The rookie lefty had been one of best Astros pitchers, in an otherwise inconsistent bullpen.

2. He finished a close second in the ’18 Cy Young race after going 16-9 with a 2.52 ERA and followed that up in ’19 with one of his best seasons yet. The move is retroactive to Saturday, September 5. And as the game in Oakland last night indicated, the veteran relievers have been just as bad, if not worst, than the rookies.

He was in the big leagues a year later at 23 years old -- he went 14-3 with a 2.73 ERA as a rookie -- and became one of the NL’s best starting pitchers over the next decade, winning 19 games in ’02. Outside of one element — more on that shortly — it might just be easier to borrow a page from the co-worker down the hall who always fares well in the NCAA Tournament pool by picking teams based on their mascots, locations or because a friend of a friend of a friend went to Loyola of Chicago so they’re gonna make the Final Four. Nobody played a “full” schedule of nine-inning games, which skews the innings pitched totals. In any other year, that would be a bizarre one-off fueled by bad fortune. Maybe the Cardinals have a lot left in the tank after all those seven-inning games. Mets scout Red Murff discovered him at Alvin High School and he was drafted by the club in the 12th round in ‘65. He went 12-10 with a 4.39 ERA that year before his career took off. Signed as an amateur free agent by the Colt .45s, Dierker made his Major League debut at 18 years old on Sept. 22, 1964 and struck out Willie Mays looking to end his first outing. Ryan made two All-Star teams with the Astros and won league ERA titles in 1981 (1.69) and ’87 (2.76). • Please enjoy Albert Pujols’s first dinger of the season, off a mind-bendingly slow delivery from Nestor Cortes, Jr. • Finally, MLB’s biggest storyline—the coronavirus outbreak on the Miami Marlins—may not have shown up in the game action, but it hung over everything. The shortened season means that each individual health issue can have an outsize effect on a team.

Maybe the long rebuilds by the White Sox and Padres yield long-awaited returns to the World Series. And the biggest question—how can the league prevent this situation from happening again this season?—remains unanswered. McCullers hit the IL because of what the team described as neck nerve irritation. Not all the time, but still way too often to be comfortable with any lead in the single digits. McCullers had a 5.79 ERA in 37 innings prior to being placed on the IL. It may not be correct, but at least there’s a logic and an order to the methodology. So maybe innings pitched isn’t the way to pick the World Series teams this year. That said, you have to work with what you have. Finally, on Tuesday, he announced one more bullpen injury: Joe Biagini, who would be sidelined with shoulder soreness. They had to get ready and stay ready for a season whose start date was unknown.

He went 21-6 with a 2.58 ERA in 34 starts. The eye test, analytics, long- and short-term evaluations of the players involved and playoff history for players and teams that may or may not be relevant in the present — it’s all tossed into the stew, mixed together, often in a position-by-position format, until a consensus is reached. Bregman’s return will be a welcome sight for an Astros team that is reeling.

From there, he was hired to manage the team in ‘97 and he led the Astros to four division titles in five years. Richard stuck out 15 batters in his Major League debut on Sept. 5, 1971 in San Francisco and bounced between the Majors and Minors the next three seasons before making the rotation in ’75. The top two teams in innings pitched by starters haven’t faced off in the World Series since the Mets and Red Sox did so in 1986.

Oswalt was the club’s ace in the early 2000s and didn’t take a back seat when Houston acquired Roger Clemens and Andy Pettitte prior to the ‘04 season.

Thirteen of the 25 World Series in the wild card era were between teams that finished in the top 10 in innings pitched by starters, including last season, when the Nationals (second) beat the Astros (fourth). Any one of the five men on this list -- and even a few on the honorable mention below -- could have a case as the greatest right-handed starter in Astros history, but I’m going to with Oswalt because of his decade of quality in a Houston uniform.

J.R. Richard (1971-80)Key fact: Only Astros pitcher with multiple 300-strikeout seasons. Maybe, with Tom Brady suiting up for the Buccaneers and the Lightning hoisting the Stanley Cup last night, this is the year of Tampa and the Rays are going to get back to the World Series. HOUSTON -- No one loves a good debate quite like baseball fans, and with that in mind, we asked each of our beat reporters to rank the top five players by position in the history of their franchise, based on their career while playing for that club. Find out the latest on your favorite MLB players on CBSSports.com. I used to take credit for ending the curse, but then the Red Sox wrecked that narrative by winning again in 2013.

© 2020 Forbes Media LLC.

Of course, pitching injuries are part of every season. It’s not all bad news however, as Alex Bregman came off the IL Tuesday.

The “Ryan Express” pitched for 27 years in the big leagues, spending a third of that (nine years) with his hometown Astros. He went 107-71 with a 3.15 ERA and 1,493 strikeouts while pitching for Houston and was putting together a Hall of Fame resume before a stroke cut short his career in ’80. Or maybe the Marlins, the true Cinderella of this bunch, make the World Series because they don’t know they’re supposed to make it (and also because the Marlins make the World Series 100 percent of the time they’ve reached the playoffs).

For a club that was heavily reliant — arguably more than what was comfortable — on internal depth heading into the season, the ongoing pandemic and its subsequent implications on the sport were a tough blow to absorb.

• Astros' All-Time Team: C | 1B | 2B | 3B | SS | LF | CF | RF | DH, 1. Or maybe Trevor Bauer pitches every game for the Reds. The Nationals won the World Series last season, when, counting the playoffs, they had 66 three-game stretches in which they went 1-2 or 0-3, including three in the postseason. The Cubs win their first World Series in 108 years. These losses are another blow to an already beleaguered pitching staff. A team that wouldn’t sniff the playoffs with a normal-sized postseason field could get hot this week and ride momentum deep into October. Houston has battled injuries all season, especially among the Astros pitchers. The rookie lefty had been one of best Astros pitchers, in an otherwise inconsistent bullpen.

Required fields are marked *. “That night, I’m thinking I might just be able to stay up here,” Oswalt said. Perhaps Gerrit Cole is as dominant as he was for the Astros last fall and out-duels Bieber tonight to begin carrying his new team to its first pennant in 1,100 Yankees fan years. The Cubs’ Yu Darvish (8-3, 2.01 ERA) is surely going to be an NL Cy Young finalist, Kyle Hendricks (6-5, 2.88 ERA) is a modern-day Greg Maddux and Alec Mills (5-5, 4.48 ERA) threw a no-hitter.

Or…or…or…you know what, instead of all that, you could just go with whomever wore the coolest uniforms in the ‘80s: The Astros and Brewers. They weren’t going to beat us.