Morning Playoff Report

I think around the time when a team has a 1-in-6 shot at the playoffs, they're officially "back in it." Well, the Astros are almost at that point.

Again, going by ELO Playoff Odds:

Wild Card:

Milwaukee: 57.6%
Houston: 15.2%
Philly: 14.5%
St. Louis: 3.4%

The Astros' dumbass train keeps rolling along. We'll see what's going to happen in the next few days. We'll be in an interesting position, come Monday.

In all this talk about the Wild Card, I hardly noticed something about last night: the Astros have now won 80 games. They've all but clinched a winning season. That's pretty cool.

The writers at Baseball Prospectus will continue to point out that the Astros have gotten insanely hot and lucky in the past two months, but I'm inclined to start changing my opinion of the Good Guys. Yeah, this current stretch is certainly the result of that combination, but it's possible that the Astros really are much better than we thought.

The first consideration is the problems the Brewers have been facing: they have an awful bullpen. The Astros have an awesome one. In the long run, the bullpen's performance can make up for a lot of poor starting pitching. Our bench is similarly great.

That combination has allowed the Astros to survive injuries to starting players, the early crapout of Roy, and the lack of depth in the rotation. Ed Wade is no genius, but he did put together a team that could compete in a tough division. In most other sports, that gets you a playoff spot. In baseball, it makes you an also-ran.

The Astros have cut the RS-RA differential to -7. Their still a projected sub-.500 team, but that's going to change soon. As I've said before, Coop has allowed plenty of blowouts to take place. He's left Backe and Wandy and even Roy in games to get knocked around. Maybe that's fucked with the projections.

Speaking of Roy, he's awesome. He broke JR Richard's record for consecutive scoreless innings last night, and he's transformed himself into the Wizard once more. That's why we're paying him $15 million to play a children's game. Oh, and he faced only 27 hitters last night. All 3 runners were retired in double plays. Good job, Roy.