Martin Truex Jr. is going for two in a row. Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images
We head for the Windy City this weekend for the overton’s 400 at Chicagoland Motor Speedway.
This track is -- you guessed it -- another mile and a half oval. While this track has practically the same layout as all of its predecessors such as Kansas Motor Speedway and Las Vegas, let it be known that it has provided some good finishes over the course of its 17-year tenure in NASCAR, Like when Brad Keselowski made a three wide pass on Kyle Larson and Kevin Harvick in 2014 or when Jeff Gordon wrecked Matt Kenseth for the win in 2006.
Last week at Sonoma, Martin Truex, Jr. cruised to his third win of 2018. Truex thoroughly dominated yet again, he led a race high 62 laps. Earlier in a green flag run, Truex’s crew chief, Cole Pearn made the decision to tell his driver not to pit, which was code to do the opposite.
This allowed Truex to have much fresher tires and he was able to fly around Kevin Harvick in the closing 20 laps and drive to victory lane. One of the biggest surprises of the race was Alex Bowman’s ninth place finish. Going into the weekend, Bowman was not one of the drivers that many people thought could run in the top 10 due to his road course inexperience, but he went out and had an extremely solid race.
Earlier in the weekend he along with five other drivers -- including his teammate William Byron, Daniel Suarez, Erik Jones and Aric Almirola -- all participated in the K&N Late model series. Normally, I wouldn’t be the biggest fan of Cup drivers racing in a lower division but Sonoma is one of the toughest tracks if not the toughest track in NASCAR so any experience that these younger drivers such as Bowman can gain by running in a lower division can really pay dividends and it did for Bowman.
Look for Bowman to be around the top 10 this week at Chicagoland. The biggest letdown of last week was AJ Allmendinger. Everything appeared to be going all right for Allmendinger as he went on to win the first stage of the race and collect 10 points to go towards the playoffs but after the race resumed, he missed a shift which caused him to blow his engine and finish last. While Sonoma was a track that he has ran well at and certainly this is a disappointing outcome for him, don’t count out Allmendinger to win a race before the year is out, there are still at least two tracks in Daytona and Watkins Glen that he can win at.
Another driver who had a great run this week and deserves a shout out is Matt DiBenedetto. Last week, he was able to wheel his Ford Fusion to a seventeenth place effort. While on the surface, finishing 17th doesn’t appear to be all that great, he and his team Go Fas Racing don’t have half the budget that a Rick Hendrick or a Joe Gibbs would have and to finish in the top 20 is a big win for a smaller team like the one he races for and they deserve it. They go out and run all the laps and are able to finish races with their equipment in one piece. It’s great to see a team like this continue to grow each year, owners Joe Faulk and Archie St. Hillare have done an awesome job at managing and who knows? Maybe this team can win races and then turn into a championship contending organization some day.
The favorite going into this weekend’s race is once again Martin Truex Jr. In the last two times that the cup series has came here, Martin has won here, not to mention it is a mile in a half track and those are the type of tracks that he thrives on. In his 149 starts on these types of tracks he has 10 victories. He has proven to be the master of the mile and a half. Look for MTJ to be a serious contender to claim his second consecutive victory and his fourth of the season on Sunday.
The driver that I have winning this weekend is Joey Logano. The tenth year driver has come a long way from his days at Joe Gibbs Racing and ever since he joined Penske racing in 2013, Logano has evolved into a championship contender, 2018 has been no different. While they have only earned one victory this season at Talladega, Logano and his team have been the model of consistency all season. He has the second highest finishing average of anyone at 8.8 now he goes to a track where he has excelled at over the last two seasons. While he has yet to win here in his career, I see him changing that on sunday. Look for the Shell Pennzoil Ford to go to victory lane this weekend.
(All stats and information used in this article is brought to you by the good folks at driveraverages.com and Racing-Refrence.com the best website for all NASCAR stats)
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After finishing up with the Guardians the Astros have a rather important series for early May with the Seattle Mariners heading to town for the weekend. While it’s still too early to be an absolute must-win series for the Astros, losing the series to drop seven or eight games off the division lead would make successfully defending their American League West title that much more unlikely.
Since their own stumble out of the gate to a 6-10 record the Mariners have been racking up series wins, including one this week over the Atlanta Braves. The M’s offense is largely Mmm Mmm Bad, but their pitching is sensational. In 18 games after the 6-10 start, the Mariners gave up five runs in a game once. In the other 17 games they only gave up four runs once. Over the 18 games their starting pitchers gave up 18 earned runs total with a 1.44 earned run average. That’s absurd. Coming into the season Seattle’s starting rotation was clearly better on paper than those of the Astros and Texas Rangers, and it has crystal clearly played out as such into the second month of the schedule.
While it’s natural to focus on and fret over one’s own team's woes when they are plentiful as they have been for the Astros, a reminder that not all grass is greener elsewhere. Alex Bregman has been awful so far. So has young Mariners’ superstar Julio Rodriguez. A meager four extra base hits over his first 30 games were all Julio produced down at the ballyard. That the Mariners are well ahead of the Astros with J-Rod significantly underperforming is good news for Seattle.
Caratini comes through!
So it turns out the Astros are allowed to have a Puerto Rican-born catcher who can hit a little bit. Victor Caratini’s pedigree is not that of a quality offensive player, but he has swung the bat well thus far in his limited playing time and provided the most exciting moment of the Astros’ season with his two-out two-run 10th inning game winning home run Tuesday night. I grant that one could certainly say “Hey! Ronel Blanco finishing off his no-hitter has been the most exciting moment.” I opt for the suddenness of Caratini’s blow turning near defeat into instant victory for a team that has been lousy overall to this point. Frittering away a game the Astros had led 8-3 would have been another blow. Instead, to the Victor belong the spoils.
Pudge Rodriguez is the greatest native Puerto Rican catcher, but he was no longer a good hitter when with the Astros for the majority of the 2009 season. Then there’s Martin Maldonado.
Maldonado’s hitting stats with the Astros look Mike Piazza-ian compared to what Jose Abreu was doing this season. Finally, mercifully for all, Abreu is off the roster as he accepts a stint at rookie-level ball in Florida to see if he can perform baseball-CPR on his swing and career. Until or unless he proves otherwise, Abreu is washed up and at some point the Astros will have to accept it and swallow whatever is left on his contract that runs through next season. For now Abreu makes over $120,000 per game to not be on the roster. At his level of performance, that’s a better deal than paying him that money to be on the roster.
Abreu’s seven hits in 71 at bats for an .099 batting average with a .269 OPS is a humiliating stat line. In 2018 George Springer went to sleep the night of June 13 batting .293 after going hitless in his last four at bats in a 13-5 Astros’ win over Oakland. At the time no one could have ever envisioned that Springer had started a deep, deep funk which would have him endure a nightmarish six for 78 stretch at the plate (.077 batting average). Springer then hit .293 the rest of the season.
Abreu’s exile opened the door for Joey Loperfido to begin his Major League career. Very cool for Loperfido to smack a two-run single in his first game. He also struck out twice. Loperfido will amass whiffs by the bushel, he had 37 strikeouts in 101 at bats at AAA Sugar Land. Still, if he can hit .225 with some walks mixed in (he drew 16 with the Space Cowboys) and deliver some of his obvious power (13 homers in 25 games for the ex-Skeeters) that’s an upgrade over Abreu/Jon Singleton, as well as over Jake Meyers and the awful showing Chas McCormick has posted so far. Frankly, it seems unwise that the Astros only had Loperfido play seven games at first base in the minors this year. If McCormick doesn’t pick it up soon and with Meyers displaying limited offensive upside, the next guy worth a call-up is outfielder Pedro Leon. In January 2021 the Astros gave Leon four million dollars to sign out of Cuba and called him a “rapid mover to the Major Leagues.” Well…
Over his first three minor league seasons Leon flashed tools but definitely underwhelmed. He has been substantially better so far this year. He turns 26 May 28. Just maybe the Astros offense could be the cause of fewer Ls with Loperfido at first and Leon in center field.
Catch our weekly Stone Cold ‘Stros podcast. Brandon Strange, Josh Jordan, and I discuss varied Astros topics. The first post for the week generally goes up Monday afternoon (second part released Tuesday) via YouTube: stone cold stros - YouTube with the complete audio available via Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.