Tuesday Morning Hot Links

Mmmmkay, Astros. I feel like you're teasing me a little bit. One more push before you inevitably break my heart. But just like REDACTED did in college, I'm going to enjoy it before it happens. Marwin Gonzalez ripped the first pitch from Ryan Madson up the middle in the 9th inning to break a 2-2 tie and send the Astros to a 4-2 win and a 3-1 record on the final road trip of the season. 

*Marwin was 0x12 before that hit. Marwin:

I was trying to get a good pitch to hit. It's been rough the last few days, but I was trying to come up and make contact...

*Marwin's hit came after Teoscar Hernandez scored on a Tyler White double to tie the game at 2-2 in the 8th. Hinch:

There's so many critical at-bats that we won.

It should be noted that Hinch played Hernandez over Rasmus and Kemp for a reason.

*Poor freakin' Ryan Madson. Against the Astros he's allowed a .400/.455/.600 line in 30 ABs this season. If he was an Astro allowing this to the A's (or Rangers or) we would have tarred & feathered him by now.

*Coming later today on Astros County: Brad Peacock is the pitching incarnate of Brandon Backe. 

*Jose Altuve is at 199 hits, and needs one more in his final 12 games to become the first player with three consecutive 200+ hit seasons since Ichiro.

*More Hinch:

We need them all, I loved how our team hung in there until the end. Some of the biggest at-bats were when the game was on the line. I liked how we gutted it out.

So where are we, Wild Card-wise, now? 

WC 1/2: Toronto/Baltimore (82-68)

Detroit: -2.5 (79-70)

Houston/Seattle: -3 (79-71)

There are 12 games left. If the Astros go 10-2, one of Toronto or Baltimore needs to go 6-7 and Detroit needs to go no better than 9-4. Seattle needs to go no better than 9-3. I'm looking forward to driving myself insane ranking the three dumbest games the Astros could have won over the course of 162 games to go to the playoffs. 

FanGraphs gives it 14.9%. FiveThirtyEight gives it 19%. 

*Lance McCullers is expected to throw off the mound in Houston this week for the first time since getting "shut down" on August 2. And barring some miraculous postseason run, the next time we see Dallas Keuchel will be in Spring Training 2017. Luhnow:

Still not throwing, so the more days that go by without throwing, the longer it's going to take him to ramp up. We'd have to go pretty deep into the postseason for that even to be a consideration. 

Same goes for Alex Bregman, as well.

*David Paulino's lack of innings with the Astros in September mean he could still pitch in the Arizona Fall League. 

*Ken Rosenthal wonders how the BBWAA is going to rob Mike Trout again.

*David J Roth writes about taking Tim Tebow at his word, and damn if it isn't a pretty good read.