Game 78 Preview. Astros vs Yankees

The Astros lost their sixth straight game last night, 4-1, and has been so often the case lately, never got their bats un-tracked. The scoring from last night’s game came from a Tyler White double, followed by an RBI Jake Marisnick double. It so happens that in the last seven days, the two top hitters in the Astros lineup are Jake Marisnick and Tyler White, in that order. Marisnick missed a number of games during this period, but in full time play, Tyler White is hitting 211 wRC+ for the last week. Below 100 are, in order, Alex Bregman, Jose Altuve, Josh Reddick and the slumping Robinson Chirinos and Tony Kemp.

Over the last seven games the Astros have scored only 21 runs over the six losses they accrued.

Brad Peacock was superb last night in the loss, getting 11 K’s in six innings. His only blemish was a home run to Gary Sanchez, his 23rd, on a fine pitch. Sometimes you just gotta tip your hat. Here’s the 481 ft. homer.

Tonight Wade Miley faces the Yankees’ Masahiro Tanaka. They come in with remarkably similar traditional statistics; Miley has a 6-4 record and a 3.30 ERA, Tanaka a 5-5 record with a 3.23 ERA. Tanaka has the edge accounting for the peripheral stats. Tanaka’s xFIP is 3.76, for Miley it is 4.22.

Odd fact. I expected to report that as a lefty Miley would face more difficulty than a right-handed pitcher would face against the heavy right-handed oriented slugging Yankees lineup. That is not true. Against right-handed pitchers, the Yankees slash .267/.344/.474 with a 115 wRC+ Against lefties the slash line is .235/.309/.386, wRC+ 84. Overall the Yankees have a 108 wRC+, 5th in the league, compared to the Astros at 119, tied for first with the Twins.

Fan Duel gives the odds of an Astro victory at 30%.

Here’s tonight’s lineup.

Game thread will be up at 6:00 PM CDT