The Pallilog

Resilient but inconsistent Texans could hang another AFC South banner - or fall apart completely

Dec 20, 2019, 6:50 am

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Give the 9-5 Texans their due. They're no super team and they're not a superbly coached team, but it is a resilient team. Off the Broncos debacle, taking down a previously hot Titans team in Tennessee was strong. It has the Texans now at least 90 percent likely to win their division for a sixth time in nine years. Four times in six years under Head Coach Bill O'Brien.

I poke fun at the "cute little AFC South Division Champ" banners they keep winning. They have rung increasingly hollow during the O'Brien era with embarrassing home playoff losses to the Chiefs and Colts and the lone win over a Raider squad down to its third string quarterback. Still, four division crowns in six years is proof positive that the football operation, and O'Brien don't stink.

The Texans have beaten the Chiefs, the Patriots, and the Titans. And have lost, at home, to the Panthers and Broncos. A ceiling of mediocre to pretty good at some point should not be accepted as the top end achievement. There seems a very simple standard for judging this Texans season a success. Without a home playoff win Wild Card weekend it's not a successful season. Getting smashed at Baltimore again in the Divisional Round wouldn't make them "losers," but it sure would make them posers not real contenders. Winning AFC South titles means nothing towards real contention.

The only way the Texans can miss the postseason is by losing at Tampa, having the Titans beat the Saints Sunday, then have the Titans come here and win the season finale. That is no impossibility. Maddeningly inconsistent teams can lose to anybody, anywhere.

Bucs on a roll

The Buccaneers have won four in a row to get to 7-7. Grade the streak on a curve. They've beaten the Falcons, Jaguars, Colts, and Lions. Combined record for those four: 19-36-1. The Bucs have two Pro Bowl wide receivers in Mike Evans and Chris Godwin. In a huge break for the Texans they're both out with hamstring injuries.

Bucs' quarterback Jameis Winston has had an interesting season. After an inept start he has come on like gangbusters. Winston is 427 passing yards over the last two games from posting just the 12th 5000 yard season in NFL history. Six quarterbacks have done it once, Drew Brees has done it five times. The past two games Winston aired it out for 456 and 458 yards, becoming the first QB ever to go 450+ in consecutive games. Surprising (yes?) that Marino, Moon, Manning, somebody hadn't done it previously.

Only NFL MVP frontrunner Lamar Jackson has thrown more touchdown passes this season (33 to 30), no one is within five interceptions of the 24 Winston has thrown. The last quarterback to throw even 22 picks in a season was Eli Manning in 2013. If the Ravens clinch the top AFC playoff seed this weekend, Jackson certainly sits out the regular season finale. That would give Winston a chance to wind up leading the NFL in both TD passes and INTs. Name the last guy to do that? Answer below in Buzzer Beaters.

Quirky stat pairing: On their 14 opening drives this season the Texans have mustered a pitiful total of three points. Jameis Winston has thrown an interception on five of the Bucs' 14 opening drives.

Rockets with a big one

What a wild ride of a Rockets' win at the Clippers Thursday night. Early in the third quarter they were down 16. A 40-12 eruption put them up 12 in the fourth. The Clips then countered with a 24-6 run for a six point lead, before the Rockets closed with a finishing 14-5 kick to win 122-117. Russell Westbrook was a human tornado tearing through the Clippers for a season high 40 points. Interest in the Rockets is down, interest in the NBA is significantly down, but the Rockets are again very good. They passed the one third of the regular season completed milepost at 19-9, though their defense is still not of championship caliber. The Rockets have taken a page from the Texans' book of inconsistency. In the eight games before the Clippers, the Rockets faced seven bad teams and a really good Toronto team. They beat the Raptors in Canada, yet lost home games to the Kings and Pistons after their blown 22 point lead fiasco at San Antonio. Exasperating for die hard Rocket fans, but it's much better to have a team that has some confounding losses but shows a clear ability to beat elite teams than to be able to beat the scrubs but look like second class citizens versus the elite.

Buzzer Beaters

1. Brees led the NFL in 2012 with 43 TD passes and 19 INTs. 2. I have five musts for the 10 greatest NFL wide receivers of all-time list disclosed Friday night: Jerry Rice, Don Hutson, Randy Moss, Terrell Owens, and Cris Carter. 3. Worst places to get sent for a bowl game: Bronze-Mobile Silver-Montgomery Gold-Boise

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THE PALLILOG

Here's how the Astros can reap the benefits from latest pitching shakeup

The Astros are utilizing a 6-man rotation. Composite Getty Image.

The Astros should schedule an Old-Timers Game, if not annually maybe every other year. Only the Yankees have regularly played Old Timers Games and it’s a highlight in the Bronx every season. The Astros have plenty enough history to welcome back an ample number of guys to make for a fabulous event. Maybe they could tie it into their now annual Hall of Fame Weekend. Anyway, don’t you feel that if Jose Altuve took part in an Old Timers Game in 2050 he’d bang out a couple of hits, and then if the Astros played him in the regular game he’d line one more hit somehow, at age 60?

After missing the first 43 games of the season while recovering from his broken thumb, Altuve went 0 for four in his first game back, but has since been generally fantastic with his OPS through nine games played at 1.013. It won’t stay that high, but Altuve is a direly needed upgrade to the Astros’ offense which has been utterly mediocre. Offense is the reason the Astros continue to look up at the Texas Rangers in the American League West. The Rangers’ offense has been fantastic, outscoring the Astros by a whopping 100 runs through the first third of the season.

As the regular season entered its middle third this week, the Astros are in the middle of playing a game in 17 consecutive days. It’s their longest stretch of the season without an off day. They are inserting Ronel Blanco as a sixth starting pitcher in the rotation for a couple of turns. The point of mixing in a sixth starter isn’t that the Astros are teeming with guys who belong in a big league rotation. The 29-year-old Blanco is not a notable prospect. This is about lightening the load a little on two guys: Cristian Javier and Hunter Brown.

In becoming a rotation mainstay last season, Javier blew past his previous biggest season workload by nearly 50 innings. He’s on pace to go another 25 innings beyond that this year without even accounting for the playoffs. Hunter Brown last year set his professional high with 130 innings pitched encompassing work with the Space Cowboys and Astros. Brown is on pace for about 170 innings this regular season. That’s a significant jump, and of course the Astros are hoping for another postseason of multiple rounds. Javier, Brown, and Framber Valdez are the three most critical pitchers on the staff, and the Astros hope they remain healthily so for several more years.

Lance McCullers’s latest recovery setback makes his plight increasingly sad. Well, except for him on payday. The odds now lopsidedly favor McCullers never again pitching a near fully healthy and effective season. His only one to date was 2021 (until he broke down in the playoffs), the year before his five year 85 million dollar contract kicked in. McCullers pulls down 17 mil this year (And again next year. And in 2025. And 2026), exactly two and a half times what Framber Valdez makes. I reckon Framber’s representation is aware of this, as it is of the five year 63 million dollar deal the Astros struck with Cristian Javier. Framber is more than three years older than Javier, but has been better, and can hit free agency after the 2025 season, the same time Javier could have gone to market.

Timing isn’t everything but it darn sure can matter. The Astros’ two best relief pitchers through May were Hector Neris and Phil Maton. Neris enters June with a 1.19 earned run average, Maton even better with a teeny-weeny 0.68 ERA. Maton has been especially amazing, given that last year while not pitching very well he posted his career best ERA at 3.84. His 2022 ended ignominiously when after giving up a hit to his brother Nick in the regular season finale, Phil took the ding-a-ling of the week award by breaking his pitching hand punching his locker, sidelining him for the postseason. The Hurt Locker won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2010. Now Maton is up for Best Pitcher (per inning worked). Both Neris and Maton were James Click acquisitions. Both become free agents after this season.

Up next

Four games with the Angels at Minute Maid Park through the weekend mean the amazing Shohei Ohtani is in town. It’s “Sho-time” on the mound Friday night in a doozy of a pitching matchup with Framber, with Ohtani batting in at least three of the four games. In one player the Angels have a pitcher as good as Cristian Javier and a hitter better than Kyle Tucker. And the Angels will probably miss the playoffs again anyway. And then lose Ohtani in free agency. After the Angels series the Astros are on the road next week. They start with four games at Toronto against the Blue Jays’ very potent lineup, then it’s three at Cleveland vs. the Guardians whose offense has been pathetic so far this season.

Walk this way

Geek Astro factoid of the week: Jeremy Pena drew two walks in Tuesday’s win over the Twins. In his rookie season, Pena had only one two walk game, also in May, also against the Twins. Tuesday’s bases on balls finally got Pena into double digits for the season. He has just 11 walks drawn (largely explaining his weak .307 on-base percentage) vs. 50 strikeouts.

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Stone Cold ‘Stros is the weekly Astro-centric podcast I am part of alongside Brandon Strange and Josh Jordan. On our regular schedule it goes up at 3PM Monday on the SportsMapHouston YouTube channel, is available there for playback at any point, and also becomes available in podcast form at outlets galore. Such as:

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