The Bench: Can the Astros’ offense really be better in 2018?

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Today on The Bench, John and Lance talked about the Astros’ historic offense from 2017, and if there’s actually room for improvement in 2018. John believes they can put together a season even better than last year because the team dealt with a lot of injuries, and several key players like Marwin Gonzalez and Yuli Gurriel, will improve after another season of facing big league pitching. Also, young players such as Carlos Correa and Alex Bregman have nowhere to go but up, and struggling hitters like Carlos Beltran have retired and will no longer be in the lineup.

Lance, on the other hand, is not so optimistic. He still thinks the Astros will have a ton of success with the bats this year, but improving on a historic season is not exactly likely to happen. Historic seasons are historic for a reason, they don’t happen very often. He doesn’t see Marwin Gonzalez, Jose Altuve, and George Springer improving on last year’s statistics. Springer and Gonzalez had career seasons, and it will be pretty impressive if Altuve can outperform his 2017 MVP season. Check out the full segment and decide for yourself, both guys make some really good points.

Make sure you catch The Bench with John Granato and Lance Zierlein weekdays from 7-9:30am on ESPN 97.5 radio. You can listen live or on demand with the ESPN 97.5 radio app.