In the past 10 games, the Astros have went seven and three and they are winners of four in row for the first time all season. The mood and the feeling is the team is finally back on the right track.
This has been one of the few times all year the Astros have mixed everything together and got great results. The starting pitching has been solid (minus one start) the bullpen has kept improving and the offense is finally pulling their weight.
Since moving George Springer to leadoff, he's batted nearly .500, Jose Altuve is getting on base like he's normal self. But the offense is better not just because those two guys, while that's great and helpful, the rest of the lineup is starting to come through. Luis Valbuena who bats in the bottom half of the lineup is batting .400, and even Jake Marisnick who has been absent batting wise all year has started to turn it on.
For a while, I myself have asked, begged even, for the Astros to do some major shaking up to the lineup. While flip-flopping Altuve and Springer isn't exactly what I pictured, it's worked. The Astros have been "lit" as the young kids say, going seven and one since moving the two. Springer has just been unreal!
"He's taking some singles up the middle, he's hitting some homers, bullet doubles to start the game," A.J. Hinch said, "his job as a leadoff hitter is to be a good hitter first, and what comes with that is a better hitter."
Springer early on in the year batting second had been a little up and down but he has seemed to find a home at the head of the Astros attack.
"Whether it's mental or physical I don't really care," Hinch said trying to give reasons to why his new leadoff hitter is going bananas, "I like the look of it, and I think he's made a conscious adjustment to set the table for Altuve (and) Correa."
The pitching has also been bang up as well, outside of a Mike Fiers hiccup (7 runs in 3.2 innings), the starters have been fantastic. They have given you what you have needed to win games with each guy giving up three runs or less. With the offense doing well, only allowing three runs is a winning combo.
The bullpen has also kept stepping up, getting strong performances from all over the place. Michael Feliz is nails, hasn't allowed a run since the year 1965. Ken Giles is still a little hit or miss but the rest of the relievers have been great.
Last year the Astros had a 10 game win streak and it helped power them all the way to the playoffs at the end of the season. Right now the Astros are playing their best baseball of the season, they haven't had a 10 game win streak but seven wins in their last eight games is nothing to sneeze at.
"It's nice to see us play consistently, we could have even had a better month if it had not of been for some one-run losses, I think six of them this month, our team has played well for going on four weeks," Hinch said via MLB.com's Brian McTaggart, "we can pretend it's May tomorrow or we can move to June and continue the momentum into another good month, we've got to play consistently for month to month to month to get to where we want to get."
The Astros had a really poor April winning only seven games, but so far May has shined on them as they have more than doubled up the wins, winning 16 games. If not for such a poor start, you could be looking at the Astros being frontrunners in the A.L. West.
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