker bat against players that throw from the same side of the plate, you essentially reset the luck count.

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That's all just pure conjecture.

How is trying to get a platoon advantage decreasing your likelihood of bad or good luck?

How is shifting increasing or decreasing luck?


Whether you like to believe it or not, there is a lot left up to the BABIP dragons in baseball. Over the course of a whole season, things usually remotely normalize.

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You have to put yourself in position for luck.

With Hinch, both offensively and defensively, we screw the pooch and never give luck a chance. When you constantly pull guys based on lefty righty, shift all over the place, and refuse to let players like White and Tucker bat against players that throw from the same side of the plate, you essentially reset the luck count.

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We've been in a position to win a lot of these games.

Whether it's not hitting with RISP, not making a defensive play, or a reliever blowing it we've been in a position to be quite a bit better.

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You have to put yourself in position for luck.

With Hinch, both offensively and defensively, we screw the pooch and never give luck a chance. When you constantly pull guys based on lefty righty, shift all over the place, and refuse to let players like White and Tucker bat against players that throw from the same side of the plate, you essentially reset the luck count.

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Let's use some numbers here. I went to fangraphs and pulled up the team "High Leverage" splits.

The Astros have had 214 plate appearances in these situations. That's the 4th highest in the league. Lots of opportunities.

They have a wRC+ of 55, 29th in the league.

Their BABIP in these situations is .213, 30th in the league.

Granted they strike out a lot in these situations, 28.5% for 29th in the league, but they strike out a lot in all situations.

The pitching staff has handled high leverage situations much better than the hitters. Here's the number if you want to look. They've also been luckier.

http://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx?pos=all&stats=pit&lg=all&qual=0&type=1&season=2016&month=26&season1=2016&ind=0&team=0,ts&rost=0&age=0&filter=&players=0&sort=11,a

Last night was the perfect example of bad luck. Hard hit ball after hard hit ball kept finding their way right to the defender. I'm amazed we won the game. For more bad luck, look and Altuve and Correa over the past week. Both guys have seen their averages drop while still getting a fair amount of hard contact. That has nothing to do with Hinch.

I understand many of y'all hate Hinch, but you can't pin everything on him, especially bad luck.

I have not looked at the stats in a while, but I thought I remember from last year that our shifting is one of the main reasons we were an above average defensive team. In other words, if we did not shift, we would be average or below average on defense.

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You have to put yourself in position for luck.

With Hinch, both offensively and defensively, we screw the pooch and never give luck a chance. When you constantly pull guys based on lefty righty, shift all over the place, and refuse to let players like White and Tucker bat against players that throw from the same side of the plate, you essentially reset the luck count.

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Hinch has done a lot of stupid things. But all of the bad luck issues are not squarely on his shoulders.

And let me be clear, I don't think all the bad luck is making a 10 game difference. But I do think it's been bad enough to make a 4-5 game swing.

That's why I like to look at fangraphs Baseruns to see how it reflects. Baseruns has our record at 21-25. It also has the Rangers at that record too.

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You have to put yourself in position for luck.

With Hinch, both offensively and defensively, we screw the pooch and never give luck a chance. When you constantly pull guys based on lefty righty, shift all over the place, and refuse to let players like White and Tucker bat against players that throw from the same side of the plate, you essentially reset the luck count.

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That's all just pure conjecture.

How is trying to get a platoon advantage decreasing your likelihood of bad or good luck?

How is shifting increasing or decreasing luck?


Whether you like to believe it or not, there is a lot left up to the BABIP dragons in baseball. Over the course of a whole season, things usually remotely normalize.

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Jose Altuve routinely has a high BABIP.

Jake Marisnick routinely has a low BABIP.

You pure stat guys love BABIP, but its good for nothing more than a sweeping glance. The best hitters are going to hit the ball harder and to more fields than the worst hitters. They are ALWAYS going to have a high BABIP, because they are skilled enough to find the gaps that others cant.

And you can't quantify luck. You can't use BABIP to say a team is lucky or unlucky. A team that doesn't strike out is going to be immensely more lucky than the Astros.. because they put the ball in play and give themselves a chance to have luck.

Saying we are unlucky is undermining the more serious issues, and completely avoiding the fact that if you are going to use that logic, you then have to say that we were EXTREMELY lucky last year (especially when you consider how badly the Mariners underperformed).. and that this year is closer to our norm than "unlucky".

Maybe this was bound to happen at some point.. because you have a team of young guys who have no idea what winning in MLB costs both as a player and as a person. Maybe these guys, while not even knowing it, were completely unprepared to be a top team with expectations. And maybe it didnt help that their manager is a guy who also hasnt experienced success or high expectations.

Agree about your BABIP comment

I better sign of luck would be comparing average contact velocity vs. batting average

Correa really snake bit there recently

Theoretically, our approach of taking full swings throughout an at bat should lead to a higher BABIP than if we took a protective approach when down in the count. We should have more strikeouts and less soft contact.

The downside to that approach is that you do put fewer balls in play, thus limiting your chances of a lucky hit. The goal, however, is to neutralize that luck by making better contact and getting extra base hits.

It's not an unsound approach and I'm sure there is analytical data to support it, but as a fan, it can be frustrating to watch.

Looks like a winning line up

I think this may be the most level headed post about the season so far.

Bad luck, but lots of potential for good luck eliminated due an organizational hitting approach.

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Demuth should be reprimanded for that absolute **** job he did at the plate last night. And in particular, for initiating physical contact with Colby last night.

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Demuth should be reprimanded for that absolute **** job he did at the plate last night. And in particular, for initiating physical contact with Colby last night.

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Yep! And super glad Colby did what he did. Too many umpires make it about themselves and their power complex.

Dammit colby.

I watched the video after seeing you guys posting about it last night. I was mildly concerned he might have gotten himself into hot water with the league for threatening to whoop the umpire's ass.

My general feeling on it, providing the pitch before was as described was that, if he didn't get a hit the ump was going to toss him if he breathed in his direction. He was gone before he had much of a chance to say anything, much less say enough to get tossed. Definitely a bud look for an umpire to be initiating contact like that and even worse to be looking for a reason to toss somebody over their own failings.

Think we've gotten lucky nothing happened to us playing the Angels. We drew good old Angel Hernandez. I thought that guy had been thrown out on his ear a long time ago for being awful. Guess not.

McHugh has looked dirty as hell tonight. Even their RBI was on a curve smacked off the dirt essentially.

5 astros at bats. 3 first pitch swings. 3 weak ground outs.

12 pitches for 5 outs for tyler.

Holy sheet julia almost got nailed


And not by ashby

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Holy sheet julia almost got nailed


And not by ashby

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She almost put her head right in front of that liner

Now we aren't gonna hit a bomb for like 6 games for me to say "man he really put a little stank on that one"

Those breaking balls against Davis were dirty.

marwin put a little too much stank on that line drive. hit the wall too hard and only got a single

Look at us playin a lil small ball

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marwin put a little too much stank on that line drive. hit the wall too hard and only got a single

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There ya go

Get em on. Get em over. Get em in!

This ump sucks ass

springer looks light years better in the 1 spot. hopefully altuve can make the change as well. it seemed like one of them would excel last year for stretches. Did altuve struggle in the 2 hole last year or am I remembering it wrong?

evan gattis shirtless

El stanko blanco