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Weird west preview6/13/2023 ![]() The 24-year-old rookie made the opening-day rotation only due to McCullers’ forearm strain. Rome: Brown entered spring training as a luxury. What can you tell me about his development and his early success this season? I liked what I saw in a small sample size last season. Dusty Baker advocated for it, but acknowledged “we didn’t have a general manager in place to make that move.” Oops.īrock: It looks like we are going to see Brown this weekend. It could have behooved the team to add some veteran pitching depth this winter, especially after losing Verlander. Houston should still feel confident in Valdez and Javier atop its rotation, but everything behind them now feels like a massive question mark. A day later, Garcia threw eight pitches before leaving with “right elbow discomfort.” Both are now on the injured list alongside Lance McCullers Jr., who strained his forearm in February. Urquidy hurt his shoulder and exited his Monday start in the fifth inning. The health and dominance was stunning, and as the 2023 Astros are now seeing, totally unsustainable. The rotation threw a league-high 950 innings, shielding the bullpen and allowing it to be fresh in October. Framber Valdez, Justin Verlander, Luis Garcia and José Urquidy all made at least 28 starts. The team used eight (8) total starting pitchers all season - and one of them, Hunter Brown, made just two regular-season starts. Only the Guardians and Orioles had fewer days spent on the IL. According to Spotrac, the 2022 Astros had 15 players on the 40-man roster combine to spend 859 days on the injured list. In all seriousness, this is a return to reality for an Astros team and pitching staff that lived a charmed life last year. ![]() Dusty Baker can tag along, too, for obvious reasons. What’s going on?Ĭhandler Rome : Can we take Astros pitching coaches Josh Miller and Bill Murphy with us to the Hoov? Those men deserve some stiff drinks after this week. Serious question, though: Do the Astros actually have any healthy arms in the rotation? Wow. ![]() First round postgame at the Hoov (Hooverville Bard) is on you tonight. Corey BrockĬorey Brock: Chandler, consider this your official welcome to The Athletic. Joined by The Athletic’s new Houston beat writer, Chandler Rome, we break down the match-up between the two preseason AL West favorites. Additionally, choices made as one character impact how the next plays out.A lot has certainly happened to these two teams since that 1-0, 18-inning marathon in Game 3 of the 2022 ALDS - some good, some not so good. I keep emphasizing plural characters, because Weird West takes the player on a journey with five different human and not-so-human protagonists, and they all play very differently. As in most RPGs, you’ll also be finding and crafting better weapons, armor and consumables as you move through the story, as well as upgrading your characters with perks obtained by finding relics. Of course, we’ve seen mechanics like these in other games, especially in Arkane’s classic titles like Prey and Dishonored, but they’ve really upped the creative potential for creating mayhem and using stealth. But you could also sneakily shoot a lantern from distance to ignite a stack of explosives that does burn damage instead, and then pick off your victim with a gunshot at close range. Sure, you can just shoot someone with your pistol. More specifically, the environment and all the items and structures within it just begged to be toyed with in various destructive ways. While the game’s overall story arc is determined, there are a lot of choices - in both action, sub-quests and dialogue - that the player’s characters can make that shape the course of the game. To start with, its mechanics help create an experience that is unique, fluid and allows for some genuinely creative approaches to combat.
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