Meet the 2025 Astros. They look a lot like the 2024 Astros, a team that won their division before taking a sudden tumble in the AL Wild Card Series at the hands of Detroit. This season, at 68-53 (.562), the Astros are looking to top that. They\u2019re first in the AL West, albeit just one game up on a surging Seattle, who is 9-2 in August (at least before they ran into the buzzsaw that is the 2025 Orioles, that is. Heh. Heh.).<\/p>\n
As for Houston, despite several noteworthy moves at the Trade Deadline (a Carlos Correa reunion, trading for Ram\u00f3n Ur\u00edas, and obtaining lefty OF Jes\u00fas S\u00e1nchez), they\u2019ve been a little cool since the All-Star break, with a sub-.500 win percentage in July and a 6-6 record in August.<\/p>\n
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Injuries have hurt, especially the rotation: starters Ronel Blanco, JP France, Luis Garc\u00eda, Hayden Wesneski, and Lance McCullers are all out with injury, and closer Josh Hader just hit the shelf, too. Basically, after Framber Valdez and Hunter Brown, who are both having career years at the top of the rotation, there\u2019s been a lot of uncertainty. Unfortunately for the Orioles, it\u2019s Framber Valdez that they\u2019re facing tonight.<\/p>\n
Valdez has finished in the Top 11 of the Cy Young Award voting four times in the last five years, and he\u2019s still posting career-best numbers in WAR, at 4.4 with a large part of the season left to go. The right-hander is 11-5 with a 2.97 ERA in 23 starts, including two complete games. He\u2019s struck out 145 hitters in 145.2 innings, and is allowing a league-fewest 0.5 home runs per game. On the other hand, Valdez has allowed 10 runs (nine earned) in 11.2 innings since August began, and the Orioles have a .270 batting average against him in the past.<\/p>\n
We are at the other side of the pitching spectrum when it comes to Brandon Young, who over ten starts in his young career is 0-6 with a 6.70 ERA. Young took a loss against the Athletics last Saturday, allowing six runs on six hits, two of them home runs, over three innings. Young says he knows he has to be better, but I\u2019m not sure the stuff has much room for growth. Hold onto your Stetsons tonight.<\/p>\n
Orioles lineup<\/p>\n
1. Jackson Holliday 2B
2. Jordan Westburg 3B
3. Gunnar Henderson SS
4. Adley Rutschman C
5. Ryan Mountcastle DH
6. Coby Mayo 1B
7. Jeremiah Jackson RF
8. Dylan Carlson LF
9. Daniel Johnson CF<\/p>\n
Astros lineup<\/p>\n
1. Jos\u00e9 Altuve DH
2. Carlos Correa 3B
3. Jes\u00fas S\u00e1nchez LF
4. Christian Walker 1B
5. Yainer D\u00edaz C
6. Ram\u00f3n Ur\u00edas 2B
7. Taylor Trammell CF
8. Mauricio Dub\u00f3n SS
9. Cam Smith RF<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Meet the 2025 Astros. They look a lot like the 2024 Astros, a team that won their division…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2374],"tags":[1079,42,143,47,2538,5,796,451,3225,100,583,9288,1866,147,590,79,916,1432,139,1328,1514,13459,4942,581,817,1109,5175,2098,3617,4,125,40899,914,766,1359,619,9356,1362,5355],"class_list":{"0":"post-250846","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baltimore-orioles","8":"tag-adley-rutschman","9":"tag-astros","10":"tag-baltimore","11":"tag-baltimore-orioles","12":"tag-baltimoreorioles","13":"tag-baseball","14":"tag-brandon-young","15":"tag-cam-smith","16":"tag-carlos-correa","17":"tag-christian-walker","18":"tag-coby-mayo","19":"tag-cy-young-award","20":"tag-daniel-johnson","21":"tag-detroit","22":"tag-dylan-carlson","23":"tag-framber-valdez","24":"tag-gunnar-henderson","25":"tag-hayden-wesneski","26":"tag-houston","27":"tag-hunter-brown","28":"tag-jackson-holliday","29":"tag-jeremiah-jackson","30":"tag-jesus-sanchez","31":"tag-jordan-westburg","32":"tag-jose-altuve","33":"tag-josh-hader","34":"tag-lance-mccullers","35":"tag-luis-garcia","36":"tag-mauricio-dubon","37":"tag-mlb","38":"tag-orioles","39":"tag-orioles-lineup","40":"tag-ramon-urias","41":"tag-ronel-blanco","42":"tag-ryan-mountcastle","43":"tag-seattle","44":"tag-taylor-trammell","45":"tag-the-orioles","46":"tag-yainer-diaz"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}