Jogging in Place While Mariners Implode
Astros Expected Win Total has not increased since July 5
Surely you remember the Astros win over the Twins on July 5. That’s the game where the Astros scored three in the top of the 9th with an 8-run lead and Luis Contreras on the mound in mop-up duty and ended with Josh Hader recording his 15th save of the season by striking out Manuel Margot to preserve a 13-12 win.
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Two other things stand out about that win.
First, it was Brian King’s first, and to date only, Major League win and second, it increased the Astros expected win total to 87.
Things were looking up as Houston was now just two games behind the Mariners after being as much as 10 games behind on June 18.
The Astros would go on to pass the Mariners on July 24th and now sit 4.5 games ahead of Seattle with 18 games remaining on their schedule.
But, has it been the Astros getting better or Seattle imploding?
More than two months later the Astros expected win total is…wait for it…87.
They’ve essentially been jogging in place, while the Mariners have disintegrated.
It’s not that the Astros have been bad from July 6 forward. A 31-25 record is a .554 equates to an 89.6-win season over 162 games.
It’s been more about Seattle and their 24-31 (.436, 70.7 win pace over 162) record in that span.
In the end, it doesn’t matter how you end up in first place as long as you end up in first place at the season’s end, but for me this is an interesting sideline to what has been a strange season of baseball and a reminder that there’s an element of luck involved and sometimes you don’t have as much control over your baseball fate as you believe you do.
Sigh.