The 2024 Astros have a lot in common with the 2005 team. Both teams had a slow start, appeared to be at the end of their competitive cycle, and had a really strong summer. The 2005 team won the pennant, but lost to the White Sox in the Series (Palmeiro was safe). Who knows how this team will do in October, but they have a lot more talent than the 2005 team and they some guys who have experience in October.
The Stros’ strong summer continued tonight with a 6-0 win over one of the better teams in baseball, the Baltimore Orioles. Many Marylanders refer to Baltimore as the Venice, Italy of North America. While I strongly disagree with this assessment, their ball park is certainly a sight to behold. It is nice they finally have a team worth watch at Camden Yards.
Spencer Arrighetti had another dominant start: striking out six, only walking one, and giving up zero runs in six innings. Throughout the game, the Orioles only took five PAs with runners in scoring position, and they did get a hit in any of them. The pitching was flat out dominant tonight, there is no way around that.
Arrighetti’s season CSW% is a shade under 30%, which means that his 10.9 K/9 is not entirely unsustainable; he really has pitched well. His walk rate is still a bit high, but over the last two months it has been a respectable 3.4BB per nine innings. I still wouldn’t bet on him being an ace, or even a two, but it is getting hard to argue that he won’t be a solid back of the rotation dude. Going into the season, I did not think he had a shot of sticking in the rotation.
The offense did a good job making consistent contact tonight. Although they did not collect any extra base hits, they leveraged for walks, eight hits, and an error into six runs. Solid stuff.
The Stros opened the scoring in the 4th with two RBI singles by Yordan and Gamel. Gamel, who had a great debut, also singled in a run in the sixth. The team would score three more runs in the sixth, and that was all the scoring they needed.
Observations:
-Camden Yards is a beautiful ball park. Yes Baltimore is a sketchy town, but if you stay in a hotel around the ball park you will not have a problem.
-Spencer Arrighetti may be due for some mean regression, but he has bailed out this team in a lot of ways. His ERA just crossed under 5 tonight, but his X-FIP is a much more respectable 4.08. In terms of fWAR, Arrighetti has been Houston’s fourth most valuable pitcher this year. Without him, who is picking up his innings?
-Perhaps the Astros get bounced in wild card weekend, but it has still been fun to watch them come back and play some good baseball this year.
What do y’all think? comment below!