THE PALLILOG
Stop us if you have heard this before: Texans need to find a way to protect Watson against Jags
Sep 13, 2019, 6:56 am
Deshaun Watson takes his act to New York. Tim Warner/Getty Images
No must win game looms for the Texans Sunday against Jacksonville. Unless you are gaga over the Titans after their season opening humiliation of the Browns in Cleveland, the AFC South does not look to have a team capable of pulling away and ripping off 12 wins. Maybe not even 10. Last season the Texans extricated themselves from an 0-3 mess of a start to win the division, so 0-2 wouldn't mean curtains. But if the Jaguars turn out to be decent with rookie quarterback Gardner Minshew and a rejuvenated defense, the Texans dropping a home division game to fall to 0-2 would be problematic. At eight and a half or nine points the Texans are the third biggest favorite in the NFL this week. Baltimore at home is -13 vs. Arizona, New England is a whopping 19 point road favorite at Miami.
Except for one awful decision and throw Deshaun Watson looked like a top 10 quarterback at New Orleans. Alas his career will be inevitably altered for the worse if the offensive line play doesn't improve and Watson doesn't speed up that imaginary clock in his head by half a tick.
Developmental prospect or not, if second round draft pick Max Scharping isn't very soon good enough to move right tackle Seantrel Henderson out of the starting lineup, the pick looks bad.
It really would be nice if Head Coach Bill O'Brien stops uttering pedantic and/or condescending nonsense. The Texans' secondary alignment on the Saints' last completion before the game winning field goal was simply indefensible. Billy Bluster's pearl of non-wisdom: "We made a call there that we thought was the best call for us." As opposed to coaches who make calls they think are the worst for them? The call was absurd! Safeties stationed as close to Mississippi as to the line of scrimmage? Two cornerbacks lined up as if covering skunks who'd just taken swims in a toxic waste pool? It's as if the Texans thought they were up by four and not one. You don't suppose…? Nah.
And Coach, about using a timeout and then immediately losing another one because of a challenge after the same play…
Astros drop three straight
In winning three in a row at Minute Maid Park after getting demolished 15-0 in the series opener, the Oakland A's administered the latest reminder that as great as the Astros are they are a lock for nothing when their postseason starts in three weeks. The A's have a better record than the Astros over the last three months. So do the Indians. Any team can beat any other team in a three out of five baseball series. Anyone who thinks otherwise is simply wrong.
Thursday's 3-2 loss to the A's dropped the Astros to 0-47 on the season when trailing going to the ninth inning. As I've covered before, all teams lose almost all of their games when down after eight. Few actually lose every one of them.
It has worked out quite well that the Astros were forced to move to the American League in order for the owners to approve the sale of the franchise from Drayton McLane to Jim Crane's group. Latest example: Yordan Alvarez is pretty much a lock to win the American League Rookie of the Year Award. Everything else being equal, as amazing as he's been Alvarez would have little shot at the NL rookie honor. Not with the Mets' Peter Alonso entering the weekend with 47 homers and 109 runs batted in. In the end you get credit for what you did accomplish, not for what you might have accomplished if called up sooner.
Not even counting his winning World Series Most Valuable Player George Springer's "career year" to date was 2017. He played 140 games that season with 34 homers and 85 RBI. Through 109 games played this season: 34 homers and 85 RBI. If he hadn't missed a month with a hamstring injury Springer might be right there with Alex Bregman as top alternatives to Mike Trout for AL MVP. Springer's contract is up at the end of the season, but he can't become a free agent until after next season when he'll already be 31 years old. Would the Astros say "too much" or Springer say "not enough" to a suggestion of four years 80 mil?
Down week for colleges
Overall it's a dud of a college football schedule this weekend. Not one Top 25 matchup on the card. UH plus nine and a half vs. Washington State feels like the right side Friday night at NRG Stadium. Texas can seemingly name its score -32 vs. Rice at NRG Saturday.
Buzzer Beaters
1. The "Texas Kickoff" really shouldn't take place the third full weekend of the season. 2. It would be a downer if Carlos Correa only gets to play in a championship series this year while rehabbing with Round Rock during the Pacific Coast League Championship Series. 3. Look away triskaidekophobes! Greatest athletes to wear #13 (A-Rod is disqualified and an honorable mention for Billy Wagner): Bronze-Steve Nash Silver-Dan Marino Gold-Wilt Chamberlain
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As of 9:42 Central Daylight Saving Time Friday night, the Astros (and all other baseball players) are officially the Boys of Summer, officially so far as the season is concerned anyway. When the summer solstice arrived last year the Astros were nine games off the lead in the American League West. So in addressing the rhetorical axiom “what a difference a year makes,” the difference in the Astros’ case is a whopping 14 games as they start the weekend atop their division by five games. At this point in the season last year the Astros’ record in one-run games was a brutal 5-14. In 2025 they are 13-7 in games decided by the narrowest of margins.
That the Astros are just 4-5 in road games against the two worst teams in the American League is no big deal, other than that every game counts in the standings. Still, just as was losing two out of three at the pathetic White Sox earlier this season, it is no doubt disappointing to the Astros to have only gotten a split of their four-game set with the Athletics. The A’s had gone 9-28 in their last 37 games before the Astros arrived in West Sacramento. The former-Oaklanders took the first game and the finale, as the Astros’ offense played bi-polar ball over the four nights. Two stat-padding explosion games that totaled 24 runs and 35 hits were bookended by a puny one-run output Monday and Thursday’s 5-4 10-inning loss. Baseball happens. Nevertheless, as the Astros open their weekend set versus the Angels, they have gone 17-7 over their last 24 games to forge their five-game division lead.
The New York Yankees’ offense has been by a healthy margin the best attack in the American League so far this season. The reigning AL champions snapped a six-game losing streak Thursday. The Yankees mustered a total of six runs over those six losses, including being shutout in three consecutive games. The baseball season is the defining “it’s a marathon not a sprint” sport. With 162 games on the schedule, combined with the fact that the gap in winning percentage between the best teams and the worst teams is smaller than in any other sport, making much about a series, or week or two of games is misguided, apart from all the results mattering.
The future is now
Without context, statistics can tell very misleading stories. Cam Smith is having a fine rookie season and has the looks of a guy who can blossom into a bonafide star and be an Astro mainstay into the 2030s. But it’s silliness that has anyone talking about the big month of June he’s having. Superficially, sure, going into Thursday’s game Smith’s stat line for the month read a .321 batting average and .874 OPS. Alas, that was mostly about Smith’s two monster games in the consecutive routs of the Athletics. Over those two games Cam went seven for nine with two home runs and two doubles. Over the other 14 games he’s played this month Smith is batting .213 with an OPS below .540.
Cam Smith is a long-term contender for best acquisition of Dana Brown’s tenure as General Manager. If his career was a single game Smith is still in the first inning, but if his career was a stock it’s a buy and hold. If the Astros were for some reason forced to part with all but two players in the organization, I think the two they would hold on to are Smith and Hunter Brown. Jeremy Pena would be another strong candidate, but he turns 28 in September and is two seasons from free agency (unless the rules change in the next collective bargaining agreement). Smith is 22 and under Astros’ control for another five seasons, he’s not even presently eligible for salary arbitration until the 2028 season. Brown turns 27 in August and is currently ineligible for free agency until after the 2028 season.
Angels in the outfield
Hunter Brown pitches opposite Yusei Kikuchi Friday night. Kikuchi was Dana Brown’s big in-season move last season, and Kikuchi was excellent with the Astros which set up to get the three-year 63 million dollar deal he landed with the Halos. After a slow start to his season Kikuchi has been outstanding the past month and a half, with a 2.28 earned run average over his last nine starts. Brown’s 1.88 season ERA is second-best in the big leagues among pitchers with the innings pitched to qualify in the category. Only Pirates’ stud Paul Skenes has a better mark, barely so at 1.85.
Kikuchi was a stellar rental who helped the Astros stretch their consecutive postseasons streak to eight. There was an absurd amount of vitriol over what Dana Brown gave up for him. Joey Loperfido is 26 years old and having a middling season at AAA. Will Wagner is 26 years old and back in the minors after batting .186 with the Blue Jays. Jake Bloss is the one guy who maaaaaybe some day the Astros wish they still had. Bloss is out into 2026 after undergoing Tommy John surgery.
For Astro-centric conversation, join Brandon Strange, Josh Jordan, and me for the Stone Cold ‘Stros podcast which drops each Monday afternoon, with an additional episode now on Thursday. Click here to catch!
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