No Limitations

A.J. Hinch made a very positive comment about the Astros the other day:

The Houston Astros have the best record in baseball and their best start in franchise history.

Surprising?

Not for the manager A.J. Hinch and these unflappable Astros.

“I didn’t put any limitations on this team,” Hinch said. “So I don’t really have a baseline of how many games I expected to win.”

With a 17-6 win over the Twins Wednesday afternoon, the Astros now hold a .704 winning percentage. I heard someone comment on the above, saying that the Astros are going for the regular season win record. That would be 116 wins by the 1906 Cubs and the 2001 Mariners. The Mariners are the better comparison, since they played 162 games with better opponents. They posted a .716 winning percentage, so the Astros are not that far off. The 1954 Indians won 111 games with a .721 winning percentage, so if Hinch is putting no limitations on the team, they might want to aim for that record as well.

The Astros now outscored their opponents 292 to 202. That works out to a Pythagorean win percentage of .676, so the team benefited from a little luck. Hinch again:

Pressed about whether anything about the Astros has surprised him this season, he contemplates the question for a few moments before slowly answering.

“Maybe the ability to hang in there when things aren’t going our way,” he said. “There’s a calmness about our team that has matured over the last year. I don’t know if that’s surprised me or if it’s just made me very proud.”

The Astros had some early success with a strong, young team. Sometimes they fall back as the league adjusts, as we are seeing with the Cubs this year. They’ve seen winning, they’ve seen a collapse, they’ve seen a bad year. Nothing surprises these players anymore, and a great front office has developed a great team.

(Note that despite the drubbing by the Astros, the Twins are in a very similar boat. Two years ago, a good young team surprised people, then fell off. Minnesota is now realizing the potential of that 2015 team.)

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2rlSMtw