Game Recap:

The Astros didn’t score any runs today. They got four hits. They have lost five games in a row. The Seattle Mariners beat them and they are now only 3 games behind the Astros for first place. Nelson Cruz hit a two run double in the sixth inning to drive in the only runs against Gerrit Cole, who pitched really well, and should have won. That’s all I have to say about this game. There’s another game tomorrow. Below is an interesting play that happened. I’ll start writing good recaps when the Astros start playing good baseball.

Box Score and videos here.

Week in Review, 7/23-7/30.

Season Record: 67-40. (Before 7-30 game) First in AL West, 4 games ahead of the Seattle Mariners. Third in AL behind Boston, 7 games behind the first place Red Sox. (record now 67-41, 3 game lead)

Pythagorean won/loss record: 73-34, best in MLB. Run differential: +179 (533 runs 4th most, 354 runs allowed, least)

Baseball Reference SRS: 1.5, best in MLB but down .2 of a point and just .1 ahead of 2nd place Boston.

Week Record: 1-4, The Astros split a series with the Colorado Rockies in Denver and were swept by the Texas Rangers in Houston.

7/23-7/30 Hitting Statistics. wRC+ for 7 days, Month, Year with League Rank.

Astros hitting was 2nd from worst in MLB for the week and has been in the bottom 3rd for the last month. It is 3rd for the year, but falling from a high of 116, formerly 1st but now behind New York and Boston.

The following is individual statistics for the year.

Season OPS leader is Alex Bregman. Tony Kemp is tied with Jose Altuve for OBP lead.

The following is individual hitting statistics for the week July 23-July 30.

In a week when the team OPS was .600, and the opposing OPS was .815, the only real bright spot individually was the reemergence of Evan Gattis. More typically, the following players had sub .500 OPS’s: J.D. Davis, Marwin Gonzalez, Max Stassi, Yuli Gurriel, and Josh Reddick.

Pitching: Below are three charts. the first for the entire staff’s ERA for the year, month and week with league ranking. The other two will break down the same data for the starters and the relievers.

The following is the data for the starters only.

And the following is the infamous ERA data data for the relievers, by week, month and year.

The staff and starting staff ERA remain first in the league for the year but have continued their steady rise upward . This is the first week both have been above 3.00.

For the week the staff as a whole was 23rd in the league, the hitting was 29th. Its hard to get much worse than that. The starters were near league average, but the relievers were near the bottom, 26th, with an ERA of 7.64.

The following is a chart of the year to date individual statistics for the team pitching staff.

The following is a chart of the staff’s performance for the last seven days.

One correction: Chris Devenski did not have a 0.00 ERA, he had an infinite ERA.

A few points of light here. Will Harris was perfect in his two innings. Good to see at least one reliever trending in the right direction. Tony Sipp allowed inherited runners to score but himself had a 0.00 ERA and has the second lowest ERA on the team’s staff. Charlie Morton and Gerrit Cole had sub 3 starts. Collin McHugh gave up a walk off home run but it was the only run he allowed in 4.2 innings. He has the team’s lowest ERA at 1.05.

Defense: The Astros have fallen to fourth in fielding percentage at .988 after being first or second most of the year. They have also fallen to fourth in Defense Efficiency Ratio at .708 after being first most of the year peaking at .722.

The injury to Carlos Correa, and the resulting defensive reshuffling, is likely responsible for a portion of this decline. In 73 games Correa had only two errors at shortstop. In 34 games combined, Alex Bregman and Marwin Gonzalez have made 9 errors at shortstop.