Keep your eye on Ryan Blaney this week. Photo via: Wiki Commons.
It’s that time of the year again, the NASCAR Cup Series heads to Talladega for the Yellawood 500. Over the course of the season, with this new car, tracks like Talladega or Daytona have been frighteningly unpredictable. I expect this week to be no different. There aren’t many times when I worry about the drivers, but this week is one of those races. Let’s hope everyone has a safe race come Sunday and no one gets hurt.
Last week, at Texas Motor Speedway, Tyler Reddick was able to survive the carnage and capture his third win of 2022. As we have seen all season, this was a race that featured many cautions and took a lot of drivers out of contention for a win. It’s clear that this car is becoming more of a problem each week as we continue to see much smaller fields that finish these races. We are beginning to see more drivers get hurt driving them. Kurt Busch has been out of the car since July, and now Alex Bowman will miss Talladega next week as he has also suffered a concussion. Ever since last year, there has been a lot of fear surrounding this car. When I went to Charlotte, I spoke to someone who worked at Jr Motorsports and he spoke about the new car. He mentioned Noah Gragson and his crash at Talladega and how it would worry him if that was today’s car. The sanctioning body has got to find a way to lessen these impacts and make the cars, or else they will continue to lose credibility with their drivers.
Another issue that has arisen has been their spec parts. We have gone from hardly seeing engines fail with the Gen6 car to an engine blowing almost every week. Both Martin Truex Jr and Kevin Harvick have been extremely critical of the exhaust system that has been the cause of numerous fires this season, including at Texas with Chase Elliott. A possible solution to this would be to allow the teams to go back to manufacturing their own parts. While some teams may find an advantage, and it might make things less equal, it’s a much safer model than what they have now. Besides, a lot of the teams that are underfunded are still having a difficult time keeping up with the big teams, so it’s not like much has changed.
More controversy emerged later on in the race as Denny Hamlin and William Byron made contact on the backstretch. After a caution came out for the spin of Christopher Bell, Byron would get his revenge on Hamlin after spinning him into the infield grass. NASCAR completely missed this and Hamlin was moved to the tail end of the longest line for “not maintaining pace car speed.” It was absurdly obvious that Byron spun the 11 under caution and should have been penalized further during the race, but there was much more to worry about considering 3/4ths of the field had crashed. Matters weren’t made any better by NASCAR posting the video on their Twitter account of Byron’s onboard camera when he did it. A couple of days later, Byron would be penalized $50,000 and docked 25 points, which knocked him out of the top 8 in points.
Another fine was doled out to Ty Gibbs after he made one of the stupidest decisions behind the wheel of a race car I have ever seen anyone make. During a pit stop, the 19-year-old driver felt he was being crowded by Ty Dillon, so he decided to swerve into the side of the #42 car, narrowly avoiding a NASCAR official and the Roush-Fenway pit crew. Usually, a suspension would make sense when you blatantly jeopardize the life of a race official and pit crew members, but according to NASCAR, a 25-point penalty and a fine of $75,000 was sufficient. This isn’t the first time they have dropped the ball on this, last season Kyle Busch went speeding through the garage area at Darlington and was only fined $50,000. Aside from NASCAR’s complete disregard for safety, it’s also clear that Ty Gibbs is not mature enough to carry himself in the Cup Series. He needs to be kept at Xfinity for at least another season.
Despite all the negativity, there is still a race this week that needs to be run and someone will punch their ticket to the round of eight with a victory. As we all know, Talladega is a track where anyone can win, but avoiding the big one is the most essential. The driver who has been in the best position so far has been Ryan Blaney. In the past two races here at Talladega, Blaney has been in the picture when the checkered flag falls, not to mention how fast the Fords have been on superspeedways. Blaney’s scored two victories here at this track and also has the third highest average finish among all drivers who have run 15 races or more on superspeedways. If Blaney can stay ahead of the pack and out of trouble, he will be a threat for victory.
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Through 20 games, the Houston Astros have managed just six wins and are in last place in the AL West.
Their pitching staff trails only Colorado with a 5.24 ERA and big-money new closer Josh Hader has given up the same number of earned runs in 10 games as he did in 61 last year.
Despite this, these veteran Astros, who have reached the AL Championship Series seven consecutive times, have no doubt they’ll turn things around.
“If there’s a team that can do it, it’s this team,” shortstop Jeremy Peña said.
First-year manager Joe Espada, who was hired in January to replace the retired Dusty Baker, discussed his team’s early struggles.
“It’s not ideal,” he said. “It’s not what we expected, to come out of the shoot playing this type of baseball. But you know what, this is where we’re at and we’ve got to pick it up and play better. That’s just the bottom line.”
Many of Houston’s problems have stemmed from a poor performance by a rotation that has been decimated by injuries. Ace Justin Verlander and fellow starter José Urquidy haven’t pitched this season because of injuries and lefty Framber Valdez made just two starts before landing on the injured list with a sore elbow.
Ronel Blanco, who threw a no-hitter in his season debut April 1, has pitched well and is 2-0 with a 0.86 ERA in three starts this season. Cristian Javier is also off to a good start, going 2-0 with a 1.54 ERA in four starts, but the team has won just two games not started by those two pitchers.
However, Espada wouldn’t blame the rotation for Houston’s current position.
“It’s been a little bit of a roller coaster how we've played overall,” he said. “One day we get good starting pitching, some days we don’t. The middle relief has been better and sometimes it hasn’t been. So, we’ve just got to put it all together and then play more as a team. And once we start doing that, we’ll be in good shape.”
The good news for the Astros is that Verlander will make his season debut Friday night when they open a series at Washington and Valdez should return soon after him.
“Framber and Justin have been a great part of our success in the last few years,” second baseman Jose Altuve said. “So, it’s always good to have those two guys back helping the team. We trust them and I think it’s going to be good.”
Hader signed a five-year, $95 million contract this offseason to give the Astros a shutdown 7-8-9 combination at the back end of their bullpen with Bryan Abreu and Ryan Pressly. But the five-time All-Star is off to a bumpy start.
He allowed four runs in the ninth inning of a 6-1 loss to the Braves on Monday night and has yielded eight earned runs this season after giving up the same number in 56 1/3 innings for San Diego last year.
He was much better Wednesday when he struck out the side in the ninth before the Astros fell to Atlanta in 10 innings for their third straight loss.
Houston’s offense, led by Altuve, Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker, ranks third in the majors with a .268 batting average and is tied for third with 24 homers this season. But the Astros have struggled with runners in scoring position and often failed to get a big hit in close games.
While many of Houston’s hitters have thrived this season, one notable exception is first baseman José Abreu. The 37-year-old, who is in the second year of a three-year, $58.5 million contract, is hitting 0.78 with just one extra-base hit in 16 games, raising questions about why he remains in the lineup every day.
To make matters worse, his error on a routine ground ball in the eighth inning Wednesday helped the Braves tie the game before they won in extra innings.
Espada brushed off criticism of Abreu and said he knows the 2020 AL MVP can break out of his early slump.
“Because (of) history,” Espada said. “The back of his baseball card. He can do it.”
Though things haven’t gone well for the Astros so far, everyone insists there’s no panic in this team which won its second World Series in 2022.
Altuve added that he doesn’t have to say anything to his teammates during this tough time.
“I think they’ve played enough baseball to know how to control themselves and how to come back to the plan we have, which is winning games,” he said.
The clubhouse was quiet and somber Wednesday after the Astros suffered their third series sweep of the season and second at home. While not panicking about the slow start, this team, which has won at least 90 games in each of the last three seasons, is certainly not happy with its record.
“We need to do everything better,” third baseman Alex Bregman said. “I feel like we’re in a lot of games, but we just haven’t found a way to win them. And good teams find a way to win games. So we need to find a way to win games.”