The

Reading in the letter they bid to not leave out the words

Stores and cigarettes ruin lives of lesser girls

And I want to know because I want you to know

And it's a strange condition

A day in prison

It's got me out of my head and I don't know what I came for

Hello and welcome to episode 1762

I'm Julie Wilde, a fan-graphed baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters

I'm Meg Raleigh of Fan-graphs and I am joined today by the other Ben

Ben Clemens, Ben, how are you?

I'm doing pretty well, it's very rainy in San Francisco, which is kind of strange, but aside from that everything's been well

I mean I guess it is October, we are into the fall, but you do get that lovely fall

Bit of nice weather in San Francisco, it's a weird city weather-wise, I don't know what you guys are doing down there

Yeah, it's kind of strange, but I like it

While we are going to talk about some playoff related stuff to start the episode, we are feeling other Ben's presence in this episode

Because we're going to talk about his piece with Rob Arthur on some of the minor league rule experiments that MLB did

And then we're going to answer some listener emails

But I thought we would start today by talking about the Houston Astros and the state of their pitching

Because you recently wrote about that very topic for Fan-graphs.com and is a relevant playoff consideration as they get ready to take on Boston this evening and potentially advance to the World Series

But they will do so, it sounds like without the services of Lance McCullough's Jr. which puts an already shaky rotation on tilt even further

So Ben, what do you expect these Houston Astros are going to do in an attempt to counter the absence of McCullough's

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