Monday Morning Hot Links

*Jose Altuve homered twice as the Astros destroyed the Angels for the 11th time in a row. With 64 games left, Altuve's homers each set a new career-high. Springer:
The guy is a joke. He's up there playing Xbox. It's something special to watch.

*The Rangers beat the Royals, the Blue Jays beat the Mariners, the A's beat the Rays.

*On the Wild Card side, the Red Sox beat the Twins.

*This week the Astros play the Yankees, the Rangers play the A's, the Angels go to Kansas City, and the Tigers head to Boston.

*The big news of the day was the Astros calling up Alex Bregman, who will debut against the Yankees tonight. Altuve, on Bregman:
I think he's going to be a superstar. I think everybody thinks the same way. He's a very smart kid. He plays the game the right way. I feel really happy to have him here on our team.

Bregman:
It's a dream come true. And I'm ready to go work, keep my mouth shut and hopefully help contribute.

Hinch:
We've been flirting with the idea. We feel like this is a good time to add him to a good team. We're rolling along pretty well and he doesn't have to come up here and be anything but himself and contribute at a couple of different positions. 

*Bregman is the first position player from the 2015 draft to make his debut.

*Marwin left yesterday's game with a sprained ankle.

*Altuve paid tribute to Griffey with his white shoes.

*Fresno's Brady Rodgers is unbeaten in his last nine starts.

*Corpus and Frisco got into a fight after Danry Vasquez charged the mound upon getting hit in the leg:

As I was told, the biggest fight Whataburger Field has ever seen... between the #Astros and #Rangers' AA affiliates. pic.twitter.com/RxKXvMcH9I

— Ian Steele (@IanSteeleKIII) July 25, 2016

*L.J. Hoes had a walk-off steal of home for Triple-A Norfolk.

*Two months ago Ryan Vogelsong was hit in the eye by a 92mph fastball from Jordan Lyles. He's about to make his return, and he's still pissed at Lyles.

*The Rangers are interested in Edinson Volquez.

Friday Morning Hot Links

*We already did a quick link post for last night's selections of Forrest Whitley and Ronnie Dawson, while the County Mountie wrote a little more in-depth on Whitley. Here's the MLB.com Scouting Report on Whitley.

*In case you want to hate everything, here's a picture of Whitley in a Rangers hat.

*The Astros lost - again - at Arlington. The Angels and Mariners both lost so here's the updated division:
Southeast Wichita Falls: -
Seattle: -4
Houston: -9
Anaheim: -11
Oakland: -11.5

*FanGraphs still has the Astros with a 17.3% chance of winning the division and a 32.7% chance of making the playoffs.

*Carlos Correa sprained his ankle, X-rays were negative, and he'll get a few days off to let it heal up.

*McHugh only made it through 3.2IP:
My stuff felt really good the first two innings. I felt like we were pretty sharp. Then I kind of sprayed a couple pitches, a couple borderline calls on that first hitter and then he's on, and they were kind of off to the races.

The Rangers basically took advantage of every mistake and opportunity the Astros gave them. The Astros didn't have that ability this series. Or at all against Lower Ardmore.

*Chris Devenski threw 3.1IP of no-hit relief.

*Brian T. Smith says it's hard to believe in the Astros when they can't beat the Ramgers.

*Jon Heyman wrote that, while people expected an occasional slump out of Carlos Gomez, no one expected him to play so poorly. He also writes that the Gomez trade might just be the best in Brewers franchise history.

*FanGraphs: The Astros built a phenomenal bullpen.

*Hardball Times: An ode to BABIP

First Meat Wagon of the year!

For those of you new to Astros County, we refer to an injury report as the Meat Wagon. And the Meat Wagon was called out for the first time of the 2013 season this morning during a rainy workout in Kissimmee when reliever Hector Ambriz rolled his ankle. Catcher Max Stassi was held out of practice for the second straight day, but his oblique injury is apparently not all that serious.

Tranzactionz

This all took place yesterday evening, before the win over the Padres, but let's recap for you, with the help of McTaggart's notebook:

*The Astros will use a six-man rotation at least until the All-Star Break (which sounds like it's far away, but it's only two weeks.)

*Justin Maxwell has been placed on the DL with "loose bodies" in his ankle.
*Travis Buck was DFA'ed.
*Fernando Martinez was taken off the Concussion List and optioned to Oklahoma City.
*The Astros purchased the contract of Scott Moore.

Moore, whose middle name is actually "Alanboyd," has a .965 OPS for OKC in 73 games, hitting .318/.410/.555, with 51K:35BB in 292 PAs. In 23 June games, Moore is hitting .289/.400/.518, with 18K:13BB.

Maxwell out with sprained ankle

Justin Maxwell will have an MRI today on his left ankle, which apparently has been bothering him for some time:

"Every time I hit, I kind of roll my ankle. I've done every avenue of treatment that I could so I could play. When it was bothering me [Wednesday] on defense, I knew something was wrong. That's why I said something to Millsie."

Arbitrary endpoints and all, but from June 1 through the first game of the Royals series, Maxwell hit .267/.353/.644, with 5HR - but also 20K in 51PAs. In the last two games of the Royals series, Maxwell was 0x6 with 4Ks.

Oswalt drilled on ankle, might be okay

It was the worst game of the year. Easy. To get three hits and shutout by Paul Maholm, where Roy gets hit on the ankle with a line drive 13 days before the trade deadline, and the Astros lose 9-0 (and out-hit 19-3). It's condescending to refer to the Pirates as the worst team in the League, because we have evidence in this three-game series that suggests otherwise. The worst team in the NL just may be ours.

Roy, on what happened:
“It hit me pretty good, hit me straight on and really didn’t get any shoe, all ankle. I knew the longer I stayed out there the more it was going to start swelling. I couldn’t really finish pitches. I couldn’t really get through pitches and left two balls kind of spinning in the plate and got a few hits. It got to the point I started cutting my mechanics off. And I didn’t want to hurt myself trying to throw a different way.”

Mills:
"This is something that should be able to clear up in a couple of days. We’ll know more about that (today), but at this point, yeah, we expect him to be able to make his next start.”

Cafardo on Roy: Too picky?

This may be worthless seeing as how Roy has left the game in the 4th inning after taking a liner off the ankle, but Nick Cafardo mentions Roy in his Sunday column:

One major league source wonders whether Oswalt will get too picky about to which teams he would approve a trade...

...Would Oswalt, who is 70-22 in his career in the second half, approve going to the American League given some of the problems buddy Jake Peavy has had with the White Sox? One evaluator feels Oswalt would translate well in the AL. The reasons? “He pounds that four-seam fastball low in the zone and he has that looping curve that could freeze hitters. He’s obviously a great competitor who would get his juices flowing in a pennant race. For the year and a half he has left on the contract? I’d think he’d be fine."

Zach Levine's minor-league notebook

Zach Levine has some info on a few minor-leaguers, including slugger J.D. Martinez:

Levine:
An outfielder all his life, Martinez moved temporarily to first base and began to have knee problems. He was diagnosed with patellar tendinitis, and it has bothered him ever since and caused him to keep close watch on it.

Martinez:
“Some days it's better than others. This year it's a lot better because I've been monitoring it. It's not a big deal; it's just something that's going to bug me."

And we also find out that Lexington OF Brian Kemp has been put on the DL with an ankle injury.

Fulchino aggravates ankle sprain

Bernardo Fallas is tweeting that Jeff Fulchino has aggravated his ankle sprain and will be held out of non-throwing drills.

And the Meat Wagon is making an early run

Bernardo Fallas is way better at this Twitter thing than JJO was, and this morning he's telling us that freaking Jeff Fulchino has a sore ankle and will be limited in practice.

Blum Leg

Geoff Blum exited last night's game in the 5th inning. Why? A shin contusion and a mild high ankle sprain. Time to shine, Chris Johnson...
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A follow-up on the age discrepancy of Jose Valverde has been downplayed organization-wide (and here, and you can read why I don't care).

And JJO chimes in with a "well, it's pretty common to cheat and forge" line - which didn't help me much in 10th grade chemistry (the only "C" I got in high school. A streak which lasted until second-semester Greek.)

The practice of altering dates of birth in the Dominican Republic is not rare. Miguel Tejada and Wandy Rodriguez, who actually secured a different identity to initially sign with the Astros, are just two of Valverde's teammates who forged their age to sign professional contracts.

Somehow that doesn't make me feel better.
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Keppinger was out for the fifth consecutive game, and will be treated gingerly for a few games. Coop:
“He looked fine,” Cecil Cooper said. “It looked like he might be ready to get back out there. I'll probably be still a little careful with him. I would think probably just pinch-hit him and something like that. We have enough bodies to get by defensively to put him on the defensive side. But he looked OK. He was bouncing around. It still bothers him when he runs.”

So Chris Johnson might get his first start tonight. Or the Astros can shift Tejada to third to see what happens, and let Manzella start at short. If that's going to be an option for 2010, we might as well get a look.