The Houston Astros come to town tonight, looking to get back on track, while the Guardians look to continue their strong start with another series win.<\/p>\n
The Astros are 8-15 and third in wRC+ at 122, ninth in Baserunning Runs Above Average at 1.2, 21st in Defense at -5.4, last in starting pitcher ERA at 6.34 (4.59 FIP), and 24th in bullpen ERA at 5.21 ((4.26 FIP).<\/p>\n
The Guardians are 13-10 and 17th in wRC+ at 100, 25th in Baserunning Runs Above Average at -1.5, ninth in Defense at -0.2, fourth in starting pitcher ERA at 3.10 (3.93 FIP), and 29th in bullpen ERA at 6.18 ERA (5.39 FIP).<\/p>\n
On paper, looks like the Guardians need to hope the past couple games of bullpen improvement can hang around, then they will have a good chance of keeping that Astros\u2019 offense in check. Putting the ball in play a good bit should help as the Houston defense looks bad, so far. It\u2019s tough to read TOO much into trends for another couple weeks, at least, but surface level, the Guardians have a clear path to take this series.<\/p>\n
MATCHUPS:
Game One, Monday, 6:10PM ET: Slade Cecconi, RHP 5.03 ERA (4.50 SIERA) vs. Spencer Arrighetti, RHP 1.50 ERA (3.28 SIERA).
Game Two, Tuesday, 6:10PM ET: Parker Messick, LHP 1.05 ERA (3.23 SIERA) vs. Ryan Weiss, RHP 4.91 ERA (7.18 SIERA).
Game Three, Wednesday, 1:10PM ET: Tanner Bibee, RHP 4.81 ERA (3.96 SIERA) vs. Peter Lambert, RHP 7.20 ERA (2.15 SIERA).<\/p>\n
This will be a big series for the Guardians to show that they are more of an alpha team in the AL than the Astros. The Astros are reeling\u2026 (Mortal Kombat voice) FINISH THEM.<\/p>\n
Also, Jose Ramirez\u2019s official countdown to 300 homers\/300 steals: 9 homers left, 3 steals left.<\/p>\n
wRC+ – Weighted Runs Created Plus – A measure of determining a player\u2019s run production value while controlling for park effects. 100 is league average.<\/p>\n
Baserunning Runs Above Average – A metric including stolen base value, double-play avoidance, and taking extra bases to determine how many runs above average a team is on the basepaths<\/p>\n
Defense – This stat gives you how many runs above average a team\u2019s defenders save their team, adjusted for positional value (i.e. a catcher has far more defensive value for a team than a first baseman).<\/p>\n
FIP – Fielding Independent Pitching. Essentially, ERA weighted by factors a pitcher can control (strikeouts, walks and homers) while eliminating as much as possible the effects of a good or bad defense.<\/p>\n
SIERA – A metric to determine a pitcher\u2019s true ERA based on strikeout rate, walk rate, and quality of batted-balls given up. This number is similar to ERA (3 and under is excellent) in determining player performance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Houston Astros come to town tonight, looking to get back on track, while the Guardians look to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680001,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2380],"tags":[5,135,51,2589,2565,538,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-680000","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-guardians","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-cleveland","10":"tag-cleveland-guardians","11":"tag-cleveland-guardians-analysis","12":"tag-clevelandguardians","13":"tag-guardians","14":"tag-mlb"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116439111060533995","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680000","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=680000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}