MLB Daily: How the Astros Won 10 Straight Games & Torii Hunter Draws Heat for Tweet

Welcome to a Monday edition of everyone’s favorite blog post on the Internet. On the plus side, Friday is a scant five days away …

Houston We Have (Insert dated reference of your choice): The expectation around baseball in winter was that the Astros would be better, i.e. competitive — hardly the 100-loss laughingstock the franchise became at the beginning of this decade. I’d tend to doubt anyone figured Houston would have the best record in the American League on May 4, including a 10-game winning streak thanks to an eighth-inning home run off the bat of Evan Gattis against the Mariners on Sunday.

Jeff Luhnow’s plan of tanking for 3-4 years and acquiring draft picks to rebuild the system is still in progress. The current Astros’ roster is a mix of low-level players acquired in trades or through free agency, supplemented by homegrown guys like George Springer.

Where these players were acquired isn’t in focus at the moment, since they mostly buy into the Astros plan to eschew batting average for raw power. Take the all-world Jose Altuve and the suprising Jake Marisnick (1.059 OPS) out of the Astros’ lineup and its littered with .250 or below hitters. That doesn’t matter as much when you lead baseball with 40 home runs. Look no further than Gattis or first baseman Chris Carter. Houston will take the .200-level batting average and strikeouts as long as they can hit the ball out of the park.

• Gattis (.198): 17 hits — six home runs.
• George Springer (.204): 19 hits — four home runs.
• Luis Valbuena (.218): 19 hits — six home runs.
• Colby Ramus (.257): 19 hits — five home runs.

Whether or not the boom/bust strategy is attainable over six months remains to be seen.

As it stands the Astros are 18-0 in games they’ve taken the lead, thanks in part to an improved bullpen with a 2.13 ERA. Couple that with the 1-2 punch of Dallas Keuchel (acquired in the 2009 draft) and Colin McHugh (picked up off waivers from the Rockies) and Houston has a squad that is rolling right now. Is that enough to get people in Houston to pay attention to the team once again after the sustained lean seasons? There isn’t a ready-made statistic or strategy for that. The AL West, like every other division in baseball right now, doesn’t have an outstanding team in it. Houston can contend in 2015.

Swept Away: The 2015 Yankees are another example of why it doesn’t make sense to draw conclusions after 3-4 games in April. (Myself included, obviously.) New York is now 16-9 after sweeping Boston, dropping the Red Sox to under .500. A-Rod hit his milestone 660 home run Friday, but somehow it became an afterthought — perhaps since it happened on a Friday night amidst so much other stuff going on? More surprising, at least to me, is the season so far by Mark Teixeira, who appeared “done” after two poor back-to-back seasons. Teixeira is on the Astro’s pattern: nine home runs with a .202 average.

Although it might be sacrilege to compare the Astros and Yankees any further, New York has the bullpen thing on lockdown, too. Andrew Miller and Dellin Betances are on a historical start, allowing zero earned runs over 28 compared innings so far.

Canned: Milwaukee fired Ron Roenicke Sunday night. Technically the team “relieved him of his duties.” The Brewers are off the worst start in 2015 and collapsed after the All Star Break Last year. Craig Counsell(*) takes over. Expect the word grit to be used at his introductory press conference.

As a palate cleanser, here’s a fan trying to catch a foul ball at Saturday’s Brewers-Cubs game with a nacho tray.

Jokes aside, the worry for the Brewers is what to do going forward in a division with the Cardinals and Pirates, along with the rapidly improving Cubs.

Foot in Mouth: Torii Hunter tweeted about Floyd Mayweather Jr. before his big fight on Saturday. The tweet contained the phrase, “What he does outside the ring has nothing to do with me.” The tweet, since deleted, drew criticism because some users linked it to Mayweather’s history of domestic violence. Hunter talked about it on Sunday and apologized, adding he probably won’t tweet anymore.

Walkoff winners: Yasmani Grandal provided the only run via a solo shot in the 13th, as the Dodgers beat the Diamondbacks 1-0.

Kolten Wong’s game-winner vs. the Pirates came in the 14th, lifting the Red Birds to a sweep of the Buccos. St. Louis is on a six-game winning streak, opening up a 4.5 game lead in the NL Central in the process.

Splitsville: The Royals and Tigers split a four-game set at Kauffman over the weekend. The two teams play again this weekend, including on Sunday night and then won’t see each other again until August. Detroit won the last two games, thanks to better starting pitching — David Price took a shutout into the ninth until a long Lorenzo Cain homer with two outs broke it up. Anibal Sanchez carried a perfect game into the sixth on Sunday. The only major takeaway from this series, other than these two should be neck-and-neck in the AL Central all year, is that the Royals fans (especially now that the team is a contender) deserve much better than Rex Hudler on the mic for telecasts. Maybe some fans enjoy his “we” shtick, but watching the last couple inning on Sunday via MLB Network’s simulcast of the Royals feed was grating.

This & That: Baseball is still trying to figure out how to make this StatCast thing viable — I doubt the sport truly needs more numbers. Over the weekend I saw someone (apologies can’t remember which account) tweet about which player has hit the hardest ball in 2015 in miles per hour. That’s kind of a cool stat that can be processed relatively easily. … Caught some of “The Other Guys” on FXX Sunday night. Didn’t realize until last night that Michael Keaton’s character is named “Gene Mauch.” … Another scary moment came this weekend when Pedro Strop hit Jean Segura in the helmet. Segura came out of the game. This is the second time he’s been hit in the head this year. Cubs catcher Miguel Montero guessed the pitch broke the batting helmet.

[feed your yard, feed it]

(*) Reminder: this is what Counsell’s batting stance looked like.