Three games and three demoralizing losses later, the Astros find themselves fighting for their playoff lives.
Seattle looked the part of the better team and it wasn’t particularly close, sweeping away the Astros and perhaps taking the Astros’ playoff hopes with them.
Expected Wins
The number below shows 87, but that’s actually rounded up from 86.6.
The Should Be Standings
The Astros are still 1.8 games over expected wins with 6 games to go.
Projected Standings
The final week has the Mariners pulling away and increasing their lead by one more game over the final six.
That is, if the wins and losses and run differential continue at the current rate:
Wild Card
As of Monday, I have the Blue Jays and Yankees battling it out in the East with Toronto a game up. One will win the East and the other will be a Wild Card.
The Red Sox will likely be the second Wild Card, currently projected for 88.4 wins.
I have the Tigers holding on in the Central, leaving the Guardians and Astros battling for the final AL playoff spot.
In my standings, the Astros have an 88.6 to 88.5 advantage, though the Guardians hold the tiebreaker.
Professional Projections
Fangraphs projects both the Astros and Guardians to 87 wins which isn’t good news for Houston, but they also have Houston with a 66.3% chance of making the playoffs to a 58.8% for Cleveland.
To me, it’s one or the other, right? I certainly could be missing something or am too dense to understand.
To add to the confusion, the site has 7 teams at 58.8% or higher to fill 6 playoff positions, with the Guardians the lowest.
It’s confusing at best.
Remaining Schedules
Houston - 3 at Athletics, 3 at Los Angeles Angels.
Cleveland - 3 home vs. Tigers, 3 home vs. Rangers.
Boston - 3 at Toronto, 3 home vs. Tigers.
The knee-jerk reaction is that the Red Sox face the toughest schedule, at least on paper. The Astros have a way of making any schedule tough, though.
Batting and Pitching Projections
With 96.3% of the regular season done, the projections below are close to the final stats.
Rando Stats of the Day
The Astros are slashing .244/.306/.390 in September with a .304 wOBA and 94 wRC+.
The Astros have a 4.17 ERA, 3.63 xERA, 4.56 FIP and 4.23 xFIP in September.
Jesus Sanchez is slashing .198/.276/.336 with a .272 wOBA and 72 wRC+ since his trade to Houston.
Christian Walker is slashing .203/.247/.319 with a 57 wRC+ in September.
Framber Valdez is 0-4 with an 8.27 ERA in September, though his peripherals are markedly better (4.33 xERA, 5.90 FIP, and 4.39 xFIP).
As always, thanks for reading!