The bullpen, which has done fairly well most of the season, is showing signs of tiring, so I'll bring and Zeid up, as well as Cosart, who's made 2 starts at AAA since coming back from his torn back muscle. Cory Knebel, who came over from the Tigers in the Jesse Crain deal, will get added to the 40 man and called up, too. Cosart's return sends Peacock back to the bullpen.
On the offensive time, despite his struggles this year, I'll bring up Singleton to see if he shows signs of being able to be my Opening Day starter in 2015. Hoes and Springer both have been performing well since their demotions, so they'll come back, too. Springer will take back over full-time RF duties while Singleton will start primarily against right handed pitchers to try to give him the best chance for success.
September 19 (63-90)
Alex White's comeback season is over, as I've decided to shut him down after he started complaining of a sore shoulder. I'll do a complete, season-end statistical recap in my next post, but his results this year, while not spectacular, were a bit encouraging. Rudy Owens will take his spot in the rotation for the remainder of the year.
Later this evening, Jerome Williams was declared day-to-day with a mild abdominal strain suffered while getting in some weight work after the game.
One piece of good news: with today's win we're guaranteed not to lose 100 games this season!
September 21 (65-90)
In more pitcher injury news, Brett Oberholtzer is done for the year with a strained biceps. He turned in a solid season and with the cellar locked up tight, there's no point in trying to have him finish the year. Peacock will take his remaining starts.
In other news, Tri-City manager Ed Romero was let go and did not hold back his frustration when interviewed following the news. I'll let his words speak for themselves.
September Wrapup
69-93 overall. 5th place. 24 games back. 14-10 on the month.
We finished the season with our first winning record over a month!
Rudy Owens showed that he deserves a long look next spring as he made 4 appearances, 2 starts, and put up a 2.21 ERA in 20.1 innings. Brad Peacock also made it known he wants to be in the mix again by throwing 10 innings with a 0.90 ERA. Also making a strong final showing was Josh Zeid, who threw 8 innings with a 0.63 WHIP and 1.13 ERA. On the down side, Bass, Fields, and Knebel all had ERAs over 8.00, but none of them pitched over 3.2 innings on the month.
Offensively, Krauss had himself a month by hitting .348/.410/.623 with 4 homers. Singleton did well in his debut, hitting .281/.369/.596 with 4 home runs and 14 RBI in 19 games. Sadly, Springer had another horrific month, putting up a .165/.242/.200 line with 29 strikeouts in 95 plate appearances. Not a good rookie year.
So there you have it, 2014 in the books and it wasn't quite as bad as I feared. A few surprises mixed with a couple disappointments to be sure, but I think the emergence of some of the young starting pitchers gives us reason to wait til next year.
The next post will essentially be a stat dump for those interested, though I'll throw in some of my favorite, non-Astros news from throughout the season that I missed along the way. Following that, I'll probably put the entire offseason in one post.
If you enjoyed this or have any comments, let me know in the, um, comments section. This is the first time I've written out my OOTP experiences and it's been fun putting a little more thought into what I do so I can explain it to you guys.
No comments:
Post a Comment