Hinch, on Musgrove:
That's part of the nature of having young starters. He's got to learn to battle himself through his first back-to-back games of adversity. He has pitches to do it. He has a ton of competitiveness in him.
Musgrove:
I had the right plan going out there. I just didn't execute, and that's kind of been the problem the last two outings is just executing. I've been through failure before and I know I'm going to go through it again. Just going to process things, learn from it and be ready to go next time out.
Tony Sipp struck out the side in the 5th, but allowed yet another home run with two outs. It's the 11th home run he has allowed this season, after having allowed only ten home runs in the previous two seasons combined. Or: 11HR in 34.2IP in 2016 compared to 10HR in 105IP in 2014-2015 combined.
Nova was efficient, needing only 98 pitches to throw the complete game. Jose Altuve saw six pitches in 4 ABs, Springer saw nine pitches in 4 ABs, Jason Castro saw eight pitches in 3 ABs.
In the 3rd inning, Nova needed five pitches to retire the side and still left a runner on third. Astros gonna Astros.
*The Rangers lost, The Orioles won, the Blue Jays won, so did the Royals, Red Sox, Tigers, and Yankees (who beat the Mariners). Basically the Astros lost a game in the Wild Card on everybody.
FanGraphs gives the Astros a 9.7% chance of making the postseason.
*Eno Sarris wrote about Joe Musgrove's weird one-seam sinker.
*Correa was pulled from the game early, but apparently has been sick, and with today's game starting early, Hinch wanted to give him a rest.
*Luis Valbuena will have season-ending surgery on a tendon in his hamstring. Hinch:
(Valbuena) really recovered from a difficult April for him. But again, it's the next-man-up mentality where someone has to come up and get the at-bats.
On May 3 Valbuena was hitting .175/.288/.238. He had four doubles and four RBIs. From May 3 until his injury on July 27 Valbuena hit .285/.377/.522 with 27 extra-base hits. Then Valbuena injured his hamstring and the season went to hell: The Astros were 2.5 GB of the Rangers after the game in which Valbuena was injured, and then have proceeded to go 10-15.
*Speaking of dumb hamstring issues, Yulieski Gurriel was not in the lineup for a second straight night, following the Astros' M.O. of bringing a player out for "precautionary measures," and then having him dead by Saturday. Hinch:
I considered playing him at less than 100 percent and then I just decided that it's better to give him another day. We'll see how (Wednesday) is. If not (Wednesday) we have a day off and then Friday he should be at full strength.
*You can listen to the Astros.com podcast in which Hinch talks about how Bregman has been so good at 3B that he has changed their plans as far as what to do with him.
*Preston Tucker will start a rehab assignment for his shoulder at Corpus today.
