*As you may know, Dr. County and I work in education. You may have heard about this pandemic situation that is causing schools to operate differently than in the past. I am Not Good with the fancy new virtual meeting platform and thus am spending a significant amount of time every morning trying to make sure I don't look like an idiot before my students sign on. All that to say, sorry for the delay. Perhaps you can have Hot Links over lunch.
*Would you like the good news or the bad news first?
Good News
- Bregman is back. He went 0-3 with a walk and two strikeouts in Game 1 yesterday. He did not play in the second game, though Dusty Baker said he was available to pinch hit.
- The Astros won a baseball game. They beat the A's in Game 2 of the doubleheader, 5-4. They overcame a four-run deficit and stopped a six-game losing streak.
- Despite the skid, Fangraphs gives Houston a 96.5 percent chance of making the playoffs. To be fair, basically everyone makes the playoffs this year, but it doesn't really matter because everyone gets a three-game series with no home field advantage. Griekne agrees.
- The Yankees are bad now. After starting 16-6, they've lost 14 of their last 19 games.
- Two prospects, C Korey Lee and SS Jeremy Pena, were added to the Corpus Christi Alternate Site. If you would like to know more about them, a Very Handsome Young Man wrote somewhere in the neighborhood of 80 player comments for the 2020 Baseball Prospectus Annual. You could also just type their names into the Google Machine, but where is the fun in that?
Bad News
- The Astros lost Game 1, 4-2, to bring their losing streak to six games. The 2019 had a seven-game losing streak, though.
- The list of injured Astros is quite large. Blake Taylor and Chris Devenski are out for a while with elbow soreness. Josh Reddick is still day-to-day after injuring his elbow. Lance McCullers received an anti-inflammatory injection in his neck. Jose Altuve ran the bases yesterday but is still on the IL with a right knee sprain.
Other News
- Hitting Coach Alex Cintron has finished his suspension, but is not joining the team yet due to a medical procedure.
