MIGHTY ASTROS HAVE LOST THAT SWAGGER
The juggernaut that everybody feared — and hated — appears to be gone for good
When Jose Altuve botched an easy throw to second base on Tuesday night, an inexplicable error that helped Tampa Bay score five runs in an inning and put the Houston Astros in an
0-3 hole in the American League Championship Series, it seemed like a signature moment.
Altuve looked haunted. He suddenly had the throwing yips. The little second baseman sat on his haunches, his ball cap tipped back on his head like it, too, was surprised by what happened. The image of Altuve, dazed and confused, underscored everything that had gone on with the Astros in the year since they were on the verge of becoming the undisputed kings of baseball.
And then on Wednesday night, an even more striking thing happened. Houston starter Zack Greinke gave up back-to-back singles in the sixth inning, and with the Astros holding a tworun lead and white-hot Randy Arozarena coming to the plate, manager Dusty Baker walked to the mound with what was assuredly the hook for his pitcher.
But, Greinke talked him out of it. Baker walked back to the dugout.
It was a fascinating development. Baker, 71, is the old-school manager who was hired after
A.J. Hinch was scapegoated in the off-season over Houston's sign-stealing scandal. In what would be Hinch's final game as Astros manager, Game 7 of the 2019 World Series, he pulled a masterful Greinke in the seventh inning after he surrendered a solo homer that cut Houston's lead over the Washington Nationals to a single run, then walked the next batter. It was an entirely Astros move. They were a franchise that was ruthlessly devoted to data, and the numbers said that bringing in a fresh reliever was the optimal play. Washington's Howie Kendrick would in short order hit a two-run home run to beat those percentages and set up the Nationals' comeback win.
Now here was Baker a year later, doing the exact opposite of his predecessor. Not only was he leaving Greinke in to try to work his way out of a jam, he was leaving him in to face Arozarena, the Rays rookie who was a complete unknown as recently as spring training but has suddenly become Ted Williams. He had even murdered a Greinke curveball for a two-run homer earlier in the game.
The numbers absolutely said that the better percentage move was to pull the starter. Two decades of modern baseball strategy have all but eliminated the idea of leaving a pitcher out there just because he thinks he can get the required outs. The Astros became a juggernaut by ignoring such niceties as gut instinct and feel. Baker was metaphorically dropping his pants and doing his business on all that.
It worked. Greinke, aided by a sketchy strikeout call on Arozarena, indeed worked his way out of the jam, and the Astros held on to win 4-3 and live at least one more day.
But the episode still served to ask one question: Just what are the Astros now, anyway?
A year ago, the answer was obvious. They were the franchise that everyone else wanted to be, even if everyone wouldn't publicly admit it. They had three straight 100-win seasons, a World Series title, and were up
3-2 in last year's Series, heading home to Minute Maid Park for Game 6 and maybe Game 7. I covered that series, and on the travel day after Game 5, I told my editor that I would save a piece on how the Astros had become both hated and the envy of the baseball world. I would finish it after they won. It remains, half-written, in the Hall of Unpublished Sports Columns, overtaken by events.
The Astros have since gone from hated and envied to just hated. Oddly defiant about their record, as though the revelation of a massive cheating scandal shouldn't have caused the baseball world to doubt their accomplishments, the Astros were much more grumpy than contrite.
When a good offensive performance would have bolstered their argument that their
success was not largely due to their sign-stealing scheme, the vaunted Astros lineup turned in a clunker of a shortened season. They had led the American League in batting average, on-base percentage and slugging percentage in 2019. In 2020's brief sample, they were 10th in the AL in batting, 11th in OBP, and ninth in slugging.
Altuve, a three-time batting champ who became the subject of unproven conspiracy theories that he used an electronic buzzer to receive signals, hit just .219 this season.
There could be all kinds of reasons for the drop-off: statistical noise in a short season, the added pressure post-scandal, or maybe they just couldn't get focused for a two-month sprint after three long and successful seasons. But when a poor offensive season
would give ammunition to accusations that their success from 2017-19 was aided significantly by fraud, a poor offensive season is what happened.
They were on the cusp of a dynasty a year ago. Now the swagger is gone, and the Astros are managed by someone who seems to flatly reject the organizational philosophy that helped make them so good.
Houston kept alive its hopes Thursday night with a 4-3 victory and needs two more wins to get to yet another World Series. It could happen, in a pandemic-altered season that has already produced some baffling results.
But whatever the final story for 2020, the Houston Astros, the mighty, feared, admired team that we knew, is no longer.