Thursday Morning Hot Links

*The Masked Marvel has the recap of the Astros' comeback win to sweep the Angles (sic).

*The Rangers won, the Mariners and A's lost. So the Astros move into 2nd place in the AL West. The division looks like this:

*Southeast Denton: -
*Houston: -10
*Seattle: -10.5
*Anaheim: -15.5
*Oakland: -17

In the Wild Card race, Boston and Kansas City both lost while Toronto and Detroit won.

1st WC: -3
2nd WC: -2.5

*FanGraphs gives the Astros a 17.1% chance of winning the division and a 26.7% chance of winning a Wild Card spot. FiveThirtyEight has the Astros with a 32% chance of making the playoffs.

*The Astros' confidence is up. Hinch:
It's interesting to watch our team start to grow confidence again in similar fashion to how it should be. I like the energy and the vibe and the smiles that are happening when we're playing pretty good baseball.

*The Giants' Matt Duffy (as opposed to the Astros' Matt Duffy) missed a game with an achilles injury, so now Jose Altuve - at 164 games - is MLB's newest Iron Man.

*Marwin's go-ahead triple yesterday proves Hinch right for playing him every day since Tyler White got sent down. Hinch:
He's playing really well. I think the everyday at-bats have helped. He's taking care of his body. I don't know if he's played this much in a two-week span in his entire career.

*Carlos Correa is fine after fouling a ball off his foot.

*SI: The Astros are back from the dead.

*Last week the Astros DFA'd Juan Minaya to make room for Danny Worth. Yesterday the White Sox won Minaya on a waiver claim.

*The Astros signed 1-17 pick Forrest Whitley to a $3.148m bonus and he will report to the GCL Astros.

*According to the published numbers, the Astros are now over their bonus pool allotment by $88,400 with 7th Round pick Tyler Buffett - who is still in the College World Series - the only player in the first ten rounds still unsigned. The Astros will have to pay a tax on their overage but can still offer Buffett a little short of $15,000 over the $193,300 slot without losing a 2017 draft pick.

*Tyler White's first week of the season started messing with his head:
The first week, it was a great week and something I'll never forget. But I started trying to do that all the time. I don't know if I started thinking I could hit a bunch of home runs. But I think that's when I kind of got away from things. And I started struggling. It was a snowball effect.

*Astros 2009 3rd Round pick and former minor-leaguer Telvin Nash signed a minor-league deal with the White Sox.

*Rangers starting pitcher Colby Lewis joins Yu Darvish and Derek Holland on the DL.

*LOL the Rangers/City of Arlington straight up lied to their citizens about the new shiny ballpark. An economist:
It is one of the worst public projects anyone could imagine.

Click the link. Arlington's mayor is shady as hell.

*From the Hardball Times: Byron McLaughlin Avoids the Tag