American League West "Race" Update
The Astros have 33 games left, the Mariners 32
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After another heartbreaking loss the Astros still find themselves 4.5 games ahead of Seattle with 33 games left to play (32 for the Mariners).
Yesterday, I suggested the loss had little effect on the Astros chances of winning the West and that’s still true this morning after yesterday’s debacle, especially with the Mariners losing.
I didn’t include the outside chance of a Wild Card run in the analysis because the odds were so low - 1.1% yesterday and 1.0% today.
But, today’s weird news is that despite losing the last two games in mind-numbing fashion the Astros odds of winning the West per Frangraphs has actually INCREASED from 87.9% to 88.2%.
Let’s try this again, assuming Seattle has the tiebreaker:
If the Astros go 17-16 Seattle would need to go 21-11 (.656)
If the Astros go 18-15 Seattle would need to go 22-10 (.688)
If the Astros go 19-14 Seattle would need to go 23-9 (.719)
Here are my expected wins for the entire AL West:
The Kikuchi Factor
Whatever you think of the trade for Yusei Kikuchi the fact is the Astros are 4-0 in Kikuchi starts this season, beating Tampa twice, Texas and Boston.
Amazingly, the Astros are 3-0 in one-run games Kikuchi starts (the other was a 2-run win), and 11-22 in one-run games everyone else has started.
Kikuchi doesn’t have a quality start for Houston, going 5.1 once and 5.2 the other three times, but he’s allowed no more than 2 earned runs in a start since joining Houston.
I was for the trade, as I wrote here.
That said, it can’t go on forever, Kikuchi isn’t a 2.42 ERA (or 169 ERA+) pitcher for the long term.
But, the Astros don’t need him to be that forever.
Where would the Astros be right now if they didn’t trade for Kikuchi and stuck with Bloss (or someone else)?
There’s no way to know the answer to that question, but not 4.5 games ahead of Seattle is a good bet.