Bill Gilbert’s August 2014 Report on the Houston Astros Baseball Season.
Astros Fire Manager after Posting Winning Month in August
By Bill Gilbert
(Bill Gilbert is a regular monthly reporter for The Pecan Park Eagle during the Houston Astros baseball season and an occasional commentator here in columns about all things baseball. As the former Chair of the Larry Dierker Chapter of SABR and a still current member of the same organization’s Rogers Hornbby Chapter in the Austin area, The Eagle is happy to publish his always well-considered independent reports and commentary..-Editor)
In the final game in August, the Houston Astros rallied for 2 runs in the bottom of the eighth inning to defeat the Texas Rangers, 3-2 to post a record of 15-14 for the month, matching their previous best month in May. The next day, Manager Bo Porter was fired by General Manager, Jeff Luhnow, and replaced by minor league instructor, Tom Lawless.
The Astros have a record of 59-79 with one month remaining and have already exceeded their win totals in each of the last three years. They are on pace to finish with a record of 69-93, an 18 game improvement over 2013.
The Astros played the entire month without outfielders George Springer and Alex Pressley who were on the disabled list. Meanwhile, outfielder J.D. Martinez, released by Luhnow without getting anything in return, is hitting .307 with 18 home runs for Detroit. Picking up the slack were Jose Altuve with a batting average of .325 and 7 stolen bases in August and Chris Carter with 12 home runs. The team scored an average of 4.21 runs per game in August while allowing 4.00. For the season, they have scored 3.96 runs per game while allowing 4.63.
Altuve enters the final month of the season leading the American League in batting average, hits and stolen bases. Carter has 33 home runs and is challenging for the league lead held by Nelson Cruz with 36.
The pitching also improved in August. Three of the five starting pitchers had excellent months. Collin McHugh was 3-0 with an ERA of 1.91, Scott Feldman was 4-2, 3.32 and Dallas Keuchel was 0-2, 3.21 but the Astros were victorious in 3 of his starts. Chad Qualls picked up 5 saves in 6 opportunities. Highly touted prospect, Mike Foltynewicz, made his major league debut in August with 9 relief appearances and flashed some 100 mph fastballs reminiscent of Billy Wagner.
The Astros continued their success against the Texas Rangers taking 5 of 7 games in August to retake the Silver Boot for the first time since 2006 with a record of 16-10. Another highlight was a tough 10-game road trip to play the Red Sox, Yankees and Indians. The Astros won 5 games on the trip including 2 out of 3 at Yankee Stadium.
The minor leagues finished the regular season on Labor Day with only 2 of the 7 Astro domestic farm teams entering the playoffs. The two top farm clubs, AAA Oklahoma City and AA Corpus Christi failed to make the playoffs
9/2/14
The Pecan Park Eagle 
September 3, 2014 at 12:55 pm |
Question Bill, has Luhnow received any slack for letting Martinez go?
September 3, 2014 at 1:16 pm |
Not much that I’ve read or know of. And that may be due to the fact that there was no ground swell locally for protecting Martinez as the second coming of Ducky Medwick, even when he wasn’t producing prior to the Astros letting him go. Most people I know now see his breakout reaction at Detroit as just one of those things that no one here really expected or predicted.
September 3, 2014 at 3:13 pm |
In almost 1000 PAs with the Astros, Martinez struggled to get on base, homered once per 37+ at bats, and played sub-par defense. The Astros left him unprotected in the Rule 5 draft, and 29 other teams passed on him. If he’d begged, Luhnow might have landed a bucket of balls in return.
(By the way, the Astros are 11-5 against the Rangers so far this season.)
September 3, 2014 at 7:18 pm |
Sometimes a change of scenery and/or coaches can be good for a player. It would appear that someone in the Tigers’ organization has been able to help J.D. Martinez fulfill the potential that the Astros once thought he had. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that he has guys like Victor Martinez and Miguel Cabrera ahead of him in the Tigers’ lineup; pitchers would much rather pitch around those guys and take their chances with J.D., although that will not continue to be the case if he keeps hitting like he has been all season.
Speaking of guys fulfilling their potential elsewhere, has anyone else taken note of the fact that Jarred Cosart is 3-1 with a 1.64 ERA in 5 starts since joining the Miami Marlins? The Astros and Marlins have identical .983 team fielding percentages, so a better defense isn’t the key. The Marlins have scored 559 runs compared to the Astros’ 554 so far this season, so a better offense isn’t the key. Maybe the Marlins’ pitching coach has helped.
I keep asserting that Jeff Luhnow is not the genius that people make him out to be. The guy may be in love with a modern analytical, SABRmetrics approach, but that doesn’t make him any smarter than any other general manager in the game. From what I’ve seen, he has made mistake after mistake – from personnel decisions, to draft decisions, to staff decisions – and he appears to be a control freak. From what I have read, it seems that Bo Porter may not have been the right man for the manager’s job, which leads me to question why he was hired in the first place.
I want to see the Astros be successful again, so that means hoping that I’m wrong about Luhnow. I have the feeling, though, that this is all going to blow up in his face one day and that he is going to have to take the fall for his poor decision-making. Luhnow might do well to remember that “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”