Astros vs Worst Team in Major League Baseball

HOUSTON – Hey guys, it’s Ari Alexander with the Astros, who need to quickly reverse their offensive breakdown as they enter a series against the worst team baseball may have ever seen. This weekend, the Astros will face the A’s before heading home and getting a Minnesota Twins team potentially without Carlos Correa.

HOW BIG ARE THE A’S?

The Astros swept the A’s last weekend and are expected to do it again this weekend. A’s are bad. So too bad. I’m not even trying to make fun of them, because they’re mean on purpose and for some sad reason. With ownership trying to move the team out of Oakland, they cut payrolls and basically don’t care about results. The A’s are 10-42. That .192 full-season winning percentage would equate to a 31-131 record. It would be by far the worst team in history.

They are 28th in attack, with a .661 OPS. Basically, their offense is Eugenio Suarez of the Mariners, who is not having a good season.

They’re dead last in throwing, giving up an atrocious 6.88 ERA. Their team WHIP is 1.67 which is atrocious.

They are 27th in field percentage.

The Astros’ offense is 24th, which could be improved this weekend from that awful, awful pitching staff.

JOSE ABREU BAGUETTE

Jose Abreu has been so bad this season that his power is compared to how he would swing with a stick.

Abreu, according to the baton’s tweet and a quick look at MLB stats, is one of five MLB players without a home run who has enough AB to qualify.

There is also a huge difference between Abreu and the other four hitters. Myles Straw, Jean Segura, Josh Rojas and Andrew Benintendi have combined 207 home runs during their MLB careers. Jose Abreu has 243 on his own. His power outage was shocking, to say the least.

BACKUPS COOK

In a perfect world, Brandon Bielak and JP France make no starts for the Astros. That certainly happened last season, when Houston had incredible starting pitching health. Bielak and France would have been backup options in 2022, but weren’t needed to start.

This season, Bielak and France have already combined to make eight starts. That’s as much as Lance McCullers, Jr. has made in 2022 and 2023 combined in the regular season.

They’ve been strong so far, with Bielak at a 3.55 ERA, but a 5.68 FIP means a regression could be coming. JP France has an ERA of 3.43 with an FIP of 5.52, potentially signaling the same thing. The results so far have been above expectations, and the Astros are hopeful they will be.